Third circle of hell

Rather than focussing on the contrapasso punishment of the damned, Dante's depiction of the third circle of hell uses the figure of Ciacco—whose historicity is disputed—to explore the politics of Florence, which had previously led to the author being exiled from the city under pain of death.

Written in the early 14th century, the work's three sections depict Dante being guided through the Christian concepts of hell (Inferno), purgatory (Purgatorio), and heaven (Paradiso).

[3][4] Dante and Virgil walk further through the third circle, stepping upon the prostrate bodies of the gluttonous, who are being punished by lying face-first in the icy mud, left blind and unfulfilled.

[8] Giovanni Boccaccio, another writer from Dante's home town of Florence, also uses the character in The Decameron, although it is not clear if this is based on the Inferno or on shared familiarity with a historical figure.

[15] In the third circle, the warm comforts of gluttony are punished with icy sleet, where sinners howl like hungry dogs; the mud and slime is a reflection of their excess.

[17] Unn Falkeid, in her book The Avignon Papacy Contested: An Intellectual History from Dante to Catherine of Siena, notes that the canto focusses on the "unslakable thirst for power" rather than the "food, drinks, and bodily desires" expected of Epicurean gluttony.

[18] Falkeid also draws a comparison between the factions of the "divided city" of Florence and the torn bodies left by Cerberus in this canto, "with the effect of dismissing [...] any attempt to gather them into a harmonic unity".