THE MIDDLE AGES ( ) The middle of what??

Ancient Greece There was no common Greek empire, which united all Greek-speaking peoples. Instead separate city-states arose along the Peninsula. Also due to the rugged terrain there was relatively little cultural diffusion between the city-states of Greece. Each of these city-states had its own distinct form of government and culture. (Athens - democracy and Sparta – oligarchy).

Ancient Rome In addition to the geography promoting a common culture and unity, the position of the Italian Peninsula jutting out into the middle of the Mediterranean sea made Rome vulnerable to attack but it also eventually allowed Rome to control all of the land that the Mediterranean touched and thus build a huge empire. At its height, the empire stretched from Great Britain in the north and Spain in the west, to North Africa in the south, and to present-day Iraq in the west.

With the decline of Rome, there was no one to stop the advancement of the warring Germanic tribes. These tribes traveled in search of food, wealth, and shelter, and often left devastation behind them. The result was that civilized life saw a long period of decline. Building slowed down, bridges and roads fell into serious decline and disuse. The lack of good roads and bridges, and the danger caused by the roaming Germanic tribes, and bandits made it difficult to send goods from one place to another. The lack of trade seriously hurt the local economies of Europe. Additionally, during this time period there was a general decline in education. GRECOROMANAGEGRECOROMANAGE RENAISSANCERENAISSANCE THE MIDDLE AGES

Dante Alighieri, Dante's life was shaped by the long history of conflict between the imperial and papal partisans called, respectively, Ghibellines (supported the Holy Roman Emperor) and Guelfs (supported the Pope). Dante’s family had ties to the Guelfs and he was eventually exiled from his beloved Florence. Throughout his exile Dante was sustained by work on his great poem.

The Divine Comedy The Divine Comedy which chronicles Dante’s journey to God, and is made up of the Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Paradise). It is a magnificent synthesis of the medieval outlook, picturing a changeless universe ordered by God

Dante’s Inferno In the Inferno, which is shaped like a funnel with 9 circles, Dante works his way downward toward Satan (at the center of the Earth) and goes through to the mountain of Purgatory on the other side which ascends to paradise.

The Gates of HELL (Rodin) Abando n hope all ye who enter here

Limbo: where the virtuous non-Christians: ancient Greek and Roman heroes, philosophers, worthy Arabs, virtuous Jews of the Old Testament, etc. These spirits are not tormented. They live in green meadows with a gentle sadness. Virgil is one of them.

Minos, whose long tail he wraps around his body a number of times equal to the soul's assigned level (circle) of hell, and Francesca and Paolo, the doomed lovers. Dante spoke with the spirit of Francesca da’Rimini who had fallen unhappily in love with her husband’s younger brother. He felt so sorry for her that he fainted from grief.

Second Circle of Hell: The Lustful are punished by having their spirits blown about by an unceasing wind. Here Dante explores the relationship--as notoriously challenging in his time and place as in ours--between love and lust, between the ennobling power of attraction toward the beauty of a whole person and the destructive force of possessive sexual desire.

I Cerberus is the three-headed hellhound who guards the third circle of Hell where the gluttons lie in the mud, tormented by a heavy, cold rain. Gluttony--like lust--is one of the seven capital sins (sometimes called "mortal" or "deadly" sins) according to medieval Christian theology and church practice.

Circle 4: Avarice Avarice--greed, lust for material gain--is one of the iniquities that most incurs Dante's scornful wrath. Consistent with the biblical saying that avarice is "the root of all evils" (1 Timothy 6:10), medieval Christian thought viewed the sin as most offensive to the spirit of love; Dante goes even further in blaming avarice for ethical and political corruption in his society. He viciously presents the sin as a common vice of monks and church leaders (including cardinals and popes), and he further degrades the sinners by making them so physically squalid that they are unrecognizable to the travelers

Circle 5: Wrath and Sulleness Wrath and sullenness are basically two forms of a single sin: anger that is expressed (wrath) and anger that is repressed (sullenness). This idea that anger takes various forms is common in ancient and medieval thought. Note how the two groups suffer different punishments appropriate to their type of anger--the wrathful ruthlessly attacking one another and the sullen stewing below the surface of the muddy swamp (Inf )--even though they are all confined to Styx.

In the sixth circle, heretics (those who deny the immortality of the soul according to Dante) are eternally tormented in fiery tombs

In circle seven, violence is punished. Violence against others (murder) is punished in a river of boiling blood, violence against the self (suicide) have to live in a horrid forest, the violent against God (blasphemers, sodomites, usurers) have to sit or walk around on flaming sand under a rain of fire.

The offenses of circles 8 all fall under the rubric of FRAUD, a form of malice unique to human beings and therefore more displeasing to God. Pimps and seducers are whipped by horned demons Flatterers are disgustingly dipped in the excrement Simony--the abuse of power within the church– is punished by being stuck upside down in rock with their feet on fire Sorcerers, astrologers and magicians are punished by having their heads on backwards, Barrators are flung into a lake of hot pitch, Hypocrites are made to wear heavy lead robes, Thieves are bitten by serpents and then transformed into serpents themselves, Fraudulent counselors are aflame, Sowers of scandal and schism are maimed by a devil with a sword (that’s where Dante put Muhammed), Alchemists were plagued by a disease like leprosy

TREACHERYTREACHERY In the first ring, traitors against their own kin (Cain) are frozen into ice In the second ring, those who betrayed their parties and their homelands are frozen in the ice and eating each other In the third ring, those who had assassinated their guests

In the fourth ring of the ninth circle, Satan is frozen mid- breast in ice at the center of Hell. He has three heads and affixed under each chin are pairs of bat-like wings. Each of his three mouths chew on Judas, Brutus, and Cassius