Dante Alighieri was a prominent Italian poet who wrote the 14,233 lined 3 part epic poem — The Divine Comedy.
The poem is the journey of the poet through afterlife, divided into three parts: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Paradise or Heaven).
Circle I: Limbo
Resided by virtuous non-Christians and unbaptized pagans
Circle II: Lust
The souls here are punished by being blown about violently by strong winds, preventing them to find peace and rest.
Circle III: Gluttony
Sinners lie rotting away in a never ending icy rain, overlooked by a worm-monster Cerberus.
Circle IV: Greed
The inhabitants drag about heavy weights and boulders with their chest all the time.
Circle V: Anger
The wrathful fight each other on the surface of the river Styx.
Circle VI: Heresy
The heretics were souls who did not agree to the Christian doctrine. They are lying in burning tombs.
Circle VII: Violence
The 7th circle is divided into 3 rings — outer are murderers sinking into boiling blood, the middle are the suicides who turned into bleeding trees, and the inner ring are blasphemers and sodomites who reside in a desert of burning sand and are scorched by burning rain falling from above
Circle VIII: Fraud
This circle of Hell is divided into 10 Bolgias or stony ditches with bridges between them. Each bolgia has a different kind of fraud and punishment such as whipped by demons, steeped in excrement etc.
Circle IX: Treachery
The betrayers are stuck frozen in a lake of ice. The lake consists of 4 rings, with the last level resided by Lucifer, Brutus, Cassius and Judas.
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From the desk of Aditya Khanduri
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