Canto VII

Circle Four: The Hoarders & the Wasters

Circle Five: The Wrathful & The Sullen

Plutus

• God of the Underworld

• Guardian/ symbol of 4th Circle– Avarice (greed) and

Prodigality (spending freely)

– Also known as God of Wealth in some cases

Hoarders and Wasters • “so these shades dance

and crash eternally…a nation of lost souls…they strained their chests/ against enormous weights and with mad howls/ rolled them at one another.” (23-27)– Lie in ditches,

weighted down and continually hit each other with their weights.

Hoarders and Wasters

• “’what people can these be?/ And all those tonsured ones there on our left-/ is it possible they all were of the clergy?’” (37-39).– Signifies corruption in the church – Corresponds with political fight as well

Hoarders and Wasters

• “’This is lost ambition./ In their sordid lives they labored to be blind,/ and now their souls have dimmed past recognition…Hoarding and squandering wasted all their light/ and brought them screaming to this brawl of wraiths’” (51-59).– Destroyed the light of God within themselves

by thinking of nothing but money.

Dame Fortune

• “That king whose perfect wisdom transcends all,/ made the heavens and posted angles on them/ to guide the eternal light that may fall/…he made earth’s splendors by a like decree/ and posted as their minister this high Dame/…All earth’s gear/ she changes from nation to nation, from house to house/….no mortal power may stay her spinning wheel/… man’s mortal reason cannot compass her/…And this she so railed at and reviled/ that even her debtors in the joys of time/ blaspheme her name…” (73-93).

Dame Fortune

• Fortune received orders from God to transfer worldly goods between people and nations.

• She moves quickly and humans cannot understand this so we should not curse her when we lose something- it is God’s will.

The Sullen

• “a swarm of spirits in that bog, savage, with anger,…they thumped at one another in that slime with their hands and feet they butted and they bit as if each would tear the other limb from limb…there are souls beneath that water…Fixed in slime…” (110-120)– Souls attack each other in gross slime– Lie entombed in the bubbles from the sludge, singing a

hymn that mocks them.

• Sunk under slime- refused the light of God (116-126)

Canto VIII

Circle Five: Styx- The Wrathful, Phlegyas

Circle Six: Dis- The Fallen Angels

Phlegyas

• Ferryman to River Styx

• Mythological King of Boeotia

• Son of Ares (Mars) and human mother

• Sent soul to hell for burning Apollo’s temple at Delphi

• Symbolic of Wrath

Dante

“…and not till I stepped aboard did it seem to settle

Into the water. At once we left the shore,

that ancient hull riding more heavily

than it had ridden in all of time before.” (27-30)

Emotional Reaction“’May you weep and wail to all eternity,

for I know you, hell-dog, filthy as you are.’

Then he stretched both hands to the boat, but warily

The Master shoved him back, crying’ Down! Down!

with the other dogs!’ The he embraced me saying:

‘Indignant spirit, I kiss you as you frown.

Blessed be she who bores you.’” (37-43)

• First time Dante chastises the sinners • Virgil approves and commends Dante

– Dante purges himself of anger by showing it to sinners– He is learning and gaining the morals necessary – Contempt for evil will enable truer perfection for Dante

Filippo Argenti

“’Master, it would suit my whim/ to see the wretch scrubbed down into the swill/ before we leave this stinking sink and him.’” (49-51)

Filippo Argenti

• Black Guelph member of Adimari family (enemy of Dante)

• Said that his brother took Dante’s property after his exile

• Insults family

• Character development

Rebellious Angels

“…’You need not be cast down by my vexation, for whatever plotthese fiends may lay against us, we will go on.

This insolence of theirs is nothing new:they showed it once at a less secret gate…

And through it at this moment a Great One comes’” (118-125)

• Took Lucifer’s side in rebellion against God• Defend the city of Dis (lower hell) just as they once resisted

Christ's arrival at the gate of hell.