Dis (Divine Comedy)

[3] In the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid (one of the principal influences on Dante in his depiction of Hell), the hero Aeneas enters the "desolate halls and vacant realm of Dis".

[7] Dante emphasizes the character of the place as a city by describing its architectural features: towers, gates, walls, ramparts, bridges, and moats.

"[10] The presence of mosques probably also recalls the reality of Jerusalem in Dante's own time, where gilded domes dominated the skyline.

Immediately within the walls of the City are Heretics like Epicurus, who, having previously disbelieved in immortality, are forever imprisoned in red-hot tombs.

Punished within Dis are those whose lives were marked by active-willed and obdurate, rather than venial sins:[15] heretics, murderers, suicides, blasphemers, usurers, sodomites, panderers, seducers, flatterers, simoniacs, false prophets, barrators, hypocrites, thieves, fraudulent advisors, sowers of discord, falsifiers, and traitors.

Lower Hell, inside the walls of Dis, in an illustration by Stradanus . There is a drop from the sixth circle to the three rings of the seventh circle, then again to the ten rings of the eighth circle, and, at the bottom, to the icy ninth circle.