Amy Galofaro Dante’s Inferno Canto 7

In Canto Seven, Virgil and Dante are in the fourth circle of hell and even though they are still continuing to circle downward they are still in upper hell and have yet to reach the worst punishment of all in lower hell.

The guardian at circle four is Pluto. He says the phrase: “Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe.” We are still unclear on the meaning of this phrase today.

The souls who are kept and punished in circles one through five, in upper hell, are guilty of sins of incontinence and not malice. The souls in circle four lacked self control and were full of greed, but had done know harm to anyone. They had not purposely inflicted any kind of hurt on anyone.

Punished in the fourth circle of hell are the souls of the sinners who were guilty of being avaricious and prodigal when they were alive. People who are guilty of avarice are very greedy. They are only interested in gaining more and more money and saving their money. People who are prodigal can not control their need to spend money and have wasted their money away foolishly.

As Dante described in Canto Seven, the souls of the avaricious and the prodigal were punished by having to continuously push around extremely heavy weights using only their chests, occasionally even crashing in to one another. They also repeatedly asked each other why they had acted so foolishly with their money when they were alive.

Dante recognized a lot of the souls that were being punished for avarice in the fourth circle. The top of their heads were hairless, which indicated at that time period that they were men of the church, Popes and Cardinals.

THE END!