In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the "realm [...] of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen".

[15] However, Dante is rescued by a figure who announces that he was born sub Iulio[16] (i.e., in the time of Julius Caesar) and lived under Augustus: it is the shade of the Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid, a Latin epic which also featured a journey through the underworld.

Feeling uncertain of his worthiness for the journey, Dante reflects on the paths of Aeneas and Paul, who were granted access to the realms of the afterlife, and doubts his own capability to undertake such a passage (Inf.

Dante passes through the gate of Hell, which bears an inscription ending with the phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate",[17] most frequently translated as "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here".

Among these Dante recognises a figure who made the "great refusal", implied to be Pope Celestine V, whose "cowardice (in selfish terror for his own welfare) served as the door through which so much evil entered the Church".

[19] Loathsome maggots and worms at the sinners' feet drink the putrid mixture of blood, pus, and tears that flows down their bodies, symbolising the sting of their guilty conscience and the repugnance of sin.

[23] Virgil reminds Dante (the character) of "Those pages where the Ethics tells of three / Conditions contrary to Heaven's will and rule / Incontinence, vice, and brute bestiality".

These sinners endure lesser torments than do those consigned to Lower Hell, located within the walls of the City of Dis, for committing acts of violence and fraud – the latter of which involves, as Dorothy L. Sayers writes, "abuse of the specifically human faculty of reason".

Francesca explains: Love, which in gentlest hearts will soonest bloom seized my lover with passion for that sweet body from which I was torn unshriven to my doom.

[45] In the third circle, the gluttonous wallow in a vile, putrid slush produced by a ceaseless, foul, icy rain – "a great storm of putrefaction"[46] – as punishment for subjecting their reason to a voracious appetite.

Cerberus (described as il gran vermo, literally 'the great worm', line 22), the monstrous three-headed beast of Hell, ravenously guards the gluttons lying in the freezing mire, mauling and flaying them with his claws as they howl like dogs.

[54] This speech fills what would otherwise be a gap in the poem, since both groups are so absorbed in their activity that Virgil tells Dante that it would be pointless to try to speak to them – indeed, they have lost their individuality and been rendered "unrecognizable".

Dante holds discourse with a pair of Epicurian Florentines in one of the tombs: Farinata degli Uberti, a famous Ghibelline leader (following the Battle of Montaperti in September 1260, Farinata strongly protested the proposed destruction of Florence at the meeting of the victorious Ghibellines; he died in 1264 and was posthumously condemned for heresy in 1283); and Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, a Guelph who was the father of Dante's friend and fellow poet, Guido Cavalcanti.

Farinata explains that also crammed within the tomb are Emperor Frederick II, commonly reputed to be an Epicurean, and Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, whom Dante refers to as il Cardinale.

[63][64][65][66] Pausing for a moment before the steep descent to the foul-smelling seventh circle, Virgil explains the geography and rationale of Lower Hell, in which the sins of violence (or bestiality) and fraud (or malice) are punished.

Canto I notes that the sun is in Aries, and since the twelve zodiac signs rise at two-hour intervals, it must now be about two hours prior to sunrise: 4:00 a.m. on Holy Saturday, April 9.

Virgil explains the presence of shattered stones around them: they resulted from the great earthquake that shook the earth at the moment of Christ's death (Matthew 27:51),[69] at the time of the Harrowing of Hell.

Geryon, the winged monster who allows Dante and Virgil to descend a vast cliff to reach the Eighth Circle, was traditionally represented as a giant with three heads and three conjoined bodies.

The Eighth Circle is a large funnel of stone shaped like an amphitheatre around which run a series of ten deep, narrow, concentric ditches or trenches called bolge (singular: bolgia).

From the foot of the Great Cliff to the Well (which forms the neck of the funnel) are large spurs of rock, like umbrella ribs or spokes, which serve as bridges over the ten ditches.

Sexuality, ecclesiastical and civil office, language, ownership, counsel, authority, psychic influence, and material interdependence – all the media of the community's interchange are perverted and falsified".

(In Roman mythology, Cacus, the monstrous, fire-breathing son of Vulcan, was killed by Hercules for raiding the hero's cattle; in Aeneid VIII, 193–267, Virgil did not describe him as a centaur).

Guido then recounts his life: he advised Pope Boniface VIII to offer a false amnesty to the Colonna family, who, in 1297, had walled themselves inside the castle of Palestrina in the Lateran.

Griffolino explains how Myrrha disguised herself to commit incest with her father King Cinyras, while Schicchi impersonated the dead Buoso Donati to dictate a will giving himself several profitable bequests.

The classical and biblical Giants – who perhaps symbolise pride and other spiritual flaws lying behind acts of treachery[106] – stand perpetual guard inside the well-pit, their legs embedded in the banks of the Ninth Circle while their upper halves rise above the rim and are visible from the Malebolge.

Among the Giants, Virgil identifies Nimrod (who tried to build the Tower of Babel; he shouts out the unintelligible Raphèl mai amècche zabì almi); Ephialtes (who with his brother Otus tried to storm Olympus during the Gigantomachy; he has his arms chained up) and Briareus (who Dante claimed had challenged the gods); and Tityos and Typhon, who insulted Jupiter.

[117] All interpretations recognise that the three faces represent a fundamental perversion of the Trinity: Satan is impotent, ignorant, and full of hate, in contrast to the all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving nature of God.

Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus dangle with their feet in the left and right mouths, respectively, for their involvement in the assassination of Julius Caesar (44 BC) – an act which, to Dante, represented the destruction of a unified Italy and the killing of the man who was divinely appointed to govern the world.

Meanwhile, the inner rock Lucifer displaced as he plunged into the centre of the earth rushed upwards to the surface of the Southern Hemisphere to avoid contact with him, forming the Mountain of Purgatory.

The poets then ascend a narrow chasm of rock through the "space contained between the floor formed by the convex side of Cocytus and the underside of the earth above,"[118] moving in opposition to Lethe, the river of oblivion, which flows down from the summit of Mount Purgatory.