Dante draws the character of Minos both from the Aeneid and from ancient mythology, just as he takes the three-headed dog Cerberus from Greek stories of the afterlife. By placing pagan gods and monsters in an otherwise Christian model of the afterlife, Dante once again demonstrates his tendency to mix vastly different religious and mythological traditions.
This tendency speaks to two main aspects underlying the poem. By subsuming pagan gods into the Christian conception of Hell, he privileges Christian thought as the authoritative system.
Like the punishments administered in the prior circles, the punishments here correspond in grotesque aptness to the sins themselves. Thus, the Lustful, those who were obsessed with the stimulation of the flesh in life, now have their nerves unceasingly stimulated by the storm. Also, they lie prone and in the dark—the conditions in which acts of lust generally take place. Finally, because they failed to restrain the internal tempests of their emotions, external tempests now bludgeon their bodies.
The punishment of the Gluttonous, whose sins also involved an obsession with bodily pleasure, is similarly appropriate. Those who excessively pursued pleasure in life now lie in an overabundance of that which disgusts. The excrement that douses them constitutes both the literal and figurative product of their greedy and wasteful consumption. Although Dante the poet remorselessly assigns illicit lovers to Hell, one senses that he may join his character Dante in pitying them their fates.
Dante the poet intends to assert the existence of an objectively just moral universe; yet he also imbues Paolo and Francesca with great human feeling, and the sensual language and romantic style with which he tells their story has made this canto one of the most famous in the poem.
Dante looks down upon the faces of the sinners in the next chasm and weeps with grief at their torment; these sinners must walk through eternity with their heads on backwards and tears in their eyes. Virgil reproaches Dante for feeling any pity for these sinners, the Fortune Tellers and Diviners, because they are here as a point of justice. They sinned by trying to foretell the future, which is known only to God.
As Virgil mentions Manto, one of the sinners in this chasm, he also delivers a lengthy, detailed description of how his native city, Mantua, originated, and Virgil makes Dante promise to tell this true story. Dante promises and asks about the others in the chasm. Virgil names a few of the souls before saying that he and Dante should hurry onward because the moon is already setting. Every circle in hell has an assigned punishment for the corresponding sinners within them.
Dante felt sympathetic and pity for those who dwelled in this circle especially the spirits of Paolo and Francesca. The sin that they committed is adultery and so they spend eternity in a whirlwind of flight within the Carnal. Which sinners does Dante feel sympathy towards? How does Dante view the two lovers Francesca and Paolo? What is the meaning of Contrapasso? Is Contrapasso biblical? What is the Contrapasso for the gluttonous?
What does symbolic retribution mean? What is the punishment in Circle 6? What prophecy is told to Dante when he sees ciacco? What is the punishment of the virtuous pagans? How are the hoarders and wasters punished?
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