Journey with Dante

Inferno 6 Upon my mind’s reviving—it had closed on hearing the lament of those two kindred, since sorrow had confounded me completely— I see new sufferings, new sufferers surrounding me on every side, wherever I move or turn about or set my eyes. I am in the third circle, filled with cold, unending, heavy, and accursed rain; its measure and its kind are never changed. Gross hailstones, water gray with filth, and snow come streaking down across the shadowed air; the earth, as it receives that shower, stinks. Over the souls of those submerged beneath that mess, is an outlandish, vicious beast, his three throats barking, doglike: Cerberus. His eyes are bloodred; greasy, black, his beard; his belly bulges, and his hands are claws; his talons tear and flay and rend the shades. That downpour makes the sinners howl like dogs; they use one of their sides to screen the other— those miserable wretches turn and turn. When Cerberus, the great worm, noticed us, he opened wide h...

Inferno 5 So I descended from the first enclosure down to the second circle, that which girdles less space but grief more great, that goads to weeping. There dreadful Minos stands, gnashing his teeth: examining the sins of those who enter, he judges and assigns as his tail twines. I mean that when the spirit born to evil appears before him, it confesses all; and he, the connoisseur of sin, can tell the depth in Hell appropriate to it; as many times as Minos wraps his tail around himself, that marks the sinner’s level. Always there is a crowd that stands before him: each soul in turn advances toward that judgment; they speak and hear, then they are cast below. Arresting his extraordinary task, Minos, as soon as he had seen me, said: “O you who reach this house of suffering, be careful how you enter, whom you trust; the gate is wide, but do not be deceived!” To which my guide replied: “But why protest? Do not attempt to block his fated path: our passage has been wille...