Dante's Inferno & The 9 Levels of Hell Explained

hello everybody today i'm going to tell you about the story of dante's inferno as well as the description of the nine layers of hell that he talks about in the story it's wild to me that this story isn't as covered as you think it would be because like between the different layers of hell and stuff like the seven deadly sins it's one of the most referenced pieces of media ever see dante's inferno is a part of a greater work known as the divine comedy the divine comedy contains three parts inferno purgatorio and paradisio which line up with hell purgatory and heaven respectively although inferno's the one everyone remembers because it's the one with the creepy demons and the suffering and all that stuff to understand dante's inferno i need to give you a brief description of dante himself dante alegria was born somewhere around the time of 1265 in what is now italy dante became a poet and became particularly fascinated with old ideas of both greece and rome without getting in too much detail because both you probably don't care and i don't think i really understand it as well as i like to think i might dante was alive during the time of the holy roman empire which making it very very simplified and dumbed down there was the pope and then an emperor and the two were having fights back and forth over which one should maintain power dante was a very devout and firm catholic so he sided with the pope and whenever he lost a particular battle he was banished from his home city see this was before italy became a nation so the way that it worked is people were much more tied to cities than they were their own country and dante himself was from the city of florence so dante was exiled from florence and pretty much lived off the graces of those who enjoyed his poetry and it was during this time of exile around the year 1317 that he published the divine comedy the original title of this book was just the comedy see the word comedy is very different now than it was at the time of his writing this or in the historical connotation comedy was a story that followed a natural order in other words bad things happen to the bad people good things happen to the good people and we can all feel good about it so originally the title of the story was just the comedy or in other words this is going to be a long story and everyone's going to turn out the way that you think they should probably turn out so he brought the comedy to one of his friends who was also a poet and after reading it his friend said it was so marvelous that he should rename it the divine comedy which talk about hyping your boy up now something i need to make very clear here moving forward with this a lot on the channel i talk about things that are serious inside of the idea of christianity or in other words things that actual christians believe or in the bible um this is not that you see dante who really liked greek and roman mythology took a bunch of characters and inspiration from those stories and then just threw them together with christianity and came up with all these descriptions of hell in its nine layers and as we're gonna see and i hate even invoking this phrase out loud but a lot of this was uh biblical fanfiction like dante used a biblical setting to not only put down people he didn't like like literally half of the rebuttals through this is just by naming certain historical figures and saying that they're in hell like for example if me and you were an argument and i was like oh yeah well i wrote this book and guess what your mom's in hell so top that and i'm not kidding remember how i said that the reason he was exiled and wrote this book in the first place was because his side lost a battle to someone else well he just says all the heroes of that other army are in the certain layers of hell that he describes but we'll get into that because the story itself was you know pretty divisive for that reason a lot of people looked down on it and it wasn't really given a lot of praise at the time however hundreds of years later whenever people began to read it it became incredibly influential and the famous story that it's known for today to give you an idea in 1945 whenever italy was in world war ii and about to make their last stand against the allies they considered bringing the bones of dante to the battlefield in order to aid them because that's how much he meant to italy spirit and also in research in may of this year 2021 they had a virtual hearing for dante in order to historically and symbolically undo his exile from florence so a few months ago there was a trial for this dead poet who invented the nine described layers of hell and i wasn't invited for some reason and i'm gonna stay mad about that so because this is such an influential story and because it's the start of october and what's spookier than hell i read dante's inferno so that i could come to you not only describe the story the layers of hell that not a lot of people talk about some of 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to ridge for sponsoring this video it really does mean a lot and i really do like your product thank you to everyone for watching i hope you check out the link in the description hope you check out ridge and we are back to the video isn't that interesting now you know more than i do you watching this video know more about this video than i do currently recording it isn't that just weird and speaking of weird let's get into dante's journey through hell but first of all and as always thank you for watching the story opens whenever dante wakes up in the middle of a dark forest he's not sure how he got there however he figures it's best to write about the situation that he's in he's easily out of a force up a hillside however whenever he tries to climb he's attacked by various animals including a lion and a wolf moments later dante sees a figure out in the woods who he calls out to before the figure identifies himself as virgil the roman poet now in real life virgil was a great inspiration for dante and someone he looked up to as a matter of fact throughout the entire book dante refers to virgil as master virgil tells dante that there's no way to get out up that hillside that he just tried to and that the only way will be when one day the greyhound comes to chase the wolves away now while this video i hope is going to be a decent substitute for the story itself and the cool parts everyone talks about there is no way i'd be able to cover all of the symbolism within the story however some pieces like this are a bit more obvious so whenever virgil says that one day the greyhound will come to chase the wolves away that is in reference to something known as judgment day or the idea that within christianity at the end of time christ and god will return to earth and get rid of the demons lucifer and his whole entourage so the symbolism of the greyhound chasing away the wolves so that souls can freely climb the mountain is in reference to that virgil informs dante that he is now woken up within the pit of the underworld and that the only way out is a walk through hell dante takes the news surprisingly well and then asks virgil how he knows this virgil says that an angel known as beatrice gave him the information herself beatrice is the woman who dante loved in real life and now in his story he's written her in as a holy messenger and we're going to see a lot more of dante incorporating themes from his personal life into this story virgil tells dante that he can only take dante through hell itself and then after that it is part of dante's journey to walk through purgatory and then heaven the other two parts of divine comedy however virgil says that he himself cannot do it because he is a pagan spirit and therefore cannot walk into glory another thing about this is this story is also used by dante in order to get across a lot of his religious beliefs like for example he says here that virgil is a good man as a matter of fact dante thinks of him as a great man however virgil's a roman poet and was born and died before jesus christ so according to dante that just sucks for him because now he's stuck down here in the underworld forever see as we're going to see in a bit dante ranks the different sins or specifically the nine different sins by how bad that they are and then puts each of them in deeper layers of hell respectively however someone like virgil who wasn't guilty of any sins in his life is still cursed to the underworld just because he lived before christ so this is just the cars that he's been dealt so dante's scared that he's going to have to walk all the way through hell to which virgil scorns him and says that this message that beatrice gave him was given directly by god so god himself wants dante to get through this journey so dante better get on this journey so dante follows virgil through the woods until they come across a large gate also there's several different translations of this story the translation that i read people said was pretty good so written above the large gate is this inscription through me the way is to the city doland through me the way is to eternal dole threw me the way among the people lost justice incited my sublime creator created me divine omnipotence the highest wisdom and the primal love before me there were no created things only eternal and i eternal last abandon all hope ye who enter in this is of course the entrance to the gates of hell now most of you have probably heard that last phrase abandon all hope ye who enter in but the other lines are equally as interesting for one it opens up and says that through me is the way to eternal dole or eternal suffering we get all that but the part where it says that justice is the reason i was created and that my sublime creator did this as a form of omnipotence and quote primal love is saying that everything that we're about to see in the story and everything that we come across is just and what these people deserve for the sins that they have committed or at least what dante says that god says they deserve for what they committed and a common theme that we're going to see through this story is that sinners get exactly what they deserved in this never-ending punishment so dante and virgil walk in through the gate and make their way into hell upon entry dante says that he can hear every language and accent crying out at once now before they even get to any of the layers of hell literally on the path to get to the beginning of it they come across this giant sea of lost souls virgil explains to dante that these are people who didn't follow anything in life they weren't good they weren't bad they simply were nothing and among them is several fallen angels who also didn't commit themselves to god or lucifer and simply existed all of them literally billions of people from all across human history are chasing a giant blank banner which is symbolic of the fact that they never really followed anything in life so now they're cursed in this sort of in-between state of the real world in hell to just chase after a meaningless flag forever while they're doing this they're constantly being stung by wasps and hornets and it says worms all across the ground eat the tears and blood that come out of them the idea being the people who lived meaningless lives are committed to an eternity of meaningless suffering eventually virgil and dante walk to a river in which a bunch of people are waiting on a sort of dog dante can hear people around him swearing and cursing about the situation that they're in as virgil tells him this is the river acheron and then as they're standing there charon of greek mythology rose up on a boat now this is the start of something we're going to see a ton of where dante incorporates figures from mythology and then puts him in his christian narrative and just like in greek mythology charon is someone who rose dead souls down the path to the afterlife he tells virgil and dante that they are not allowed to get on because dante is a still living person and that's not how this works to which virgil just goes we are on a journey from god and sharon goes oh all right get in as all the souls are gathered onto the boat he tells all of them that now is a good time to start panicking and be afraid and then tells dante that he's not supposed to be here and then shortly after that virgil leans over to dante and he's like hey i mean he said you weren't supposed to be here so that's a good thing so whenever you do eventually die you probably won't end up here so cheer up because dante's terrified through all of this so much so that an earthquake happens to which dante panics and passes out whenever he comes to from passing out he sees that the river they are going down is now on the edge of a cliff face after looking over the cliff face dante can see what appears to be an endless spiral going down and what he's actually viewing is the spiral of hell itself each layer down being a different level attributed to a different kind of sin the noise he hears sounds like one perpetual loud noise which virgil explains to him is every soul crying out and screaming at once so then eventually the boat moves on and arrives at the first layer of hell limbo as soon as they come into this area dante says that the screaming stops and instead it's just the sound of sign and as he describes it sorrows without any form of torment remember that thing i said earlier about virgil how he was a good guy he just existed before christ so oops well this is where all of those people go people who were good people but simply didn't follow the rules of christ were before christ or something like being unbaptized which was a really big deal in catholicism at the time essentially this stage one limbo is like earth only people don't die and that's it that's the only difference there's no torment no one's really being tortured it's just the lack of hope and kind of the idea of constant nothingness or this is just how things are forever so people roam and go about life with just existence and again these aren't people who's really done anything bad they're just kind of here dante asked virgil if anyone has ever gone from this limbo into heaven and virgil says that a lot did whenever jesus died on the cross according to virgil whenever jesus died he came down here into this first plane of hell within limbo grabbed several of the old testament figures and brought them into heaven among these a few of them are adam abel noah moses abraham david and rachel just to name a few not only that virgil says that whenever jesus came into this first slayer of hell it caused such an earthquake and rumble that it caused a fracture to go all the way to the bottom of the hell which we'll see more effects of as we get into the story while walking through this layer of hell the two of them come across homer horus ovid and luken all famous writers from greek and roman history as the four of them are walking they ask virgil and dante to walk along with him now this brings us to a detail of the story that i haven't really mentioned up until now um but it's a little bit pretentious and i'm saying that as someone who's making a youtube video about a story that you could easily just read for yourself like for example these four men i just said are famous figures from poetry history who dante's big fans of including virgil himself so what happens is the four of them walk along and they're like virgil and the famous dante why don't you two come with us and while they're walking the other four are like dante you're such a great writer i can't believe how wonderful you are and now look at you walking through hell you know what you're one of us you're one of the greatest writers in all of history do you see what i mean by biblical fan fiction so then as the six of them are now walking together they come to this great castle wall and whenever they walk through it it's like this beautiful meadow and while walking through it we see figures such as democritus hector and elektra now if those names sound weird to you that's because democritus was a real person who existed in greek history along with hector and elektra two characters from greek mythology and dante does a lot of that in his story he takes fictitious characters and combines them with real characters another character that he sees here sitting on a sword of throne is caesar who dante really really likes but again he was born before christ so he's technically in the first layer of hell and whenever they get to the end of the meadow the four people who were with virgil and dante stay there as they continue on their journey and that's another weird detail like the four of them come up and they're like hey can we join you guys wow dante you're so awesome all right bye now so then they continue on to their path until they begin what is the true different layers of hell while walking they come to someone known as minus which is again a character from greek mythology just like in his story within greek mythology minus is here to judge souls and determine where they go in the underworld dante says that whenever a soul walks up to minus they can't help but confess everything that they've done in life to which minus then throws them to the appropriate layer of hell that they belong in minus points out the fact that dante's not supposed to be here because he's a still living person virgil says they're on a mission from god and they just walk by him again similar to what we saw earlier on the boat and something we're going to see a lot more of conflict rises virgil says god sent us conflict unrises so after this dante and virgil continue on their path and come to the second layer of hell lust this layer is consumed with great winds like that of a hurricane and people who are standing are constantly pushed back and forth never allowed to rest by the winds that they are facing and some people are thrown around so much that they're just floating bobbing up and down in the air every single layer that we're going to see of punishment has something to do with the way they lived in their real life so the idea with this one is that people who were torn asunder and blown about by the passions of love are now forced to spend eternity quite literally being blown about by mighty winds another interesting thing that happens is in every layer of hell dante asked virgil to point out to him famous figures and the virgil's like oh yeah well that's that guy he's famous there's also that guy over there he's also famous so like when walking through here virgil says oh yeah those two those are paris and helen from the trojan war and also that character over there that's ditto ditto is a character from a play that virgil wrote so like i said the thing that dante combines fictional elements along with real world elements but now he has virgil a writer of a story being like oh yeah that person that's from that play i wrote no i don't see what's weird about this at all and then continuing to look at people he sees the mistress of babel and cleopatra the reason he put cleopatra here not only because historically she's famous for lusty behavior but also like most 17 to 23 year old males including myself dante really had a thing for rome that's why caesar was on a big throne in the past level like sure he has to be in hell because he didn't like jesus but he was still the leader of rome and dante liked that a whole lot so as we're gonna see people who are not nice to roam dante is not nice to in this story and cleopatra had a very big hand in tearing apart some of the leaders of rome so she's in the second layer of hell dante gets really sad at seeing people in this condition and then asked to talk to two of them who explained that they were lovers in real life or the life before this life and said that he was her husband's brother and that one day the two of them were talking and reading romantic stories and then kissed and then had a passionate affair to which the husband killed both of them so now because they were lusty and broke the bonds of marriage and all that they're here on the second level and then in response to this dante passes out again which i mind you is the second time the way the story works is dante falls asleep and we wake up in our next location and third counting if technically the opening to this whole story was him just waking up in the woods i know i'm being critical of a story written in the 1300s and a story that admittedly was incredibly monumental when it came to ideas of fictional storytelling however that can't help myself dante then wakes up seemingly having been carried by virgil in the third layer of hell gluttony in this level it's constantly pouring a mixture of rain sleet snow and hail so it's constantly uncomfortable people are being pelted with ice and then the most uncomfortable thing about it is cerberus the three-headed dog is sprinting around and tearing people to shreds but people can't die so what happens is cerberus will pick someone up bite them in half rip them to pieces throw them and then they just lay there in pieces and either heal up over the course of however many eons or just lay there like that also an interesting detail is that dante describes cerberus looks pretty rough like cut up and pieces of its stomach cut open and stuff like that that'll be explained later and as cerberus sees the parent begins running at them virgil grabs a bunch of dirt and throws it into each of cerberus's mouths cerberus's mouths whatever which like like did you do it all at once like does he have three arms or was it like really quick or whatever they sneak by and as they're sneaking by someone sets up and identifies themselves as kiako and talks to dante and that's when he explains everyone on this level committed acts of gluttony in life so now we're forced to always be half-eaten by this cerberus creature and what most people do is they lay down and play dead so that cerberus doesn't get to them dante then asks hiyako if he can tell him what's happening to florence back on earth to which kyako says that all he can see is florence's future and that there's going to be a lot of war and bloodshed this is the start of something we're going to see a lot of as we get into the deeper layers of hell but dante is weirdly concerned with like the modern political climate of the city of florence considering the fact he's on a message from god to walk through hell in heaven itself but he keeps being like [Music] how's the election going back home it also brings up another interesting point because as they're leaving kiako asked if dante will write about him that he may be remembered now while on the one hand it's kind of pretentious for dante to write in his story that the one thing these suffering souls in hell want is for i the great dante to talk about them but it does open up this interesting idea from a horror perspective of these souls are so damned and trapped down here the only thing that they can hope is that they'll be written in books that they can never read as they're walking away dante asks the question of what happens to these souls who bodies have been so torn to pieces virgil says that on judgment day again there's judgment day mentioned again that everyone's soul will be reunited with their body and they will be in a state of perfection dante asks the question for the souls down here in hell while perfection may sound really cool in heaven what does perfect mean in hell and virgil's like well that means their suffering will be perfect in other words a whole lot worse than it is right now see and this is what's really interesting about reading this story in the modern age any modern story that you would look at that would be in the setting the story would go from a state of fear or whatever negative emotion to a state of pity or remorse or love or acceptance or whatever however that was not the traits that was becoming at least to dante at the time instead dante's journey or character arc through this story is going from pitying these souls to being happy that this is the punishment they're receiving because as the inscription on the gates of hell said at the beginning this is just and perfect punishment so according to the story it's good that as it goes on dante begins to lose emotion and remorse for these people instead viewing it as a perfect form of punishment that we should all be proud of so in this moment whenever virgil says well their suffering will be perfect that's not supposed to be a bad thing that's the wise virgil being like now don't you worry readers it's gonna get worse so anyway they continue on their path and get to the fourth layer of hell greed as soon as they come into this fourth layer they come across the roman god of pluto who is standing there worshiping satan again it's weird to imagine a greek god worshiping the christian devil but whatever pluto threatens to attack them to which virgil says they're on a path from god and pluto just collapses and they walk on by from walking along the path sort of along this cliffside dante looks down and sees what seems to be a sea of people constantly running into each other he describes it as two separate waves splashing against each other violently over and over again he sees that a few of them are bald which was common of friars at the time and he asked virgil if these are in fact members of the church to which virgil says these are members of the church half of them and the other half are people who simply hoarded money and didn't give it to others and were greedy throughout their entire lives now being forced to constantly fight and bicker forever just as they fought over wealth back on earth dante asks if there's anyone down there who he would recognize and virgil points out that each of them are so disfigured from hundreds and thousands of years of constant fighting that no one is recognizable anymore everyone's faces have been so obliterated and smashed in that they all just look like one identical mass of flesh always fighting over nothing just as according to dante there was no reason for them to fight so desperately for wealth back on earth so they continue across this path and then they come to the edge of a lagoon which is the beginning of the fifth layer of hell wrath and i need to clarify this isn't violence yet violence will show up later this is specifically people who were just angry or mean all the time so they come to this lagoon which virgil points out to him is at the end of the river styx and in this sort of mud broth there are these naked people who are constantly punching and hitting each other and trying to push each other down in the mud so that they can come up on top virtual also says to dante that wherever he sees bubbles coming up in the mud those aren't vents or anything those are people who are so deep under the mud that whenever they scream or cry it just comes up as a bubble so they walk along the bank of this river which again is just filled with people fighting punching and pushing each other down until they come to a tower that has two lights glowing at the top of it dante notices and in the distance he sees a beacon flashing and asks virgil what it means virgil says that this is the place that one can go across the river sticks and that the two lights on top are a signal for whoever's driving the boat that there are two souls who need picked up i think it is hilarious that in the middle of hell after the waves of people punching each other and now in this muddy lagoon where people are fighting for eternity that hell has like a morse code signaling system to let the boat driver know how many passengers he needs to pick up so then a boat comes up which is being driven by flagus another character from greek mythology who then lets the two get on the boat and begins driving them down the river sticks or driving like steering boating whatever as they're floating down the river again that is totally filled with people fighting punching and screaming all the time someone pops up and begins to ask dante who he is and where he's from dante's kind of like grossed out by it and virgil pushes him off the side of the boat and then as they're floating down the river dante sees that they all start like making fun of that guy for trying to have a conversation and then getting pushed off the boat so the dude just starts biting his flesh and ripping out pieces and virgil explains to dante that in life several of these people were very haughty and prideful so now down here in the river sticks they're constantly biting and bickering at each other and in shame he's losing his mind and ripping skin off along this journey dante sees what looks like glowing red buildings out in the distance virgil says that this is a place known as the city of dis and that that red glow he's seen is from the fires from within the city itself see the way hell's been structured up until this point is it's a sort of trail that they're constantly walking through and virgil explains to dante that the city of dis within it is the further layers of hell and that every layer of hell after this is within the city itself so in other words they have to get into the city whenever they row up to the gate crowds of fallen angels come and crowd on the gate and notice that dante's still alive and they don't like it they're like no you gross get out of here we don't want you virgil starts to do his whole thing again where he says we're on a message from god but these fallen angels who have in the past rebelled against god don't want to hear it so they just lock the city gate during this time dante gets kind of panicky to which he asks virgil if this has ever been done before to which virgil replies that one time he was sent to the bottom layer of hell to bring a soul out for a greek witch and he never elaborates on it as they're waiting there at the gate of the city dante looks up on the columns of the city and sees the three furies come out covered in blood and snakes the three furies then begin yelling for medusa to which virgil panics and tells dante to cover his eyes because if a soul is turned to stone down here including dante he'll never be able to go back out as this is happening and as dante's panicking he hears what sounds like a mighty roar before turning around and seeing an angel not a fallen angel like a heavenly angel walking across the river styx that they had just come down as the angels walking on the water mud thing of the river sticks it says all the souls are being pushed to the sides of the river to make room for it the angel then walks up to the gate of the city of dis taps on it the gate flies open and angel walks in and all of the fallen angels are cowering in fear as the angel says these two are on a mission from god and if anyone tries to hinder their journey the same fate that befell cerberus will happen to them now this is maybe my favorite part of the story from a storytelling perspective we've seen throughout this entire ride so far that virgil keeps saying oh we're on a mission from god and there's no proof of it and then the first time that someone doesn't listen to him an angel shows up blows open the city gates and threatens to take out everyone and not only that the thing earlier i mentioned about cerberus being torn up and part of his stomach being ripped open implies that at one point cerberus tried to hinder a journey from god and was brutally wounded for it and then after this the angel just leaves without saying a word to virgil or dante this also as you could imagine renews dante's faith and that he's going to be safe along his journey so then stepping through the gates into the city of dis the two come into the sixth layer of hell heresy this is a thing that isn't as common today as it was in the 1300s but short version is that heresy is strain others from the path of god or away from truth by means of some form of deception or misguidance like for example epicurus is down here who was a greek philosopher that told his followers there was no afterlife and in other words kind of brought them down this path of nihilism away from godly living and that's why he's here so what's the torture in the sixth layer of hell well it is these tombs that are cut out of rock and laid along each other that people are laying down inside of and they're constantly being stoked with flames essentially making a burning stone coffin that the heretics have to lay down in and these fallen angels of the area make sure that everyone's laying down and participating in the suffering while walking through this dante asks virgil if he can ask any of the souls if they know what's happening in florence because only dante could be walking through one of the most tragic and horrific ideas of eternal suffering imaginable and being like i really have to know about how the war effort's going back home he begins asking around and comes to someone known as faronata who in the real world had a feud with dante's family the two families being on opposite sides of that whole pope emperor war i talked about earlier however to his surprise this soul asks dante if he has any knowledge of what's happening in florence the soul then explains to dante that the way it works is that souls in hell can see the past and the future but not the present this in itself is its own kind of form of torture for example imagine if you were concerned about your family and all you could see is that 100 from years from now like your house won't be there or the country will be destroyed but you have no clue what's happening right now this also explains the guy on tier 3 who whenever dante asked about florence was like i don't know i just see bloodshed and destruction in the future as dante's talking to him someone named cavalcante sets up in the tomb next to him and recognizes dante see this guy is the father of one of dante's friends so whenever he sees dante he says do you know where my son is is he still alive to which dante when referring to him refers to him in the past tense saying something to the effect of oh well maybe he had it live that way and the father inferring from this that his son is dead begins crying and then seeps back down into his tomb that's like a weirdly human moment for this story everyone's so concerned with politics and kingship to have a father set up from eternal torture just ask if his son's okay and whenever he figures out he's dead to see him crying as he lays back into his burning coffin is a weirdly human moment but forget all that because dante wants to know more about florence so he begins asking faronata again about florence and what's going on there but again the guy doesn't have a lot of answers so dante finally asked well who else do you know is suffering in this tier of hell to which the soul says king frederick ii is down here now that probably doesn't mean anything to anyone right now but remember that whole war how it's pope versus emperor that happened like in history and dante was on the pope side well king frederick ii was one of the kings on the emperor's side so for him to write this story and to be like oh yeah that king you love so much well he's in hell with the heretics because i don't like him and he's a bad person so yeah after this dante and virgil continue their walking and come across a giant cliff face that has a noxious smell coming up from it virgil tells dante that they should probably get used to it before they just keep walking so the two of them decide to take a seat in front of a giant vault on the front of the vault it says pope anastasius the first i hold whom out of the right way photinus drew again this is one of the popes from history that dante does not like so he places him in his own vault in between the sixth and seventh layer of hell and he never says what's happening to him in there it's just like hey here's a vault there's a pope in here and that's all you get to know about it thankfully because i was getting kind of confused myself at this point in the story virgil uses this resting time to explain to dante how hell works or at least how it works up until this point he explains to dante that the way the nine circles work is they progressively get worse and the way that they are ranked is by how many people you're damaging or what kind of damage you do for example things like lust and gluttony will rarely hurt someone else whereas those are pretty much just vices that someone has so since it's more of a form of unrighteous living instead of actively harming other people that's why they're on layers two and three whereas things like greed and wrath are more often or more capable of hurting other people so they're a little bit more down the reason the city of dis is so important and the reason that layer 6 the heretics was so much more brutal than anything that we'd seen before is because layer six marks the beginning of people actively sinning against someone else see the first five layers were all about people who just had vices or lived a certain way and while they could hurt other people that wasn't exactly true all the time it's just possible to happen so all of them are outside of the city of dis of course they're in horrible conditions like the greedy people punching each other all the time and the snow following as cerberus rips people to shreds however they're not being tortured actively they're just in a bad place and they're suffering however from layer six on remember how i mentioned there's people laying down in tombs and they're on fire and the fallen angels around the city are the ones conducting it yeah that's how the rest of it is from here it goes from a state of misery to active suffering all the time the reason being everyone within the city of this so tier 6 to tier 9 are all people who hurt others in their lives virgil also explains to dante that god's most hated sins are that of fraud and deceit because they specifically abuse love remember everything that i'm talking about is centered around the idea of the love of god and everyone suffering down here is because they ruined that love in the world above so the people who most abuse love or in other words the sins that god hates the most is people who betrayed love in some regard as a means to get what they want so they are in the deepest parts of hell he also explains to dante that the final three layers seven eight and nine are all subdivided i'll get to the specifics of each one as we get to them but he tells dante up front that layer seven is broken up into three parts so having rested virgil and dante continue their journey into layer seven violence as they're walking along this path a minotaur comes in their way to which virgil insults it the minotaur goes crazy and starts thrashing and they just walk by so again threat virgil says words no threat dante asks virgil because you know they're on their way to the seventh layer of hell where these paths that they're walking along came from and virgil says that whenever the earthquake happened and jesus came into the first layer and pulled people out of hell that the earthquake sent a rift and they're walking along the crack line of that right now this kind of gives the overarching idea that wherever they're going throughout hell not only are they being guided by god but that it was all pre-ordained for this to happen so then getting to the end of the path they come to a place known as the river flagathon which is a river made of boiling blood which also explains the noxious smell from earlier virgil explains that this is the first part of the three parts within the seventh layer of hell here's how the seventh lawyer is broken up the first part is people who committed violence against others the second part is people who committed violence against themselves and the third part is people who committed violence against god so we all get the first part violence against others you know killing people that kind of thing however the second part violence against yourself is more interesting this is the part where i want to amplify the fact that this is not what the catholic church believes according to dante it is worse to commit violence against yourself than someone else because committing violence against yourself is directly denying the gift of your body and life that god has given you and that's worse than getting angry and taking it from someone else so because of that people who commit suicide are on a lower level than people who killed someone else and then the violence against god means doing unnatural things so for example bestiality is down there along with and this is the part i really want to amplify the church does not believe this this is not religion this is a man who fought in a war in the 1300s including homosexuality because according to dante that was such a violent horrific action against god and they got to go straight to the bottom and like well yeah in the 1300s it was generally frowned upon especially by members of the church um people weren't the fondest of him saying that it's worse than murder obviously by today's standards it's laughable but if in the 1300s you could say something bad about gay people and even the catholic church was like you think you think you may have taken it a little too far so as they're getting closer to the river dante realizes that along the riverbanks are standing centaurs with bows and arrows virgil explains that they're on a passage from god and the centaurs explained that their job here is to make sure that no one crawls out of the boiling blood river so if anyone tries to crawl out they just shoot him with their arrow and then they fall back into the blood dante rides on the back of nessus a character from greek mythology as nessus carries dante across the river i imagine this to be a very romantic moment as dante sets on his horse spine and nessus points out a few figures too dante for example he shows him alexander the great who killed a lot of people in his conquest for glory and he points out that the river gets deeper the closer you go to the middle so the people who are up on the sides and can still you know like breathe in the boiling blood are ones like alexander the great but if you get closer to the middle there are people completely submerged like attila the hun dante then gets off the back of nessus and him and virgil begin to walk into a dark forest which this is the second part of the seventh layer as they're walking through the dark forest that is completely filled with dead trees there are these things known as harpies flying back and forth harpies are these really terrifying human bird amalgamations from greek legend that are generally not a good thing and dante can hear screaming from everywhere but he doesn't see anyone virgil then tells dante to pull a branch off a tree and as soon as he does the place where the branch was starts spouting out blood and the tree starts screaming to which virgil explains that all of the people down here on this level again the ones who committed suicide or harm their own bodies are now these trees and plants and whenever someone like dante breaks a branch off that's the equivalent of ripping an arm off and they grow fruit from themselves that the harpies eat all the time and it's very painful and then virgil apologizes and tells the tree that dante wouldn't have believed him if he had just told him and it was necessary to break the branch off which like is it was it was it really though like after everything dante seen if virgil was like you know these trees are people would dante be like get out of here dante asked the tree who he was to which the tree says that he was a man by the name of pierre who was the advisor to king frederick ii he said that the people convinced the king that he was a harmful advisor and trying to overthrow the king so pierre killed himself to which as dante and virgil are walking away pierre asked dante to remember him and to clear his name in the book that he will one day write that's again an example of the souls down here being so destitute that the only thing they can hope for is to be remembered in some capacity so virgil explains to dante that the reason all these people down here are trees and bushes and all that is because whenever they were in life they just got rid of their bodies so now they have to spend eternity as something that is not their bodies in other words all these plants but then virgil's like but don't you worry whenever judgment day comes their bodies are going to come back to them only instead they're going to be hung lifeless on the trees themselves so now instead of spending eternity as just a dead tree all there by yourself you get a look at your lifeless corpse that is forever impaled on your pinky finger isn't that so much more fitting and what's so interesting about reading this story and things of the time a lot of us would look at that and be like that's so horrible they don't deserve that but at the time or at least as dante's writing it this is supposed to be a good thing and again dante's journey through the story is learning that everyone is getting exactly what they deserve so whenever in this scene when dante's like huh i guess it is right they have to spend eternity as a dead tree that gets half eaten all by these bird women all the time that's supposed to be a good thing and then while they're walking along the path from the other direction comes two men sprinting being chased by dogs which is super weird to see two people outside of you know like their pre-designated torture areas as they're running one of the men jumps into a bush to which the bush screams because again it's a person to which the dogs pounce on him and rip the man to pieces we'll talk about where the two guys who were running came from in a second but whenever dante and virgil walk up the bush is like crying and screaming asking why of all places he decided to hide inside of him because remember these bushes are living things so whenever the dogs jumped and everyone was ripping and leaves were shooting everywhere that's pieces of this guy's body being ripped up so dante asked the bush who he is that's a funny line out of context anyway and the bush doesn't want to be remembered but he simply says that he was a man from florence who hung himself so dante feeling pity because again florence matters above everything else starts grabbing pieces of the leaves and twigs and comes over and just kind of like lays them on top like oh sorry man here's your eyes and your toes and everything just lay that there and good as new so dante and virgil began walking in the direction of where the two men came from and they eventually come to a giant clearing that is filled with sand and this clearing itself is surrounded by the dark woods that they had just walked out of this sand pit is the third part of the seventh layer so he sees all these naked people walking about all moaning and groaning and a few of them are laying down however dante points out that their screams are by far the worst he then notices that there are these flakes of fire that are falling from the sky that he describes as looking at like snowflakes only instead of snowflakes there again pieces of fire that hit the sand and make it scalding hot so the sand that all of these people are constantly walking across is like third to green burn level hot all the time there's also a point where he looks out across the sand and there's a giant lane on it and i know i just said the word giant but i also realized that there may be new people watching the channel and we have to break them in easy so anyway the giant is laughing and essentially saying that this torture isn't so bad to which virgil points out that that's kapinius and he's not going to let the roman god jove who killed him have the satisfaction to know that kapinius is suffering so it's like all these people suffering and then a roman mythological giant because yeah virgil points out that there is a river nearby that the two of them can walk along because the waters of the river make stone out of the sand that's not hot and they can walk across however the people on the sand cannot step off of it because as mentioned by the two guys who ran naked through the woods earlier dogs will find them ripped from the shreds and then they'll just be back where they started whenever they heal up or at least that's why imagine happens like dante doesn't say what happens to the guy who got ripped apart into the woods although i highly doubt the way it works is if you get ripped up it's like all right your suffering's over you get to go home now while walking along the bank dante asks virgil where these rivers come from to which there's this weird description that doesn't really go anywhere but i have to mention it it's too weird not to virgil says that underneath the island crete there's this giant creature and again giant that is very similar to the description of nebuchadnezzar with nebuchadnezzar's dream in the bible so in other words it's this thing with a head of gold a body of silver feet of clay and i think thighs of brass and he says it's crying all the time underneath the island of crete and the tears go underground into the underworld and that's where all these rivers come from and that's never elaborated on i almost feel like in some of these cases dante had to be sort of trolling with it because it's like oh wait you want to know where the water from hell comes from well there's a giant stone statue thing underneath crete and it cries and that's where rivers are from any other stupid questions so while walking along this bank dante seeds his old teacher brunetto dante's excited to see him and says to brunetto let's set and talk a while to which bernetto says no if you set down you are trapped in that state for a hundred years that explains why the people laying down earlier were the ones screaming the loudest and like i've ragged on the story a lot and i know i have especially for a story that was written 800 years ago however that's one of the coolest like torture concepts i could imagine like it's this flaming hot sand that you would get tired of after walking for a whole day let alone the eons that you'd have to but if you take a moment to rest boom a hundred years in that position meaning more of your body's being burnt by the sand and then if you do eventually decide to just lay down and take a hundred years of suffering you're just stuck there and that is so brutal and i love it and like i know it may sound like up until this point i've been like oh this is so awful but stuff like this made the story worth it and made me want to keep reading and while dante never says why brunetto's all the way down here and while there's many reasons to be down here in this part of the seventh layer in the research i did uh there's beliefs that he was homosexual so dante feeling so driven that even though he was his teacher who he still greatly admires he's like oh you're gay looks like you're down there below the murderers bucko it's also during this moment that dante and not the character dante the rider dante uses this moment as more of an ego pump like there's that thing i mentioned earlier where the other poets were like you're so great you're fantastic and here his teacher's like wow you sure are mature and a great writer and a good spirit you're not afraid at all you're one of the most driven people i know well bye and then brunetto and the group just walk on and anyway i guess you know he's dante the guy that wrote dante's inferno so who am i to make fun of him but if you write a story like this and keep talking about how fantastic you are in it i am absolutely that guy to come and make fun of you before brunetto leaves he asks if dante will remember him again there's that whole remembrance thing so eventually dante and virgil come to the end of this waterway and it drops into a waterfall and virgil explains that they have to go down to get to the eighth layer of hell as they're standing there at the waterfall jerrion appears which is essentially and i know they're different but i'm dumbing it down is essentially a griffith which is the creature that is like the lion body and the human head and all of that and while virgil talks to the gerion he tells dante to like go talk to three other people who are standing on the edge of the sand and whenever dante walks up to these three guys who are sitting down in the sand they're all holding these purses and just staring at him and whenever dante asks why they're just holding the purses they tell them to get lost and get out of here and they just keep staring at them these guys are known as users which again isn't really a thing now but they were essentially lone guys or in other words they loan people money at high interest and then prey upon them to take it back and virgil talked about them earlier during their conversation before they went into the seventh layer but i wanted to wait till now to explain it because it's so funny to me so according to virgil the way the natural law of order works is people do things in the world and then they are given rewards for it whereas debt collectors don't do anything of worth and instead simply like prey on other people and take their stuff and therefore mess with god's natural order so dante threw debt collectors on the final part of the seventh layer of hell so according to dante the acts of violence you can commit include genocide suicide being gay and charging high rent and i'm once again stressing this isn't a belief system just because he was catholic doesn't mean the catholics believe this they renounced this several times um but reading it from like a modern standpoint it's so funny like oh yeah and in the end the burning sand that's where the debt collectors and uh all the other people who i have moral disagreements with go and no one can tell me otherwise oh you have you have an issue with that well guess what your your mom's in hell too so yeah what about it so then dante walks back over to virgil and the two of them fly down the waterfall on the back of geron down to the eighth layer we then enter the eighth layer of hell which is fraud again as mentioned earlier the idea that dante's getting across is that god specifically hates those who betray kindness and love so therefore fraud is so deep in hell this eighth layer has 10 different sub-levels and the way it's arranged is these 10 sort of stone trenches that are dug out or these sort of pits that different people are punished for different kinds of fraud within each one we then come to the first trench which is that of deceiving love from the descriptions that he gives this is sort of like human traffickers for example they come across someone and he says that he sold his sister to a lustful man and also jason from the story of troy is here for betraying his lover so those who give away love are those who betray private love and the people within this trench are forced to run from one end of the trench to another as devils whip them if they go too slow so imagine an eternity of sprinting and wearing yourself out from that and every time you slow down you're beat and whips relentlessly until you keep running the second trench is for deceptive speakers or in other words those who use lies or boister themselves in order to get what they want in this trench is alicio and thias again two characters from greek mythology and this trench is a giant pit full of dunk the idea being that people who bs in real life are now forced to bs forever and they're constantly fighting and pushing each other down and covered in sores all the time and obviously the smell not a fun party in the third pit are the simonis now that's not really a thing in modern age but at the time it was a big deal simonist are people who sell sacred goods now as that relates to church that means members of the church who would lie to people and have them give money when it wasn't actually going to what they said it was going to so like as dante describes these are people of the church who stole money to raise people from purgatory or quite literally sold holy sacraments for cash it was also a thing that started around the time the church leaders would sell pardons or in other words if someone committed a sin they would literally take money and say all right you're good now and then send them on their way dante didn't like that so they're in here too so the way that this trench works is the ground and the bottom of the trench are on fire and it's like these hot coals that randomly shoot up with flames and the only way to get away from it is there's these holes in the rock that you can put your head and torso inside of and i imagine it's just kind of like a stone coffin within there so then your waist and feet stick out and that's burnt but you have some alleviation on the top part of your body dante sees one soul that's so horribly burnt he can't even recognize a face whenever he asks the soul who it is they say that they are pope nicholas iii now dante did not like pope nicholas because he was the one who started the whole thing of oh well if you give me part of your money your family member can go to heaven or whatever so him being a charred burnt remain just tells him off and is like you know how much jesus charged peter to go to heaven nothing because salvation's free because jesus paid for you know what i'm glad you're down here and i'm glad you're burnt to death and virgil begins praising him for because as i mentioned earlier the character arc is not character goes from being bad person a good person like we would think it goes from character feeling bad for people to yelling and screaming at him and saying they deserve it and then nicholas mentions a really creepy fact he asks because you know his eyes are gone because he's so horribly burnt he asks whenever dante comes he says is that you and then refers to the next pope and he explains to dante whenever the next pope comes to take his place that he is to crawl deeper into the hole in the rock so that the next guy can put his head through it so are those holes just like infinite tubes full of people inside of hot rock that's like that's the worst one out of all of them if that's how that works and like the other thing is dante describes all of these cosmic terrors things like that and things like the burning sand and all that and then he's like and then we saw a big cat griffin thing and that was neat and we said bye to everyone who's been suffering for an eternity and then there was a really cool river and he just never mentions it they come to the fourth trench which is sorcerers and sears or in other words like witches and mystic types and all of them have their head twisted all the way backwards so that they forever have to walk backwards and that's it and what's funny is dante begins crying at the side of this whereas not 30 seconds ago he was yelling at the giant scab about how awful of a person he is and then now he sees someone walking backwards and it's just more than his heart can bear and i guess it's because like things like that in the modern age are i mean not common but we see them in horror movies so often and stuff we don't really think anything of it um but it's weird that he describes all these bodily images and this is the one that does him in people walking without the use of their knees how terrible also i feel like the punishment doesn't scale because the one we're about to talk about it's way worse like you've got the popes the the like pope tube with people on the outside having their feet burned up and then we've got people walking backwards and then the next one's a pit of boiling oil like anyway so they come to the next one the fifth trench which is like this boiling pit of tar and at first when walking around it they don't see anyone but then a demon runs by carrying someone on his shoulder and then dumps them into the pit of tar and all the other demons have these big like stirring rods and just push them under and dante realizes oh there's like millions of people under there how quaint virgil explains to dante that this part is for bearters or in other words people who exchange money for political office or in other other words the way modern politics work so virgil again using his wise words negotiates for safe passage because as one of the devils explained to him there used to be bridges connecting all these trenches but whenever jesus did the whole like return thing and the whole earthquake happened that destroyed the bridges so now they need to kind of like climb their way across while walking around the edge of the pit dante begins to notice that there's a few people who like swim to the surface and hide under the rock face but whenever one of the demons come around they dive back under which that's got to be you know a scary idea if it's like well back into the boiling tower i go that's better than dealing with these guys at one point while the devils are walking around which also mind you this entire time they've been making fun of dante like hey what if we throw him in the pit wouldn't that be funny and dante's like crying and throwing up and everything at one point as they're walking around one of the demons stab a guy and hoist him up in the air and dante's trying to have a conversation with him but every time he says something one of the demons like pokes an organ out anyway eventually there's like a moment of confusion with the demons and the guy manages to hop off the hook back into the boiling tar um so the two demons get into a fight with each other and fall into the tar and dante never elaborates if they're just stuck down there forever or what but there's two demons in the tar pit now whatever that means so the other demons get mad at virgil and dante because i don't know they're like hey get those guys now for some reason so virgil and dante run and just jump into the sixth trench which turns out is a relatively trip chill chill trench is a relatively chill trench however it's really lucky that it was because what if it was another boiling tar ones like oh and we're dead now great all of god's journey ruined because we were running and jumped into a trench like an idiot so they jump into the sixth trench and it's a bunch of people with really heavy garments over them and that's it like it's just like these heavy they look like robed people walking around in circles and dante points out that the outside of the robes look beautiful but the inside is like like brittle and covered in lead and stuff it's not on fire it's not anything extreme they're just forced to walk around all the time and really heavy garments but like can they sit down can they like take a nap is this just like a bunch of weighted blankets everywhere dante eventually talks to two men who explain that they are friars and that this pit is for hypocrites hence the whole the garment looks beautiful on the outside but it's ugly and bristled on the inside you get it and while talking dante notices that there is a man in the middle of the room who is crucified to the floor and the two friars explain that that is caiaphas the guy who had the idea to crucify jesus and that whenever they're walking around in the robes that they have to step on him as his punishment for crucifying jesus again no clue if anyone's telling them to do that or if that's just like an agreement they all came to or what and then dante and virgil just leave and they head on to the seventh trench the seventh trench is by far the weirdest one and like a lot of the language in this poem which you can check it out i linked in the description itself is hard to read in its own right and what he's describing here is anyway so the seventh trench is for thievery and essentially in it there are these giant lizard snake things and they're not lizards or snakes they're like these weird hybrid creatures that he's just trying to describe that have these stingers on him and he watches one of them sting a guy that's running around and he's bound up by snakes so there's a guy bound by snakes running around in this pit of giant snake lizard things and one of them stings him and he falls over and turns to ash then all of the ash reforms and he comes back together and that just keeps happening on a loop dante goes down there and asks the guy who he is and the guy doesn't want to say and eventually confesses that he stole from a church because again the seventh trench is thievery so then during the conversation he curses god and as soon as he does a series of snakes come and begin to wrap him up and as they're wrapping him dante's talking about how much he hates him and how deserving he is of this punishment so i want you to imagine dante standing there at the edge of a trench he just came to this guy's probably been suffering for you know two three hundred years and dante is like asking him what happened and then the guy was like yeah i'm not the biggest fan of god and immediately snakes rap all around him and as he's laying there like suffocating frothing at the mouth dante's like i cannot believe your insolence well let me tell you as someone of a higher position that you are wrong good day sir this is the really weird part that's hard to describe so these three souls come up to him and then they all sort of like scream or cry out for something and the description that dante gives to the best of my ability is like this worm with legs comes to one of the souls and like burrows inside of it and then like the soul flips around and becomes this lizard thing and then i'm not kidding read it yourself and then another one of the souls this like turtle comes up to and they both breathe no it bites the soul on the chest and smoke comes out of the chest and then the smoke becomes a snake and then the other one like gets eaten by a scorpion thing or whatever and becomes a spider that that's the best i can do like it's this weird long description of these three people flipping in and out and i'm sure it's this really cool cosmic horror um but the way dante describes it gets me a little bit he specifically says the things that i saw were so great and so amazing that they would put any poet to shame and that the sights here were more amazing than any man could ever dare to imagine and like if this was real sure i get it but dante here and he specifically brings up like old roman and greek poems and it's like this is cooler than what those guys had so he's pretty much right into being like wow it'd take a pretty cool guy to come up with this stuff which is definitely real and not made up by a really cool guy and i think what he's describing is that the souls down here constantly have their bodies stolen by the spirit they're like lizard things that are running around everywhere uh or like they're constantly switching bodies i don't know weird stuff is happening in the thief pit so anyway they come out of that pit and then they go to the eighth one which whenever they see it it's like this long expansive area and there's these little fires everywhere that dante describes as looking as fireflies and then virgil's like yeah underneath every one of those little fires you see is a soul burning all the time these are the evil leaders and counselors or in other words people who let others to death or treachery with their leadership for example one person down here is ulysses from the trojan horse story who says that after all of that happened he decided to get all of his men together and sail across the seas forever however at the time you know 1300 they thought that the world ended at a certain point so his story is that ulysses went too far and literally went off the map and everyone with him died so now he's punished down here because he led men to death with his own insolence one very interesting person down here is guido da montefeltro and again guido is a real historical figure but according to him pope boniface the viii had asked him to be a soldier in his army and guido had said that he doesn't want to do that because he's repented and doesn't want to go to war but the pope said that he will give him a pardon in advance if he fights in the papal war however whenever guido died a demon took him saying that you cannot be pardoned for a sin you had not yet committed because that implies that you regret it however if you regret something in advance before you do it that's not actually in you know regretting it that's the equivalent of being like i'm sorry before you punch somebody and apparently and again i'm not an expert on like you know medieval times religion or whatever but apparently this was a thing that was happening within catholic churches people would like get pardons in advance so again dante including him in this tier of hell is another political jab they come to the ninth trench which according to dante is an endless sea that looks like all the carnage from every war in history it is just arms and legs and bodies and heads and everything else ripped to shreds virgil explains that these are the sowers of discord or in other words people who have purposefully caused trouble and that what happens is these demons come around and they pick people up and they just rip them into as many pieces as they want and then throw them back in there and because this is hell no one can die so if your head gets ripped in half and you're just a disembodied head well you just gotta lay there forever and then have piles of other body parts thrown on top of you and you can still feel all your limbs and it's like that forever he mentions a few people being down here most of them people he personally knew from florence because he does that a lot as well as the prophet muhammad from the religion of islam because i mean as you could imagine dante did really care for islam so yeah he put him in there too among the carnage he sees something like a man who's had like his entire mouth and jaw ripped off and can't speak he saw another man who had his head cut off and was walking around holding his own hair and whenever he comes to dr dante he's like hey talk to the actually he's like hey talk to it there's also this weird line where dante mentions to virgil oh i should have a family member down here and virgil's like yeah he was there you just didn't recognize him because he was skinned alive and dante's like oh all right on to the next part they then get to the 10th trench which is different as on their way there it becomes pitch black and dante has to cover his ear from the shriekings that he's hearing this is the trench of liars and falsifiers in other words those who have completely lied outright in order to gain from it he says that the people in this trench not only experience total darkness but illnesses of that far beyond earth or in other words a constant pestilence he says he sees people covered in these giant scabs that he compares to fish scales all over their body that they constantly itch and rip off and bleed everywhere just to continue to scratch before the scabs grow back and they do it over again he meets a man by the name of griffilino who was an alchemist in other words he would fake precious metals and then sell them as real like gold and silver as well as to rabbit people who run around frothing at the mouth biting other people and themselves saying that the pestilence here is so strong people have even lost their minds he comes across a counterfeiter who made fake money who is hideously bloated and constantly thirsty with no way to get water and then also down there is potiphar's wife who is a bible character that lied about joseph in order to have him be thrown in prison also two of them gets into a fight and at this point dante's so giddy about all this torture stuff that he like enjoys the fight and then virgil rebukes him and says no don't enjoy their fighting but it's good that they're suffering but don't enjoy it too much and then they leave so then walking out of the eighth layer of hell they walk into this corridor that's incredibly dark dante begins to make out in the darkness something that he describes as towers but as he gets closer he realizes that these are not towers instead these are giants i'm controlling myself who are stuck in the ground from their stomach down or in other words it's just the top half sticking out and all of these giants are in a circle around a huge well there is one giant by the name of nimrod who is blowing a trumpet but whenever he tries to speak to the pair what he says is completely indiscernible virgil explains that nimrod had the idea to build the tower of babel in the bible which is the tower that people tried to build in order to get to heaven and for his insolence he's been punished that no one can ever understand him eventually they come across a giant named anties who is not frozen or stuck in any regard and ask for his help to go down the well initially antaeus is afraid to go down to the ninth layer but then dante says that he can make him famous by writing about him in the story so antaeus agrees and he holds out his hand to which the two men climb onto it gives you a scope for how big this giant is he then climbs down the well and drops them off onto a frozen lake they are now in the ninth layer of hell treason as the previous two layers it is subdivided this time into four parts the first part is kindred or family betrayal the second part is country or homeland betrayal the third part is betrayal of guests and friends and the fourth part is betrayal to god as soon as they get there dante hears a voice say be careful where you step you may step on a center to which dande pulls back and realizes that he is standing on a giant frozen lake that has heads popping up out of it and all of the heads are living people who are permanently frozen unable to move from the neck down as people cry the tears freeze across their face and it's so cold that several people have ears frozen off and are in a permanently pale state of existence while walking and stepping over all of the heads he comes across these two men who have their hair knotted together so they're forever touching forehead to forehead another soul explains that these are two brothers who killed themself in the real world so now they are forced to be ever be stuck together and unable to do anything about it virgil then says they need to continue walking as he says they are walking towards the center of this frozen lake which is the center of hell itself now something to explain about why the ninth layer is composed this way the idea being the least offensive treason is that a family because family is something that you're born into so while you're still supposed to maintain ties the love there isn't as strong as a loved one would give to a friend or god the second is country because country is something that one or at least dante figured someone should be so loyal to that it should surpass that of family the third being friends and guests because those are bonds that you have chosen to make and entirely rely on trust so betraying that is a massive sin against humanity and then finally a treacherous act against god the idea being that since god is perfect any treacherous act comes from a pure place of malice on your behalf so as they walk closer to the center um i can't really see in the writing a difference between you know the ones who because like in the eighth tier there were individual trenches like it was easy to see oh these people these people these people it seems like here it's just continuing and nothing's changed the only mention was there was a line about the faces were purple so maybe it's even colder here but like you know it's still just head sticking out so whatever while walking dante kicks someone's head on accident who's gets mad and he's like why are you torturing me i'm being tortured enough leave me alone and whenever dante asks him who he is the head doesn't respond so dante gets down on the ground and grabs his hair and says if you don't tell me who you are i'll rip your hair out like that that is a wild change from the dante that we saw like an hour ago like this guy went from passing out at the thought of two people kind of floating around in the wind so now he's like if you don't tell me who you are i'm gonna rip your frozen hairs off one by one so as this is going on ahead nearby tells dante that that man is a traitor to florence dante does not like that one bit and tells the frozen man that he's going to write about him in his story and everyone for all of history will know that he's a traitor to florence forever cursed to freeze in hell he keeps walking and comes across two people who are frozen one's head up against the back of another and the one who's pressed up against the back is eating the head of the man in front of him dante kneels down and asks what this is all about and to answer him the guy that is eating the other guy wipes his mouth on the hair of the guy in front of him and then begins to tell his story he tells dante that he himself was count and the man whose head he's eating was an archbishop who in life condemned him and his sons into a dungeon where they all starved to death he gives a grueling account of how he was thrown in there for betraying the city of pisa and even though he deserved the treachery also throwing his sons in there was a treacherous act and it's heavily or at least he heavily implies that he ate his sons as they were about to die like that's how hungry he was so he tells dante now the man is forever cursed to be the victim of my hunger and then he just goes back to eating the guy's head to which dante the takeaway he has from that is he stands up and he's like pisa is such a horrible city i can't believe pisa is this evil could you imagine that at and again this is the thing that's so weird to me about this he is in the ninth circle of hell he has gone where quite literally no man has been before standing above someone eating someone else's head for eternity he's like man pisa really has to get their social climate in order so then they continue on walking and they get to the third part of the ninth layer which is the traitors to guess again because that's entirely bounded on trust and they broke that trust these people are different because instead of frozen upright their frozen line on their backs which means not only do they not have anyone to look at and they never know who's around them but whenever they cry instead of the ice kind of pouring down like icicles it covers their whole face until eventually they're stuck in this frozen mask it's also this point that dante begins to feel a rush of wind like a gentle breeze happening and he asks virgil what it is and virgil's like just we'll get to it when we get to it one person who has their face completely frozen in tears asked dante to help him and dante says he will if the man tells him his story the man frozen on the ground explains that he is friar alvarezio which is someone that dante knows back on earth the friar explains that he invited a guest over to his house and murdered him dante's confused though because the friar is still alive on earth to which the soul explains that if someone commits a sin so heinous that it puts them in the ninth circle of hell the moment that they commit it their soul is sucked to hell and their body is filled with a demon and that's where possessions come from this is an insanely cool concept to me like the idea of souls being switched if someone commits an act so heinous against humanity and guess what dante's takeaway is from it that's right italian politics so then remember dante made the deal tell me who you are i'll break the ice off your face and then dante goes you know what no i'm not going to break the ice on your face you know why because this is what you deserve and then he stands up and recounts that this man is from genoa and he's like genoa is such a terrible place that a friar can be possessed and no one could tell the difference imagine living in genoa wouldn't that be awful like the man just described there are sins so heinous that a demon possesses your corpse and now they exist in the realm of the living and his takeaway is that genoa not the best place to live they then continue walking and dante says they eventually get to a place where souls are completely frozen beneath the ice as in not just their heads sticking out and they cry their entire body frozen forever in various positions that he can see beneath the ice as they walk across it and then finally they come to the fourth part of the ninth layer of hell the bottom of the pit itself as they get close virgil explains to dante the wind that he was feeling earlier that's much stronger now is the wind off of lucifer's wings as he flaps them whenever they get to lucifer himself he is massive as a matter of fact dante says that he himself dante is closer in size to the giants than the giants were to the size of lucifer implying him to be this monumental mountain-sized figure lucifer himself has three heads the one on the right being a dark blackish color the middle one being deep blood red and the left one being a bright burning yellow and from each of those faces pours blood and tears from the eyes that run down his body and create a sort of river there are four people in this bottom pit of hell the first as mentioned is lucifer lucifer for betraying humanity and betraying god the two on either sides of the heads are brutus and cassius now that may not mean much to a lot of you but for my boys who know about rome that's a pretty big deal brutus and cassius are the two members of the senate who conspired to murder caesar in other words ending the original roman empire which as i mentioned earlier dante thought pretty highly of so caesar himself set on a throne in the first circle of hell as such a great man and now the two people who conspired to murder him and destroyed the roman empire are stuck here as well the two of them hang within the right and left sides of lucifer's heads with their top half hanging out as they are constantly chewed and lucifer reaches up with claws and scratches them for all eternity so non-stop within the mouth of satan snarling as he bites at you forever and then finally in the middle head of lucifer the most punished man in all of hell is judas iscariot he is instead facing towards the throat of lucifer and dante says he can see his spine and bones as all the skin has been stripped away judas is here for betraying jesus christ and leading to the crucifixion of jesus so not only for betraying jesus himself but for portraying humanity's second attempt at perfection virgil explains to dante that now that they have made it to the bottom of hell and they've seen everything that needs to be seen it's now time to climb their way out so virgil carries dante on his back and waits for an opportune moment to grab on to the side of lucifer and begin climbing up him virgil's climbing for a while before jumping off of lucifer onto a rock face and then dante opens his eyes and instead of seeing you know lucifer's chest as if he was climbing up he sees lucifer's legs sticking up as if everything's been flipped upside down virgil explains that this entire time they've been traveling towards the center of the earth and now they've passed the barrier where gravity has flipped and they are now climbing their way out virgil says that they are climbing their way to the southern hemisphere which is almost entirely made of water according to him whenever lucifer was cast out of heaven all of the land moved away from him and he shot a straight hole all the way from the heavens to the center of the earth where he got stuck going through and that's the reason he's now frozen setting up chewing on brutus cassius and judas so all that they have to do is tunnel their way out the hole that lucifer originally made whenever he got shot in the waters from the oceans because again as virgil said the land moved away from him so now it's pretty much just water up there the waters from these oceans burrow their way down and dante says that this water coming through is the river leaf from greek mythology and then they finally pop out as dante says at the exact opposite point on earth from where they started so they made a direct line through the entire earth with the final line of dante's inferno being vince we came forth to re-behold the stars meaning they're finally out on the surface and can once again see the stars not only that but they've popped out at the foot of mount purgatory or in this legend the mountain on which purgatory exists which makes sense at this time in history because again they hadn't really explored anything outside of their hemisphere so they thought well if purgatory is going to be anywhere it might as well be on the other side of the earth so then coming out on the surface at the foot of mount purgatory is the setup for the second part of divine comedy purgatorio so after all of that after i read and described to you the entirety of dante's furno how do i feel about it this is all right there are some interesting points while reading it um like some conclusions i came to that i think are interesting especially from a modern perspective for one and i mentioned this a lot the journey of dante from being pity to pious is so interesting to me because whereas we hear that whole thing near the end in tier nine with the guy with the frozen tears on his face who dante's like if you tell me who you are i'll uncover your face and then after he tells him dante's like no you're a bad soul you deserve to have your face covered in frozen tears forever that is like a heroic moment that is dante's character arc from being weak and passing out to being like nope they deserve it uh this is all right and i'm following what god wants me to do by saying that they should suffer more i like that idea it was also really interesting the ideas of like fame throughout the entire story because it's it's like a cool concept by modern standards it's wild that in the 1300s dante managed to have these ideas where these suffering souls are just like please remember me or just show me some form of remembrance which was entirely out of character for any storytelling at the time so i think it's really interesting to see it put forward as much here and what's interesting is once he got to like the eighth and ninth layer of hell they didn't want him to know who he was because then it goes from fame to infamy also there's kind of the combined message that you probably picked up on listening to this that dante had a very heightened sense of christianity above everything else like yeah he had all the greek and the roman gods and like you mentioned muhammad that's an islamic figure right and all that but they're all within his idea of what hell is in the christian canon so therefore it's like yeah you know you can all be real whatever um but you're in my hell so as well as the entire story itself being both a political and personal tool like it's a political tool in the fact of like the army he's waging against he's like oh you you don't like me well king frederick ii is in the heretic level of hell now and oh you think he's your actual king well i guess you're wrong oops and also the personal stuff like not only the fact that virgil his hero basically guides him through the whole journey but the fact all these other poets and his old teacher like wow you're so great you're so smart and the woman he loved in life being the angel that comes down to him like it's weird that for the time i think about i'm like yeah that's fine like 1300 whatever but it's hilarious writing tropes by today's standards i made the joke biblical fanfic but it really got that way sometimes um like i i don't know it's it's so weird because you would think from a storytelling perspective and it's not like this is dante's first story either he wrote a bunch of other stuff but you would think from a storytelling perspective there would be this hindrance to add so many personal layers to it but personally i think part of the his bitterness because he was exiled at this time came through in this story where he's just like well this person's in hell and this one is too and i get the girl and all the poets say they love me and like the whole feeling of this sort of malevolent benevolence exists throughout the story because he talks about all these people suffering and how it's good like even the inscription on the gate of hell at the beginning where it talks about divine justice and primal love made me and the idea like everything you're about to see is exactly what they get and it's what they deserve and like honestly dante's entire character journey was coming to terms with that fact it's like the opening inscription on the gate is the end destination for his character and not only that but with things like the inscription on the gate the power of words has such an important like it's an asset in this story because there's so many and i made jokes about it but anytime something happens virgil's like god sent us and they just get what they want and like when it came to uh the city whenever the angel had to come and tap open the door like the one time words didn't work an angel did it and every other time words did what they needed it to and all these souls who have been suffering in hell for who knows how long just want dante to talk about them in his poetry which yeah kind of haughty to be in a story and be like but these souls were relieved to know that i the great dante would write about them but it does show how dante valued words and ideas which whenever you're reading it kind of gives you an idea for why he included a lot of the details he did for example dante thinks of poetry and writing as these great standings of moral character so whenever he writes about someone being in hell he wants that to be seen as a big deal so how did i feel about it by a modern standard if someone wrote this today i would be like it's like okay right because these are it's still interesting the concepts have held but in other times it's incredibly biased not only with things i mentioned like who goes to the seventh layer of hell is really weird and like old world philosophy thinking but also with details about like who is in those layers of hell specifically like all of them across the board it's like i said it's a political tool a lot of it and a lot of the times the stories like this you got to realize you know dante was part of a war there are people who take some of this too seriously a good example of it is william shakespeare's the tragedy of julius caesar which is a fantastic play and shakespeare is a great writer but people have taken that story and they have made that their history right like they have taken that opinion and been like yeah this is what happened they were definitely remorseful for it and mark antony definitely felt this way about it and all that stuff and people do that with dante's inferno sometimes like they'll read it and they'll read about these old popes and be like i guess pope nicholas iii was just an evil guy wherein you know history's more complicated than just dante's opinion of it so it's weird that it's kind of become like a historical footnote and understandably because of how big of a piece it is but it's weird that the facts that dante says in itself have kind of become not canonical so to speak but revered and i think that's kind of weird but whatever but i will say for the time that it was written this thing is an absolute masterpiece to have no knowledge of these greater concepts of fear and and body disfigurement and i'm talking about this from like a horror guy perspective or like a film bro perspective you could say like the ideas of these body amalgamations and the transformation scene i kind of ragged on because he talked it up but in all honesty it was like an insanely weird scene to describe things that would be insane for a modern director to get across the fact he did it in 1317 blows my mind and like these descriptions of hell like i mentioned are incredibly relevant today not only in things like video games like there's a dante's inferno video game but stuff like as above so below or the majority of depictions of hell that use one if not more of these elements to get their point across for what it is i think it's incredibly interesting and whenever there's something like this i love going back to the source and seeing like where it all came from because even in reading this and i once again want to emphasize i have not only dante's inferno itself linked in the description but a sort of notes guide to help you understand because a lot of the english is older english but while reading it there were so many elements i found that i couldn't mention all in this video that made me go oh that's where this comes from that's where that idea comes from and as much as i rag on him as much as there's ridiculous stuff in the story for nowadays um for what it was at the time it was a marvel and i think it's something that should still be looked at today and i enjoyed reading it but you know i enjoyed even more than reading it that's right talking to you guys about it and i hope that you enjoyed and thank you for watching it is the start of halloween and there's going to be more like direct line halloween stuff like horror args and all that coming out soon uh but like i've wanted to cover this for a while and was kind of put it off and i'm like october is a good time to do it because it is spooky there's a lot of spooky ideas on there body horse stuff and all that so i wanted to do it now and hopefully you enjoyed i have absolutely no idea what this video is going to cut down to it has been uh it's currently six in the morning i've been recording since like two a.m it's been four and a half hours um so i have no idea what this will cut down to so hopefully you also if you're supply surprised by that time that i've been recording that's just how youtubers operate ask anyone um we there is no sleep but thank you all so much for watching uh i hope that you enjoyed i love talking about this stuff like i like weird history and i like weird horror and this is like a good mix of the two and it was so fun to research uh and like this is a thing that i've been blessed with because of you guys um i don't want to enforce it but there are people who make the dad jokes and sometimes i do feel like a dad because i'll be researching and for example get to uh what was one in this video oh the the suicide four is saying really suicide forest where the trees are like bodies and all that i was reading about that and i'm like man i can't wait to tell everyone because like i get excited um to relay this information you guys because you all are always so funny in the comments and say the funniest stuff about it and i love not because it used to be i would find this stuff and be like that's neat and then never be able to talk about it and i can talk about it and like you guys enjoy and that's so cool to me so i hope that you enjoyed this and i love that i have the ability and the blessing to be able to tell you about it so i know i say thank you for watching a lot but thank you for watching um thank you so much for subscribing to all my subscribers i think we broke 640 000 which is something like 20 000 subs over the last video and like at the rate you guys are doing it i can't like it's none of it's real at this point like um if it seems like i'm less reactive now than i was in previous milestones that's because this is all fake now and i'm just imagining it and this is all a fever dream but thank you for supporting that dream um i also want to say above all else a massive thank you to my patrons thank you to my top patrons that you can see here i love you guys so much you give me the ability to do this you give me the ability to do this full time and the fact that i can bring videos like this to you and then people support me monetarily means more than i could ever describe so thank you all so much for that um so upcoming it's going to be spooky videos for the rest of the month uh i know i've got an arg to cover that actually may be out before this i'm not sure yet um i'm not sure what after that but we'll see uh however i hope whatever comes i hope that you enjoy and that should do it so thank you all so much for watching i hope that you enjoyed and i will see you in the next one but

Channel: Wendigoon

Views: 1,071,078

Rating: 4.9551558 out of 5

Keywords: iceberg, explained, scp, analysis, breakdown, scary, spooky, horror, creepy, comedy, funny, laugh, humor, cringe, intel, deep web, dark web, hidden, tier list, secret, top ten, top 10, countdown, compilation, meme, memes, meme compilation, internet horror, reddit, ask reddit, redacted, childhood, trauma

Id: NGbuZ-65Qz8

Length: 98min 41sec (5921 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 08 2021