Dante’s Inferno Canto III

Canto III Virgil leads Dante up to the Gate of Hell They read a foreboding inscription that includes the admonition: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.” As soon as they enter, Dante hears innumerable cries of torment and suffering. Virgil explains that these cries emanate from the souls who did not commit to either good or evil, but who lived their lives without making conscious moral choices. Therefore, both Heaven and Hell have denied them entrance. They must now reside in the Ante-Inferno, within Hell yet not truly a part of it. Flies and wasps continually bite them and writhing worms consume the blood and tears that flow from them. The souls of the uncommitted are joined in torment by the neutral angels –those who sided neither with God nor Satan in the war in Heaven.

Canto III Virgil leads Dante to a great river called Acheron, which marks the border of Hell. A crowd of newly dead souls wait to be taken across. A boat approaches with an old man, Charon, at its helm. Charon recognizes Dante as a living soul and tells him to keep away from the dead. After Virgil informs him that their journey had been ordained from on high, Charon troubles them no longer.

Canton III Charon returns to his work of ferrying the miserable souls, wailing and cursing, across the river into Hell. As he transports Virgil and Dante across, Virgil tells the frightened Dante that Charon’s initial reluctance to ferry him bodes well; only damned souls cross the river. Suddenly, an earthquake shakes the plain; wind and fire rise up from the ground, and Dante, terrified, faints.

Analysis: Canto III In the first line of the inscription above the Gate of Hell in Canto III, “through me you enter into the city of woes,” Hell is described as a city. This description gains support in the portrayal of Hell’s architecture; it is walled and gated like a medieval city. The idea of cities figures significantly in the Inferno, and Dante’s treatment of them situates his poem both historically and theologically. Historically, large cities had begun to plan an increasingly important role in European social and economic life in the high Middle Ages.

Analysis: Canto III Dante portrays Hell as a city in large part because to a thinker in the early fourteenth century, any substantial population would have suggested a city. In the theological sense, the Inferno’s treatment of cities belongs to the great tradition St. Augustine’s City of God. In the City of God, the forces of charity, kindness, and love bind people together.

Analysis: Canto III Those who have lived metaphorically in the City of God go to Heaven. In the City of Man, each citizen acts in his own self-interest and thus preys on his neighbor. Those who lived in the City of Man go to Hell The souls of those who would not commit to either good or evil in life now must remain at the outermost limit of Hell – closest to Heaven geographically, yet undeniably still a part of Hell.

Analysis: Canto III Because these souls could not be made to act one way or another on Earth (moral choice is what gives action meaning), hornets now sting them into action. Throughout the poem, many of the souls of the uncommitted (those in Hell) are made to act out a grotesque parody of their failures on Earth.

Analysis: Canto III Through Canto III, the geography and organization of Dante’s Hell generally conforms with medieval Catholic theology, particularly the views voiced by the thirteenth century religious scholar Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas held that pagans who lived before Christ and led virtuous lives could have a place in Heaven. As the architect in his own Hell, Dante shows less sympathy, automatically damning those who failed to worship the Christian God, regardless of their virtue. The punishment that Dante creates for them is to know finally about the God of whom they were ignorant when they were alive.