Dante's Inferno Flashcards
Antaeus
Antaeus is shown among the giants half-frozen up to their torsos at the edge of the Circle of Treachery. He lowers Dante and Virgil into the Circle of Treachery.
Beatrice
a soul in Dante’s Divine Comedy who guides Dante out of Purgatory and through Heaven
Cacus
In the Inferno poem of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Cacus is depicted as a centaur with a fire-breathing dragon on his shoulders and snakes covering his equine back. He guards over the thieves in the Thieves section of Hell’s Circle of Fraud.
Francesca
According to Dante, Francesca and Paolo were seduced by reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, and became lovers. Subsequently they were surprised and murdered by Giovanni before they were able to repent. However, it is likely that the adultery was much more calculated. Both Francesca and the also-married Paolo had their own children. Dante used the romance of Lancelot in order to fit within the scheme of lyric love poetry, which Francesca emulates in her lines of Inferno’s Canto V. In 2nd circle
Geryon
the Monster of Fraud, a winged beast with the face of an honest man, the paws of a lion, the body of a wyvern, and a poisonous sting at the tip of his tail. He dwells somewhere in the depths below the cliff between the seventh and eighth circles of Hell (the circles of violence and simple fraud, respectively); Geryon rises from the pit at Virgil’s call and bears the Poets to the eighth circle. To Dante’s horror, the Poets ride on Geryon’s back, and he slowly glides around and around the waterfall of the Phlegethon down the great depths to the Circle of Fraud.
Malebolge
In Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, part of the Divine Comedy, Malebolge is the eighth circle of Hell. Roughly translated from Italian, Malebolge means “evil ditches”. Malebolge is a large, funnel-shaped cavern, itself divided into ten concentric circular trenches or ditches. Each trench is called a bolgia (Italian for “pouch” or “ditch”). Long causeway bridges run from the outer circumference of Malebolge to its center, pictured as spokes on a wheel. At the center of Malebolge is the ninth and final circle of hell.
Plutus
In Canto VII of Dante’s Divine Comedy poem Inferno, Plutus (Pluto in the original Italian) is a wolf-like demon of wealth which guards the fourth circle of the Inferno, the Hoarders and the Wasters. Dante almost certainly conflated Plutus with Pluto, the Roman god of the Underworld.
Simony
is the act of paying for sacraments and consequently for holy offices or for positions in the hierarchy of a church
Sinon
Sinon is seen in the Tenth Bolgia of Hell’s Circle of Fraud where along with other Falsifiers of words, he is condemned to suffer a burning fever for all eternity. Sinon is here rather than the Evil Counselors Bolgia because his advice was false as well as evil.
Paulo
Francesca’s lover and his murderer (Francesca’s husband)’s brother. In 2nd Ring
Brutus
in the 9th circle of hell for his treachery to Ceasar; in Lucifer’s mouth on the left side with Judas and Casius
Cacus
In the Inferno poem of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Cacus is depicted as a centaur with a fire-breathing dragon on his shoulders and snakes covering his equine back. He guards over the thieves in the Thieves section of Hell’s Circle of Fraud.
Sinon
In Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy poem Inferno, Sinon is seen in the Tenth Bolgia of Hell’s Circle of Fraud where along with other Falsifiers of words, he is condemned to suffer a burning fever for all eternity. Sinon is here rather than the Evil Counselors Bolgia because his advice was false as well as evil.
