Fifth Circle | DivinaLingua

Leaving the Styx and the wrathful behind, Dante and Virgil move toward the City of Dis. - Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, imagini di Amos Nattini, Milan, Officine dell’Istituto nazionale dantesco, 1939, plate 8. McGill Rare Books and Special Collections, elf PQ4302 F23.

As they walk down to the fifth circle of Hell, Dante and Virgil reach the banks of the marshy Styx, where the wrathful assault each other in the muddy water, covered in filth. Virgil informs Dante that in the deepest parts of the river, well beyond their ken, are the sullen, who are also punished here.

To cross the marsh, Dante and Virgil must skirt its edge until they arrive beneath a tower where, through a series of flame signals emitted from its top, the boatman Phlegyas is called to shore.

Phlegyas allows the two poets onto his boat and agrees to ferry them to the opposite shore. While they traverse the swampy water, however, one of the wrathful clings onto the edge of the boat. Dante recognizes this damned soul as his fellow Florentine, Filippo Argenti, whom he firmly rebukes. Reacting to Filippo's brazenness, Virgil pushes the wrathful soul back into the marsh where he is immediately mobbed by the other damned souls of this circle.

In the illumination, Dante and Virgil cross the Styx on Phlegyas’ boat with Filippo Argenti hanging off the side. - Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 40.1, f. 23r.

While we crossed the stagnant swamp

one cloaked in mud rose up to say:

'Who are you that you come before your time?'

And I to him: 'If I come, I do not stay.

But you, who are you, now become so foul?'

He answered: 'As you can see, I am one who weeps.'

And I to him: 'In weeping and in misery,

accursed spirit, may you stay.

I know you, for all your filth.'

EXCERPT OF THE COMEDY: Inf. 8, 31-39

(Inf. 8-9)

City of Dis

Lower Hell is separated from the upper circles of Hell by the fortified walls of the City of Dis.

Atop the walls and towers, devils refuse to allow Dante, a living man, to pass through the city gates. Virgil attempts to bargain with them, but to no avail; if anything, the devils merely become more obstinate and insolent in their determination to block the poets’ path. Frustrated, Virgil nonetheless reassures the now worried Dante that help is on the way:

no devil can truly stand in the way of their divinely sanctioned pilgrimage, and a heavenly messenger will clear this obstacle in no time.

Dante is turned away from the City of Dis. Atop the ramparts, the devils insolently refuse to open the gate. - Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 90 inf. 42, f. 41r.

While the poets anxiously await their savior, the three Furies show themselves atop a tower. Womanly in appearance but with snakes for hair, they tear at their breasts to call forth Medusa, the mythological monster whose gaze turns whatever it beholds to stone. Virgil, sensing peril, quickly turns Dante away from the screeching terrors and orders him to cover his eyes with his own hands for good measure.

A great thundering rends the air putrid as an angel comes to the rescue. The sight of the heavenly messenger sends devils and Furies alike scrambling; with a wand, the angel opens the gates to Dis, scoffing at the arrogance of the devils who would impede the Divine Will.

It was clear that he was sent from Heaven,

and I turned to the master, who signaled me

to keep silent and bow down before him.

Ah, how full of high disdain he seemed to me!

He came up to the gate and with a wand

he opened it, and there was no resistance.

'O outcasts of Heaven, race despised,'

he began on the terrible threshold, 'whence

comes this insolence you harbor in your souls?'

EXCERPT OF THE COMEDY: Inf. 9, 85-93

The angel departs as swiftly as it had arrived.

The path is now clear.

Dante and Virgil enter the city.

Sixth Circle

Walk into the sixth circle