1. Canto VII Circle Four: The Hoarders & the Wasters
Circle Five: The Wrathful & The Sullen

2. Plutus God of the Underworld Guardian/ symbol of 4th Circle
Avarice (greed) and Prodigality (spending freely)
Also known as God of Wealth in some cases

3. Hoarders and Wasters
“so these shades dance and crash eternally…a nation of lost souls…they strained their chests/ against enormous weights and with mad howls/ rolled them at one another.” (23-27)
Lie in ditches, weighted down and continually hit each other with their weights.

4. Hoarders and Wasters
“’what people can these be?/ And all those tonsured ones there on our left-/ is it possible they all were of the clergy?’” (37-39).
Signifies corruption in the church
Corresponds with political fight as well

5. Hoarders and Wasters
“’This is lost ambition./ In their sordid lives they labored to be blind,/ and now their souls have dimmed past recognition…Hoarding and squandering wasted all their light/ and brought them screaming to this brawl of wraiths’” (51-59).
Destroyed the light of God within themselves by thinking of nothing but money.

6. Dame Fortune
“That king whose perfect wisdom transcends all,/ made the heavens and posted angles on them/ to guide the eternal light that may fall/…he made earth’s splendors by a like decree/ and posted as their minister this high Dame/…All earth’s gear/ she changes from nation to nation, from house to house/….no mortal power may stay her spinning wheel/… man’s mortal reason cannot compass her/…And this she so railed at and reviled/ that even her debtors in the joys of time/ blaspheme her name…” (73-93).

7. Dame Fortune
Fortune received orders from God to transfer worldly goods between people and nations.
She moves quickly and humans cannot understand this so we should not curse her when we lose something- it is God’s will.

8. The Sullen
“a swarm of spirits in that bog, savage, with anger,…they thumped at one another in that slime with their hands and feet they butted and they bit as if each would tear the other limb from limb…there are souls beneath that water…Fixed in slime…” ( )
Souls attack each other in gross slime
Lie entombed in the bubbles from the sludge, singing a hymn that mocks them.
Sunk under slime- refused the light of God ( )

9. Canto VIII Circle Five: Styx- The Wrathful, Phlegyas
Circle Six: Dis- The Fallen Angels

10. Phlegyas Ferryman to River Styx Mythological King of Boeotia
Son of Ares (Mars) and human mother
Sent soul to hell for burning Apollo’s temple at Delphi
Symbolic of Wrath

11. Dante “…and not till I stepped aboard did it seem to settle
Into the water. At once we left the shore,
that ancient hull riding more heavily
than it had ridden in all of time before.” (27-30)

12. Emotional Reaction “’May you weep and wail to all eternity,
for I know you, hell-dog, filthy as you are.’
Then he stretched both hands to the boat, but warily
The Master shoved him back, crying’ Down! Down!
with the other dogs!’ The he embraced me saying:
‘Indignant spirit, I kiss you as you frown.
Blessed be she who bores you.’” (37-43)
First time Dante chastises the sinners
Virgil approves and commends Dante
Dante purges himself of anger by showing it to sinners
He is learning and gaining the morals necessary
Contempt for evil will enable truer perfection for Dante

13. Filippo Argenti
“’Master, it would suit my whim/ to see the wretch scrubbed down into the swill/ before we leave this stinking sink and him.’” (49-51)

14. Filippo Argenti Black Guelph member of Adimari family (enemy of Dante)
Said that his brother took Dante’s property after his exile
Insults family
Character development

15. Rebellious Angels “…’You need not be cast down
by my vexation, for whatever plot
these fiends may lay against us, we will go on.
This insolence of theirs is nothing new:
they showed it once at a less secret gate…
And through it at this moment a Great One comes’” ( )
Took Lucifer’s side in rebellion against God
Defend the city of Dis (lower hell) just as they once resisted Christ's arrival at the gate of hell.