Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 231 - Dante's Inferno

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

Dante's Inferno! One of the most influential literary works ever written. Put to parchment in the early 14th century, Dante's opening third of the Divine Comedy presented a clear vision of Christian Hell, wherein nine descending circles, Dante, guided by the ancient Roman poet, Virgil, witnesses various types of sinners receiving poetically fitting forms of punishment. In today's Suck, we learn about the nature of epic poems, layout several examples of epic poems that came before Dante, and learn about who Dante the man was, before accompanying him, circle by circle, on his descent into the underworld where he will eventually meet Lucifer. We also summarize what Dante will encounter in the second and third portions of his Divine Comedy. Getting literary today, on a fire and brimstone, gnashing teeth edition, of Timesuck. Thanks for helping Bad Magic Productions give $12,200 this month to No Kid Hungry https://www.nokidhungry.org/ Click the link to learn more. Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0O42keSWx2Y Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

Go to hell with me. Please, I'm going to hell today and I'd like you to join me. Well, you won't stay long. Just taking a tour, taking a tour of Florentine Dante's version of Christian hell as he wrote about it in his 1321 epic poem, The Divine Comedy. One of the most influential literary works ever written in the Western world. Dante depicted hell as being made up primarily of nine concentric circles of torment located within the earth, or various types of sinners face a variety of horrifying punishments from sitting in lakes full of shit slush to being bitten by magical snakes to being literally chewed up in Satan's mouth for eternity.

The punishments Dante came up with were not enough not imaginative. Dante's depictions of hell were highly influential to Christian theology, which has influenced Western culture significantly. When you picture hell, if you picture hell, you likely picture imagery influenced by Dante. Never wonder where many of the dirt bags whose lives we've explored in other time suck episodes go when they die. Dante had some thoughts. There were specific circles reserved for the likes of the Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer killer clown John Wayne Gacy the night stocker Richard Ramirez the Co-ed killer Ed camper and other serial killers Ever wondered if they're getting punished somewhere by a demon or some other kind of monster. I do Dante clearly wondered about that type of thing as well

He placed a lot of people he either knew or knew of and didn't care for into hell He seemed to clearly be pleased with his vengeful thoughts of their eternal suffering, totally get it. I've entertained thoughts of vengeance for as long as I can remember having thoughts. They're pretty fun fantasies, I gotta say. In Dante's hell, the centers of each circle are punished for eternity in a fashion fitting their crimes.

The first circle is for baptize, or I'm sorry, unbaptized, virtuous pagans, the second for the lustful, the third for gluttons and so on. All this came out of Dante's mind, a very religious and pretty twisted mind. And when he wrote it, pretty angry and bitter mind. Dante grew up in Florence when it was a city state and basically a war zone between two opposing political factions, Dante would later enter politics himself and then be exiled when a rival group came to power.

And he was pretty pissed about it. He wrote the divine comedy from his exile. Dante's political enemies would make their way into his inferno. If he couldn't punish them in life, at least he could punish them on the written page and have them suffer immensely down with a devil below. His epic poem was his personal shit list full of people he thought should burn and hell for whatever reason. also his personal burn book Chance for him to show off how good he was at poetry compared to the all-time masters

It was a sweeping declaration of the supremacy of the Christian God and maybe also the first buddy road trip story So let's go to hell join me down below in this week shit covered fire raining monster filled hitchhikers guide to the underworld edition of time suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to time suck. Hold my state. To time suck. Happy Monday, mate, sex. Welcome to the cult of the curious. He'll Nimrod, he'll loose the Fina, praiseable jangles.

Glory be to triple M. Nimrod needs our help today. He may be stuck in Dante's hell right now. You'll meet him later in the show. Um, Dan Cummins, a master sucker, loose the Fina's masseuse and waxer. And you are listing the time suck. Quick reminder, I got a lot of show to get today before, uh, before we do a quick reminder that, uh, thanks to you, space lizards who support the show on Patreon, uh, bad magic productions donated 12,200 to no kid hungry dot org. Also, thank you to the Roberts and Annabelle's over on scared to death for, uh, helping with this charity donation. Keep in kids fed bed. There we

go. I don't know what I just said. Uh, Thanks for helping us do that. Find out more or to donate more yourself, you can go to nokidhungry.org. Link in the episode description. Now for a quick message for any cordal lane slash spokehand washed in, areas suckers, dude specifically, a need of a barber. A buddy Michael, awesome guy, the owner of Mavericks and downtown CDA at 418 Lakeside in the innovation den by CDA coffee, great vibe, great barbers, beard stashes, fades, whatever you need. It's open a new location on Ramsey and that same little strip mall is Pokeworks and Mangia Pizza.

Great cuts by great dudes. Go to mafcuts.com to book with Michael or any of the other great barbers there. So easy to set up an appointment. Kyle or Nye have been going there for a few years now. It's always solid. I've been telling him forever. Like, let me help you. Let me promote you.

He's like, no, it's fine. It's fine. But now he's got a new shop. He's like, well, okay. So go check it out. New edition of the TimeSuck serial killer yearbook series in the store today at BadMagicMarch.com. A sexy cow lover.

Yahim Kroll- T certified piece of shit. Pretty sure where it gets you 50% off, whatever you order from Kroll's Cafe, the world's most disturbing diner. Check that out. And that's it. And now for something a little different. We don't offer covered great works of literature

on time suck that we have covered written texts before, like the last books of the Bible, way back in episode 83. Today's episode of Dante's Inferno will probably feel more akin to the previous sucks on the Greek Egyptian gods than it will to that episode though. While Dante, Alagari certainly didn't invent Christian theology or even its symbolism, a lot of what many consider to be standard Christian hell imagery comes from the divine comedy and not from the Bible. A Dante gave a really dense book, the Bible that's mostly instructions and genealogies a compelling narrative, the story of one man's journey through hell and then purgatory

and into heaven and attempt to both find his missing love and understand the nature of divinity. Let's burn meat sacks. It's in Ferno time. Dante's in Ferno, the first of a three-part epic poem chronically in a journey through the afterlife. Three parts together, the in Ferno, Pergatorio, Baradizo, Hell, Pergatorio in heaven, make up the whole work to divine comedy. It was written in the early 14th century by one Dante, Allegherory. It is believed that he started to write a prior to 1308 and completed it just before his death in 1321.

Because there were so few records back then, exact dates are uncertain. So why did it take him so many years to write this big epic poem? Bucking laziness. He was a lazy pity party sad boy who filled his ink well with tears and mixed those tears with his sad boy poopy pants juice to make some stinky sad boy ink. But you didn't know that. Did you have literary nerds? That was pretty crazy and it's not true. We don't know exactly why I took him so long. Probably partially because you had a real hard time finding an apple store or a best buy. Or somewhere else, you know, where one could buy a laptop. Couldn't even find an old serious catalog

to order some kind of typewriter from. You couldn't even find an old five in time to buy himself some wide out, make some corrections. Dude had to quill an inket, which I'm sure made the revision process just a wee bit tedious. That would be tedious. I think about how many notes, you know, like revisions, edits, I make every single week

for TimeSuck, how many parchment rough drafts? That would be if I had to do it by hand. I had to quill and ink that shit. Man, we'd be kicking out about two episodes a year. Speaking of parchment, that was another thing that made writing hard back then. Paper didn't exist as it does now. You could just go buy a big ring of printer paper

or typewriter paper from the drugstore. Paper wasn't commonly found in Europe until around 1450, well over a century after Dante died before then. It was sheepskin parchment or calfskin vellum. Had to find a trusty vellum dealer. Pelt's were first soaked in a lime solution to loosen the fur, which was then removed, while wet on a stretcher,

the skin was scraped using a knife with a curved blade as a skin dried, the parchment or vellum maker adjusted the tension so the skin remained taut. The cycle of scraping and stretching and taunting, making it taut, was repeated over several days until the desired thinness had been achieved, such a pain in the ass to create just a few sheets of parchment. Because of all the labor involved because you couldn't just slatter coddle, cattle, excuse me, and sheep indiscriminately to make more paper when you needed it, it was really expensive.

I'm guessing a lot of ancient Middle Ages writers made it to the end of their books, you know, or poems, whatever, then they had an idea that would make their story way better. I'm like, oh, I should have introduced this character. Oh, that's where I should have went. And then they thought about how it would take fucking months or years to rewrite it

and then just did a little internal, ah, fuck it. No one was ever going to know what it was supposed to be anyway. Good enough. So why did Dante write a giant book that would have taken so much effort to write? Essentially because he was pissed off and he suddenly had a lot of time on his hands. He'd been exiled from Florence, the city-state, the republic he loved so dearly, he was venting. He was also quarreling with some of his fellow exiles. He was alone, out of work, pretty bitter.

There were a lot of different people. So he wrote about a lot of people. He didn't like Bernie, or otherwise being tortured in hell. Let it out, Dante. Let it out. Sounds like fun. Everybody had a pretty good time right now. A literary revenge and judgment only part of his motivation.

He was also confused about how he had ended up in exile, how he ended up alone later in this life. He was trying to wrap his head around it all. He's experiencing a real big, how the hell did I get here? He's trying to make sense of everything, including know his faith. He was having a sort of existential crisis. He was trying to get his head around the meaning of life and religion, you know, the religion he based his life on. And he also wrote it because he was a love sick sad boy. His giant poem was part true love story. He'd been haunted by a long held infatuation with the woman he barely knew. And he wrote a book about literally traveling through hell to try to find her in heaven. Whatever motivated him, the book he ended up writing now widely considered to be the greatest product of Italian literature

and one of the greatest literary achievements of all time who inspire many a Renaissance artist and their art continues to inspire us to this day. Very important book. And Dante didn't make a dime on it. How about that shit? He believed to have only finished, you know, the book shortly before he died around the age of fifty-six. Even if he had finished it many years before he died, still wouldn't have made any money on it. At least not directly off of book sales. That weird to think about. Some of these historical things. Even if he had finished it many years before he died, still wouldn't have made any money on it. At least not directly off of book sales. It's not weird to think about some of these historical things. Like the printing press hadn't been invented yet when Dante wrote Inferno. Wouldn't be invented until 1440. Wouldn't be used commercially until 1450, 130 years after he died.

Divine comedy wasn't first printed. Actually printed printed until 1472. Before the printing press, copies of books were generally made by monks who made copies one by one, scribing each copy by hand on that damn parchment and vellum, real hard to build up a nice library back in Dante's day. For the printing press, it would cost more than an average labor's entire year's wages to buy a single book. The Divine Comedy for many years was for royalty, teachers at prestigious academies,

either the wealthier those supported by someone wealthy. Most people didn't own books at all. Like if you own, like let's say two or three books, you are living larger than most middle-aged peasants. What about the Bible? Didn't most peasants at least own a Bible? Nope, sure didn't. While most of Europe was Christian, it wasn't like being a Christian today.

You didn't have a Bible, you're priest had a Bible. You most likely couldn't read if you did come across a Bible. They didn't take, you know, literary censuses back in the Middle Ages, but some sources I found guesstimate that around the time when Dante was alive, right, late 13th, early 14th centuries, only about 10% of European men could read only about 1% of the women could. Now but not much of a book market, when only about one in 20 people can read and most of those people probably still can't afford to buy a book.

Dante was the very rare author in his day, super rare. As rare as it was to be able to read, it was much, much rarer to be able to write. Picture medieval peasants, you know, watching somebody like Dante write and reacting like they're watching a wizard perform some kind of powerful magic. Well, look at that. Look at all those symbols and lines and such. They have meaning, they do. Special magical meaning.

My Lord swears, he can look at those symbols and then words form right in his head. These wizards can make symbols out of the wizards can turn into words. No matter how many times the wizards reads them, the symbols remain. They don't disappear like a regular witch spell or something. Yes, I don't know. I know that wasn't like an Italian old-timey accent. I don't know what that was. That might have been kind of old-time British. I wanted to try and do an old-timey Italian accent, but I have no idea how they were supposed to speak. No matter what era,

somebody existed in Italy, only Mario brothers comes up when I try and take an Italian accent. Hey, look at that. Look at all the symbols and the lines and the satchad. I have a demeaning to do, a special demeaning. Me, all the swears, you can look at all those assembles,

and then the words of Thorben invited his whizz in the head. I don't know why I have to go higher like that too. Refolksy now, how did one make a living? I didn't really expensive to copy books in Italy back at the end of the 13th century, beginning of the 14th century. Really hard question to answer.

It doesn't seem like they did make a living, at least not from book sales. There's no Stephen King, Agatha Christie, no Danielle Steele, equivalence back. You know, there's no Stephen King, Agatha Christie, no Danielle, Steele, equivalence, back then. And if you're thinking who the hell is Agatha Christie, you know what? The British mystery author who died in 1976, sold over two billion copies of her works. Don't you dare disrespect Agatha.

But Dante didn't have a chance to sell books like Agatha, like a painter back decades before the Italian decades before the Italian Renaissance began. An author, philosopher, like Dante either had to have a wealthy patron willing to literally pay them for the thoughts or they had to have a job separate from writing, work as a teacher, he worked as a politician. That kind of thing, they wrote for less for money, more for status. They wrote to impress their fellow well to do an intellectual friend, to leave a legacy of great works of art behind. And I'm sure they just wrote because they were inspired to do so, you know, they had the means, they wanted to get their thoughts down on paper, had the time to do that. So they did a little later on artists like Leonardo

Davinci, they would be paid and paid well for their art, but for authors, not so much it seems. They have, there's been rare poets paid, you know, and ancient times by, for their writing going way all the way back to ancient Greece, but really not many. So how did Dante actually pay the bills? His father has thought that I've been a money lender, which meant he was likely wealthy. Dante was his first born son, which means he probably was given a large inheritance, which could have then allowed him to live as a sort of noble, rubbing shoulders with Florence's elite, drinking wine, discussing the nature of life, arguing the politics of the day, and like I mentioned, he may have made some money as a politician.

He was heavily involved in politics, which we'll get into. Luckily for us, whatever the reason he did write, and while no surviving original manuscripts of the divine comedy are known to exist, some 14th century copies are still around. Once it started to get printed, long after Dante's death, it became very popular, the divine comedy are known to exist some 14th century copies are still around. Once it started to get printed long after Dante's death, it became very popular. The divine comedy was a huge success because it was simultaneously deeply personal while also reflecting on the nature of the entire world in the afterlife. It connected an era of European thought that consisted mainly of works about church doctrine with a new era of European thought, the Renaissance.

Also, one of the first literary works written in common Italian in a time when great works were generally written only in Latin and accordance with the church's will, very few people could read Latin, even less than the very few people who could read anything else. The divine comedy was also popular because Dante's big book discussed more than religion, including references to Italian politics, which would have interested contemporary readers. Dante was very active in his Florence politics, had strong opinions about corruption in the church as well, loyalty to rulers, how to act morally,

when he positions a power on and on. There's an opinionated dude. He put a lot of those opinions in the Divine Comedy. Okay, to reset a bit, and this suck, we're gonna explore the epic poem genre, to learn a lot of those opinions in the divine comedy. Okay, to reset a bit in this suck, we're going to explore the epic poem genre to learn a bit about the art form that Dante's in Ferno, and then the entire divine comedy would contribute to also learn more about who Dante may have been, what was happening in Florence during his life. Then we're going to go step by step to the levels of hell with Dante, his ghost buddy, Virgil, bunch of monsters,

historical personalities, mythological figures, along with a bunch of other people, Dante, his ghost buddy, Virgil, bunch of monsters, historical personalities, mythological figures, along with a bunch of other people, Dante, for one reason or another, didn't care for it. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm appreciative of the spaces for voting this topic in. Let's start with laying down some poetic context. What exactly is an epic poem? Boring!

It's fucking boring. And so we're all other poems written a long time ago. So moving along, now let's go over what Dante's life was like in Florence, JK. Gosh dang poets, I was just joking around. Don't go upset, I've heard you're very sensitive. An epic poem is a long, often book-length narrative in verse that retells the heroic journey

of a single person or a group of people. Well Dante's poem did have a rhyme scheme. Many epic poems don't rhyme at all. They are all written in some kind of verse scheme, given them, you know, different literary structure than a non-pomestory. If I was gonna write the inferno, you know, I would have went harder on the rhyming

than Dante did, but that's just me. I would have made the rhymes more evident and obvious it made it more compelling, I think. But I live in 2021, you know, and so I'm a lot smarter than he was. You know, you get it, right? Like literature just comes so much further. It's come so far since he died.

It's not fair to compare a poet like me, you know, like something I could just do in a few seconds with what took him over a decade. Like, here's something I wrote in less than one minute. Deep down in hell's underground, devilness demons like the ground in pound. Souls get chomped on and it's always too hot. Nuts get kicked and no one owns a yacht.

You might get your nipples flipped in a way you don't like. You won't get any water to drink, not even after a really long ride on your bike. That's the devil for you. He's a real piece of shit. And if you don't like that, the tough titty, because hell don't quit. You fucking kid, do you hear that? Drop in fire bars. Shit.

Took me less than one minute to write that. It's way more compelling than in Fernow, you know? You get to not being ridiculous, right? Okay. Back to epic poems. Epic poems are very old. The oldest story ever written that we know of was an epic poem,

the epic of Gilgamesh. More on that here soon, many of the world's oldest written narratives are an epic form. Like mythology, and often, epic poems do deal with mythology. Epics were some of the most powerful tools used by ancient rulers when building the reputations of their cities, societies, empires, religions. They were powerful expressions of the rise and fall of those organizations preserved long after the peoples and the government structures were gone. There were stories to be told and retold over and over by one storyteller after another

to build legends out of. They typically chronicle its time beyond living memory when extraordinary men and women dealt with gods or other superhuman forces gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants where we now live. The epic poem tries to help the poet and their audience to understand themselves as a people or a nation and they've been created all over the world. Ancient poets have used them to reflect on enormous themes, war, betrayal, sex, adventure, humanity, originally composed by bars and memorized so they could be recited when people were hanging out

indoors during the cold months of the winter. Ancient times or a pass down orally is in the case of the ancient Greeks. Epic poems tend to go heavy on the battle scenes, often listening out weapons and the actions of the troops in great detail got to keep people entertained while also reinforcing the values of victory and strength. Many of them in addition to the divine comedy also featured a ton of trips to the underworld. We look at something like 20 epic poems. I'm not gonna go over all of them today, don't worry. Almost all of them took a side quest

to the underworld at some point. We meet sacks have always been fascinated by death and darkness. On surprisingly epic poems could be and were used sometimes or oftentimes as a type of propaganda, painting one culture, empire, city, whatever, as noble, heroic, aligned with the gods,

while the rival is painted as evil, horrific, in need of destruction. You know, they were ancient half-time motivational, let's get out there, rip their fucking heads off, do it for Rudy, like those kind of stories, you know. Let's fight like legends, make the heroes of the ancient stories proud, tonight we dine in hell, Sparta! Like that kind of stories, you know, let's fight like legends. Make the heroes of the ancient stories proud tonight we dine in hell, Sparta. Like that kind of shit.

So let's take a look at some of the most interesting ones written before in Ferno. Oldest epic poem that is survived to the modern era. The oldest surviving work of literature in the world, the epic of Gilgamesh. The story of at least, at least around 4,000 years old, older than the Bible. The oldest surviving tablets date back to 1800 BCE. The oldest Old Testament text fragments on some pottery shards date back to around a thousand BCE. Based on an Assyrian king, the epic of Gilgamesh recounts the travels of a young God king named Gilgamesh, no surprise there, whose arrogant practices hurt his populace until a wild man created by a goddess challenged

his power. Whose composed and ancient Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, and used many of the narrative conventions of epic poetry, things like the idea of a quest. In this case, Gilgamesh goes on a quest for eternal life overcoming monsters, and then there is divine intervention. And written on old clay tablets, back when carrying around just one book Could really fuck your back up. All right. It's quite a limpy guy there Bob. What the hell happened? Oh fuck my bag of real good

Thread carrying a book by myself for about five miles on a hike The Iliad and the Odyssey are probably the most well-known epic poems in the Western world The Iliad and the Odyssey are probably the most well-known epic poems in the Western world. Erliest fragments of these poems come from the 4th century BCE, but it's believed to have been written in the 8th century BCE based on linguistic and other archaeological evidence. We covered these tales briefly in our Greek God's Suck. Very little is known about their author Homer, thought to have written both poems. The events kicking off the Iliad, though the actual poem begins in the middle of the Trojan War, get started when Helen of Spata, the most beautiful woman in the world, is abducted by Paris of Troy.

Right? If a straight dude is writing a big ass story, good chances, good odds, it's going to be about a girl. Dude, chasing our boners around since the beginning of human history, hey, Lucifina, war follows the abduction and the Greeks and the Trojans fight the Trojan War for 10 years until they're in a stalemate. The Greeks aren't strong enough to penetrate Troi's walls and the Trojans aren't strong enough to repel them.

The Greeks' best fighter is the Kiles who's told before he arrives at Troy by the gods. He could either go to Troy and die young as a hero or die of old age, but without fame or recognition. And he chooses death. That young death, but with glory, he chooses the, you know, the second, making the Iliad, or chooses that, sorry, making the Iliad an important text about free will destiny, about creating one's legacy. These scenes would come into play in many epic poems that would follow.

The Iliad covers the last few weeks the Trojan War begins with the famous lines, seeing goddess Achilles rage, black and murderous that cost the Greeks in Calcubal pain, pitched countless souls of heroes into Hades dark and left their bodies to rot as feasts for dogs and birds as Zeus will was done. Begin with the clash between Agamemnon, the Greek warlord and godlike Achilles. It's pretty cool, I guess. It's just not as rhymy. Again, it's what I would do. But different times, different styles, things have just improved since then. Like, just kind of spitballing here, something quick. I probably would have wrote something better. Like Achilles was a dude who could get really, really mad. If he came out you with a sword, you wouldn't be very glad.

He fights so good because he's a god. That's why he has a really rock hard bod. He'll send you to hell, which will not be swell. He'll cut off your head, which will make you super fucking dead. The end, I think I'm getting the hang of this epic poem stuff. I mean, I didn't put hardly any effort into that. I think it's, you heard it. Undeniable.

Anyway, sorry. I can, you know, don't want to make this all about me, my poetry skills. The Iliad ends with the death of the Trojan's best warrior Hector at Achilles' hand, and we know that Troy will soon fall, and Achilles will also soon die. The Odyssey is a sequel to the Iliad, and it follows the warrior Odessius, as he tries to find his way home from Troy across the Peloponnesian sea.

For our next epic poem we head to India. A lot of challenging words coming up. Written around 350 BCE, the Mahabharata is one of the longest pieces of literature of all time and a pivotal literary text in the formation of Hindu identity. A longest epic poem known has been described as the longest poem ever written. Highly recommend that when venues open back up, you go to a poetry open mic and you insist on reciting it in its entirety. Its longest version contains over 200,000 individual verse lines and long prose passages. At about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabhata is roughly 10 times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined.

The average novel today, about 90,000 words, the uncut version of the stand Stephen King's largest single book, roughly 500,000 words. It's about four times as big as that. Big poem, big, big poem. The oldest surviving copy of the Mahabhata, the spitzer manuscript, written on palmly fragments, comes from around 130 CE. Narrated by the sage, Viasa, the poem follows a human incarnation of the God Vishnu. The main story revolves around two branches of a family, the Pandavas and the Corovas, who in the Churek Shetra war, battle for the throne of Hausten Pure. If all those are descendants dealing with their choices, their ancestors made, or that choices, it also contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion

of the four goals of life. It also contains one of the first instances of theorizing about just war, right, speculating about the morality of war, the author, Krishna, Dwipayyan, Visha, or Vyasa, is himself a character in the epic, something we'll see with Dante as well. The panoramic view of everything from spirituality and morality, have had an impact on Indian society for thousands of years. Again, sorry if I mangal those words. I could find examples of the words being spoken, but I could only find YouTube videos with Indian speakers saying them, and I felt like if I tried to emulate those pronunciations, then I end up being like the white dude doing a condescending a poo accent from the Simpsons, then I'm racist

somehow, which is a bummer, because I'm not, because I was kind of sad I can't do it, because next to doing an over the top skin, a Navian accent, an over the top Indian accent is, you know, it'd be pretty fun. Why did actual racists have to fuck things up for just goofballs like me? I want to just get silly with everything. Now fast forward a few hundred years to the Roman Empire. Here's where the truly propaganda-esque nature of epic poetry comes into play. The Aniad was written from 30 to 19 BCE at the height of Emperor Augustus' reign in Rome's Imperial period and details the creation of the most mighty Empire in the world Rome

August was the heir to Julius Caesar and the first Roman Emperor It was written by the Roman poet Virgil that names down some millions because Virgil shows up as a character in the divine comedy He plays the role of Dante's spirit guide in the afterlife Virgil's a knee it is basically a sequel to Homer's Iliad spirit guide in the afterlife. Virgil's Aniad is basically a sequel to Homer's Iliad, picking up after the end of the Trojan War, the Aniad describes a Trojan warrior Anias who travels from Troy to Carthage. In Carthage, he has a brief relationship with Queen Dito, which also explains the Roman Empire's later sour relationship with Carthage. The Aniad presents the rivalry basically is coming from a lover's quarrel. More Dick Chasem.

After he abandons Dito and Neus travels to Italy where he found the city of Rome, and how is this propaganda? Virgil's purpose was to write a myth of Rome's origins that would legitimize the success of the Roman Empire. To do that, Virgil works backward, connecting the political and social situations of his own day, with the inherited tradition of the Greek gods and heroes

to show the former as historically derived from the latter. He basically says, of course, order and virtue, aka Rome, have triumphed over other primitive Italian peoples. It happened in a neosist time, and it's happening now. Our noble culture is destined to conquer so much. Manifest destiny, Roman style, Wolverines, you know, that kind of shit. Going head briefly, it's clear that Dante loves Virgil. He puts him in his poem as a central figure, but Dante would also use a passage or two of Inferno

to flex a bit on Virgil, right? Kind of like I had kind of like how I was flexing, you know, on Dante, you know, he would do the same thing to Virgil. We'll get more into that later. One more epic poem in the lead up to Dante's masterpiece. Around 750 CE, an anonymous author composed Beowulf, an epic poem in Old English, containing over or consisting of excuse me, 3,182 alliterative lines. Some may know Beowulf is Britain's national epic. The oldest surviving English poem from the

Anglo-Saxon period, Beowulf gives the reader insight into the history of England and what eventually became British literature. Also celebrated as a national text in most Nordic countries. The old are the events of the early 6th century, although originally untitled, later named after the Scandinavian hero of Beowulf, opens in Denmark, when King Rothgares splendid Mead Hall has been ravaged.

For 12 years, by nightly visits from an evil monster, Grindel. Fucking Grindel! Carries off Rothgares warriors and devours them. How unfortunate. That's a rough dozen years. That's a very stressful 12 years. How are you supposed to run a kingdom? If for 12 goddamn years, some dickhead evil monster is constantly devouring your warriors. You can't run an effective empire under that kind of anxiety. The al Highness, the peasants are still awaiting a word from their king

regarding how we shall deal with the drought that continues to ravage our kingdom. When will you address them, Sile? I don't know, arch two, get off my fucking back. They haven't had a lot of time lately. Contemplate or impending food shortage been a little preoccupied with the evil monster devouring my fucking dudes the past dozen years. Baywolf visitor offers to help rossgar out the night. Grendel comes over from the mores or one night he comes over from the mores. Uh, tears open some heavy doors and devours one of the sleeping goss. He then has to grapple with Baywolf whose powerful grip he cannot escape. And Grendel has to rip his own fucking arm off to wrench himself free, and he leaves mortally wounded.

I'll teach that monster. The second part of the poem, Baal Wolf has succeeded to the throne, and 50 years of his peaceful rule have passed. But now, fire breathing dragon ravages his land, and the aging Baal Wolf has to engage it. The fight is long and terrible, and a painful contrast to the battles of his youth. He's got stiff back and stuff, I imagine. Bayowulf was also deserted by his kinsmen, except for a young man named Wigloff.

Bayowulf kills the dragon, but is mortally wounded, and the poem ends with his funeral rights and a lament for his death. Sad but awesome. Dying shortly after slaying a dragon. Definitely worse ways to go out. Many would later translate Bay of Wolf, including Lord of the Rings author, J.R.R. token. It was 1926 translation was published in 2014.

Older surviving copy, this epic comes from around a thousand CE, written on that sweet, sweet parchment. And after looking at some of its predecessors, now let's look back at Dante's Divine Comedy. How is written? A full poem consists of 100 cantoes, a sort of basic structural component like a paragraph would be in a novel, which are grouped together in three sections called cantacoles, which sadly have nothing to do with testicles, and ferno, purgatorio, parodiso.

There are 33 cantoes in each cantacole. And one additional canto contained in the inferno, which is the introduction to the divine comedy. Most of the cantoes range in length from about 136 to about 151 lines. The poem has a rhyme scheme called Terza Rima, which consists of rhyming triplets in the form of ABA, BCB, CDC, and so on. You know, now it's complex.

Really is, you know, the examples of poetry. Really is, you know, the examples of poetry that I gave, you know, from my personal brain, why do they call it personal brain? But, you know, from one poet to another, you know, respect, Dante. You know, you didn't do what I did, but you did some stuff. Number three plays a big role in the divine comedy. This is because three was thought of

in Christian theology, ideology ideology as a divine number. 33 was the age, you know, they thought at that time that Jesus died. We actually don't know for sure. The Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghosts, right? There's three who are also one. Jesus betrayed three times. Three shows up often in the Bible. And you know who else likes number three? Luminati. Mm-hmm. Yeah, think about that wake up sheeple. 33rd degree Mason. Anyone? Let's put some stuff together with Jesus the free Mason. He was a carpenter carpenter Mason. Pulling string now from one picture to another in my basement bunker yelling, aha! What does it all mean? Is Jesus the head of the illuminati? Was the Bible written by lizards? Should we be worshiping lizards? How deep does it all go? Only Tom Hanks knows for sure.

Maybe Roy Disney, and probably Pat's age. Those cute and on motherfuckers are probably sipping on some sweet kids at Dream of Chrome right now. And yes, I know Roy is supposed to have been long dead, which is exactly what they want you to think. Sorry, I blacked out for a few moments.

Where were we? So why is it called a divine comedy? Is it supposed to be funny? I don't know. Not really. It doesn't even include one fake sponsor, or you know, nobody makes fun of anyone's name. for a few moments, where were we? So why is it called a divine comedy? Is it supposed to be funny? I don't know, not really. Doesn't even include one fake sponsor or, you know, and nobody makes fun of anyone's names. There's no wiener jokes in it.

I guess comedy is subjective though. In Dante's time, comedy was a work that started badly and ended well, which does happen in the divine comedy. This is a departure from previous poems, which were mostly tragedies, plots that flowed from a promising beginning to a destructive end. Tragedies were considered more elevated and sophisticated. Alright.

Comedy, meanwhile, was a lower style with plots that started out unhappy and became happy. Along with this low genre, Dante also chose to write the poem in vernacular Italian, the common tongue of the people, not the Latin of scholars and religious writers, departing a lot from the mainstream here. No one believed this could be done well in Dante's time, even inspired some controversy after he died. Why did he write it in the common vernacular? Dante may have been a acknowledging how risky of a move it was when he called his work at comedy to begin with. At first, Dante just called the work the comedy. After his death,

Dante would become known as the divine poet and in venison 1555, the adjective divine would be added to his work, making it the divine comedy. It didn't take too long for Dante's work to be recognized after his death by 1400. There were no fewer than 12 full length commentaries devoted to explaining the poems, meaning in detail. Doesn't may not sound like a lot, but again, very few people wrote anything back then. Super rare to have other writers writing about your writing. Giovanni Bocaccio, an important Italian Renaissance writer and poet, delivered the first public lectures on the divine comedy between 1373 and 1374. Dante's poem was the first, quote, unquote, modern classic to be taught alongside the ancient

classics in university courses. A regular guy from Italy being taught alongside the greats like Plato and Aristotle. Sadly, Dante wouldn't get to see any of this, you know, dying long before his fame began. Now let's get into his life a bit now before tackling the inferno. Most of what is known about Dante's life comes from his own writings. He didn't really gain a significant amount of fame until quite some time after his death, so when he was alive, you know, no one really thought to write a lot about him. I mean, he's born in Florence, which was the Republic of Florence, and in or around Ish, 1265, Florence as a city was established

by Julius Caesar back in 59 BCE. The Republic of Florence formed in the 12th century, and would last as an autonomous nation all the way until 1533 CE. I always forget that for centuries after the fall of Roman Empire, much of Italy was divided into various city states. And it wasn't just Italy. During the Renaissance, that would follow shortly after Dante's death,

Venice, Milan, the Papal States, the Kingdom of Naples, four of the other five major city states of the Italian Peninsula in addition to Florence. We don't know what day Dante was born in Florence, but documents recorded that it was under the sign of Gemni. So between May 21 and June 20th, he remained a devoted citizen to Florence all his life, even after Florence kicked him to fuck out and became an angry sad boy. He once fought

as a cavalryman against the Gibolins, a banished Florentine political party supporting the Holy Roman Empire. One of his mentors was Brunetto Latini, member of the Guelph party that supported the papacy over the Holy Roman Empire in the power struggle between the emperor and the pope. It's complicated, but basically this power struggle was the Holy Roman Emperor thought he should hold the most power in Europe, as emperors like to do, hold the most power, and a point who he wanted to appoint to various positions, but the pope felt that he, as God's representative, was the most powerful man on earth, and that the emperor should

bend his knee to him. Bend your fucking knee on the pope. It was Pope versus King, secular versus Celestial. You know, who gets the final say on shit, basic power struggle that flared off and on for a few centuries in Florence, other city states and elsewhere in Europe. Latini was a wealthy noble, a skilled orator, a noted politician in Florence. He worked for a time as a type of lawyer, also as a high ranking politician. And if he was Dante's mentor or one of them, Dante's family was probably part of the

upper crust of the city that around that time had about 30,000 people. Another poet who helped shape Dante's style, immensely was another friend and mentor, Guito Cavalcante. Guito spent most of his life trying to save a noble woman Princess Peach from an evil tyrant, monster listed in old sources as either Bowser or King Cupa. Wait, that might not be true.

I might be thinking of another famous Italian. Guito Cavalcante considered the first major poet of Italian literature had he not existed very possible Dante would not be known to us today. He's thought to have taught Dante how to write in the common vernacular, not just in Latin. And he was part of a whole group

of poet, philosopher and Florence at that time. Another who perhaps inspired Dante's poetic style, the most was another poet's name, Guito, Guido, Guenzelle. Founder of the Dulce Stelnovo, a style of love theme poetry being written in Florence and elsewhere in Italy in the 13th century. Not positive on Guido's, this Guido's last name. The Dulce Stelnovo would popularize a way of referring to a woman, the object of the narrator's affections as a creature from paradise. And poems using this style, the woman is described as an angel or as a bridge to God. I get it.

Dude's back then where I like dudes now. Straight dudes anyway, right captivated by the female form, such a primal desire. I'm not embarrassed at all to say my favorite thing to look at is a naked beautiful woman. Is it nice to gaze at a sunset? Yeah, sure. Does it beat a great set of hips, ass and breasts, women's curves, combined with a beautiful woman's face, fucking nope. Halo, Safina, and that sweet, syrupy, primal lust, she radiates. Of course, those ancient horny dudes saw women as bridges to God.

Right, that place attracts. Dante would use that imagery a lot. Dante also used the divine comedy as an opportunity to tell readers about his family. Readers meet his great, great grandfather, Kakakuita, and Paradiso. I'm very awkward if you would have put Grandpa Kakakuita and Hell, but also pretty funny. Don Te also wrote that he was proud of his dissonance sisters who were descendants of Roman soldiers who settled along the banks of the Arno.

He doesn't mention his immediate family in the divine comedy, no mother, father, brother, or sister. Why not? No idea. No one really knows. In an earlier work, the Vita Nueva, Dante does refer to having a sister, and his father is a subject of some insulting sonnets exchange jokingly between Dante and his friend, Ferezi Donati, Dante's father, Ali Gero, the villain Cioni. It is tough because all these YouTube videos were in Italian. And I was like, I don't understand. I'm not going to be able to pick out the name out of all the other Italian words in this video. A member of the Guelphs, the Guelphs had lost an important battle to their rivals. The Gibblins in the middle of the 13th century, but Ali Gero was not ex-out along with the rest of the Guelphs. Sug that, you know, Dante's dad was protected by his social prestige or that he was in such a low

standing that he wasn't considered worth exiling, exiling. Probably because he was in very high standing. Dante would grow up in a world like this full of exiling and other political punishments. One day you could be in power the next, you could wind up banished with your property seized, which would eventually happen to Dante. The fight between the Guelphs and the Gibolons seemed as faded as the legendary battles between the Greeks and the Trois or the Trojans, and these, you know, political parties would fight literally, not talking about heated arguments, talking about swords, arrows, hangings,

burnings. It took that shit seriously. 1266, when Dante was still a baby, a force of wealth supported by papal and French armies were able to defeat the Gibolins at Ben-Evento, expelling them from Florence. So the party of Dante's father was back in power, Florence was on a new path, and Dante grew up in a city brimming with post-war pride and expansionism, eager to extend its political control throughout Tuscany. Expansionist dreams reminded Florentine to the legendary civilization of ancient Rome that gave Florence its birth.

Not only was Florence extending this political power, but it was exercising intellectual dominance in the region as well. An intellectual dominance that Dante would contribute to. Remember, Florence is where the Renaissance was born. Back to his family in early life, Dante's mother Bella died when Dante was young. Sometime before he reached 14.

Some sources say seven, some say ten. His mother's genealogy is unknown, but thought she belonged to the wealthy Abati family long time, Florentine nobles. After his mother's death, Dante's father then married lapide, cree-as-a-mano-cres-aloo-fi. I was trying to say it fast because I have no fucking idea. Together, they had a son, Francesco, and a doctor, I got to the nata. I don't know how to say her name either. I didn't find an example. Algario died sometime between before 1283, and he left his children modest yet comfortable properties

and Florence along with other properties in the country. So dude had some money. Guessing money was not a big concern for Dante while he lived in Florence. Around the time of his father's death, Dante married Gemma Donati to, keep wanting to say that pizza place is there. To whom he had been betrothed since 1277.

Sources say that Donati, the family was a wealthy family in medieval Florence, a fuck yeah, bro, noise! Got some money from dad, got some money from mom's family, got some money from wife's family, plenty of money. By all the sweet parchment and vellum and quills and ink and shit that a millage is public who want. Don't in his wife would have four children, maybe hard to find records for one of them, at least three, a Jacopo, Pietro, Antonio, Antonio, they're real, maybe Giovanni.

Don in his wife may not have loved one another, a lot of literary nerd speculation about this. He didn't put gem in his epic poem. He wrote about Beatrice. Noble arranged marriages didn't always get love thrown into the mix. While he married Gemma possibly for financial and status reasons, seems he was in love with the Beatrice. And in love with the Beatrice. And the love he felt for her seems to have helped motivated the man to write a lot of poetry. Beatrice would play an important role in the Divine Comedy. She become one of the most celebrated women in literature. Beatrice appeared in many of Dante's works,

actually outside of the divine comedy. He wrote at least six other book of far lesser fame that we know of of poetry. Beatrice was first canonized in the Vita and the Wave. No, noova. A book of Dante's love poems written from sometime before 1283 to roughly 1293. She'd later return the divine comedy as the woman credited with having led Dante away

from the vulgar herd. The Vita Nuova narrative is pretty simple. Dante, first he's Beatrice when both are nine years old, setting off Dante's eternal love for her. Later on as teenagers, they run into each other here and there. And when Beatrice doesn't greet him one day, Dante expresses anguish. She's making fun of him. She doesn't care about him.

He retains himself and says he's only going to write, or then he retains himself, says he's only gonna write about her virtues going forward. Later on she dies. Dante moreons her, temporarily replacing her with another young woman, but finds he can only be loyal to Beatrice. In the last chapter of this book of poems,

and this Dante expresses his determination to write at some later time about her, that which has never been written of any woman, and the divine comedy would keep that promise. Now, was she really a real person, or just a fictional character in a poem? Scholars seem to say that Beatrice was probably real. If she did exist, which is likely, she's thought to have been the real person of Beatrice, Defolco, Portonari. There's not a lot of evidence out there about her life, but most scholars seem to think her father was a banker and that she was married to another banker, Simone de Bardy. So she probably had a lot of money. Florence and Dante's time,

for quite a while afterwards, was one of the premier banking cities. If not the premier banking city in all of Europe, possibly in all of the world. The Renaissance would soon be born in Florence. A lot of that wonderful art that we created during the Renaissance funded by Florence banking patronage, the Medici illuminate team members. A lot of conspiracy theorists love to speculate about the Medici's. The bankers of Florence, lizard people might not have sucked them someday. Dante claims to have met a Beatrice only twice on occasion separated by nine years but was so affected by the meetings that he carried his love for her throughout his life. Dante first met Beatrice when his father took him to the Portonari House for a Mayday party. They're both nine years old at the time. Dante, instantly in love with her,

remains so throughout his life, even though she married another man in spite of this, he maintained a deep love and respect for Beatrice, even after her death in 1290, at only the age of 25. Her death would lead him to more seriously get into poetry and philosophy as an attempt to preserve her memory meant crazy. How much that early childhood encounter

seemed to have affected him. Clearly he idolized her in a way that you can only do when you're not around somebody a lot to see their flaws, right? Easy to build them up in your mind at the mythical proportions. Wonder what is actual wife, thought of all the Beatrice poetry. I can't imagine Gemma loved it.

Dante, dear, will you be joining us for dinner tonight? Or are you too busy again writing love poems for that fucking slut Beatrice? Speaking of the table, if you want to tuck your bone or away and join your actual fucking family, Dante based on the company he kept, where and when he lived, what he created was clearly highly educated. Obviously, he studied the classics taught at that time, very familiar with the Bible as well as the writings of Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca. Aside from all this education, Dante was just plain old smart. Scholars say he was super intelligent.

Someone who possessed loads of self-confidence to go along with that intelligence. He supposedly had an insanely good memory. There's a spot in Florence currently marked by a plaque where Dante's supposedly like to sit and write his love poems about Beatrice while watching the construction of the Dwellmo, aka the massive Florence Cathedral. According to an old anecdote, as he sat there one day, he was asked by a passer by what he ate for breakfast.

Eggs replied Dante, and he doesn't see this dude for a year. A year later, that same dude walks past Dante again, sitting again on his favorite little rock, and he tests the poets, notorious memory, and all he says is how, and Dante quickly responded with salt, nice, I like some salty eggs as well. Maybe a little pepper, no, maybe some to Basko sauce, if I'm feeling saucy.

I definitely couldn't remember what I'd had for breakfast a year ago. Hard to remember what I had in the last week. By the time he was 18, as Dante claims in the Vita Nuova, it already taught himself the art of writing verse. He sent an early sonnet, which would become the first poem in the Vita Nuova to the most famous poets of his day. All right, had plenty of dough to buy plenty of old parchment, apparently. He received several responses, but the most important one came from a hero of his, the poet Guido Culvacante, who he

met earlier. Beginning of an important and complicated friendship, Chapter 30 of the Vita Nuova, Dante states that Cavalcante was the person who advised him to write in the Italian commenton, not Latin. Dante even dedicated the Vita Nuova to Cavalcante, writing that he was his best friend. Later, however, when Dante was appointed to a position in the Florentine government, he was pressured to agree with the decision to exile Cavalcante. That sucks. Had to kick his best bud out of the Republic, or he helped, I guess he didn't have to.

Cavalconty then contracted malaria during his banishment and died in August of 1300. Guessing Dante felt a bit guilty. This was hard on Dante, and in Ferno, he composed a monument to his great friend recording how indebted he was to Cavalconty. He also spends time talking about the more complicated side of their friendship, their opposing political views, fucking politics, separating people

back then, separating people now. With Dante's obsession, the bane of his existence on 1295, Dante became a member of the guild of physicians and apothecaries, to which philosophers could belong, which opened his way to public office. He entered the political arena at a very dangerous time when once again Florence was a divided city. The ruling gulf class of Florence was further split into two parties now. The black wealth led by Corso Donate and the white wealth, which Dante belonged. Two buildings owned and named after Corso Donate actually still stand to day in Florence. The black wealth continued to support the papacy, but now the white wealth, they were now against papal influences in the city states,

because they didn't like the new pope, bonifiz the ape. They're like, no, my God. The white's gained the upper hand in this power struggle and exiled the blacks. So much pope drama in this suck, so much exiling. It was like any time an argument was settled back in Florence, you know, someone got exiled. Okay, you're right.

I couldn't not see it though, but the pineapple does it go very well with the hammer on the pizza. You're right, it does, someone got exiled. Okay, you're right. I couldn't not see it though, but the pineapple does it go very well with the hammer on the pizza. You're damn right, it does, a Guido, and I'll grab your shit, and get the fuck out of the Florence, you know what the rules are. By around 1300, Dante became an influential speaker

against papal intervention in affairs of the city states. And then Pope Boniface Yates with detained Dante in 1300, I'm sure got a real tongue lashing for being against some of his policies, luckily they didn't get tortured and killed. And November of 1301 when Dante is still detained, the exiled Blackwell secretly re-enter Florence and terrorize the city for six days. And then the Blackwells returned to power, making things very dangerous for the whitewealths like Dante who deposed them. In January 1302, Dante is called to appear before the new Florentine government and failing

to do so. He is condemned, along with three other former white wealth officials for crimes he'd actually never committed. Didn't matter what they had done. They were just on the losing side of another political beef and they were out on March 10, 1302, Dante and 14 other white wealth condemned to be burned to death. Good thing he didn't show up. Political bullshit.

So annoying back in 1302 and still annoying today. At least today we're not burning people, the death for political differences, and this country at least, that's progress I guess. At first after receiving a sentence, Dante was passionate about returning. Now around the age of 35, he wanted to reunite with the white gwelfts,

he wanted to lead them in a military campaign. This fucking get those black gwelfts, get them to fuck out. But no one wanted to join him in a military campaign. This fucking good those black wealth. Get them to fuck out. But no one wanted to join him. It wasn't able to rally any other exiles. It wasn't able to rally the Gibbons, another ousted political party on his quest either, because he had previously helped exile them.

Now he's, you know, out alone kicked out of Florence, really doesn't have a lot of friends. No source would say Dante remained in exile for the rest of his life alone. All his property he thought to have been taken from him. The only good news that came from the exile was the fact that his wife and children didn't get to go with him. They had to stay in Florence and I bet he was fucking pumped, right? Freedom! Finally! Some which time to fantasize about Beatrice, maybe try to find a new Beatrice. Now that I'm my fucking

ball and chain dragon around behind me. I don't know. I don't know if he's excited about that. Might've been super sad. Thought his wife ended up in a convent in Ravenna later in life. It's three sons, Jacobi, Giovanni, Pietro, also exiled from Florence 13 years after their father in 1315.

Or at least two of them were if Giovanni wasn't real. So much exile. Dante and his sons may have reunited in Ravenna after Dante's death, his son, Jacobi, would bring a copy of the divine comedy to the Lord of Ravenna. He'd returned to Florence in 1325 four years after his dad's death. We'd actually win back his dad's confiscated property in 1343 before the damn plague took him out 1348. Dante's other son Pietro able to return to Florence, but didn't stay there, died in Terviso. And, you know, we don't know what happened to the third son Giovanni, because he might be a fake ass dude. Dante's daughter thought to have become a nun like her mother. Years following Dante's exile seemed to have been difficult. He wandered from place to place

as he himself repeatedly says in the divine comedy. He says that bitter is the taste of another man's bread and heavy the way up and down another man's stare. It likely had to rely on the patronage of those who appreciated his works to get by. He was received honorably in many noble houses in the north of Italy, ended up in Ravenna, welcomed there by its prince, and he worked for the prince in some capacity,

actually died returning from Venice on September 14th, 1321 of malaria, on some type of diplomatic mission for the Prince for Ravenna. It thought to have been around the age of 56 when he died. After his death, Dante was given an honorable burial attended by the leading men of letters of the time. He was buried at a church in Ravenna where he'd been living.

Florence would later decide, once they entered the Renaissance that they wanted to bury Dante in their own city. They built a spectacular tomb for him. Michelangelo, even Pope Leo the 10th campaign for the poets remains to be returned to his hometown, but the sneaky Revena monks simply sent an empty coffin, having found a hiding place in a cloister wall for Dante's bones.

And those bones wouldn't be discovered until 1865, discovered by accident during some construction. And then his bones were re-barried in a Revena, Mausoleum, and then they were moved during World War II, because out of fear that the the tomb would be bombed, his bones remain in Ravenna, fuck Florence, right? They didn't want him in life. Too little too late now.

Wasn't actually until 2008, the Florence passed a motion officially, pardoning their most famous resident, Larry's. All right, me and Sachs, now that we investigate his life, all right, the works, some of his works, some of the motivations of the man who both wrote and starred in today's subject, let's get into his greatest achievement right after a quick sponsor break. Thank you for listening. Now, it's divine comedy time. The plot of Dante's, the divine comedy, actually pretty simple. Dante is miraculously enabled to take on a supernatural journey, which leads him through hell, purgatory, and paradise.

He has two guides, Virgil the Roman poet, who leads him through hell and purgatory, and then Beatrice, his lost love, who takes over at the end of purgatory, and leads him to paradise. Yeah, yeah, she does. Hey, Luciferina. But of course it's not like that. These fictional encounters take place around Easter and the year 1300 and the poem Dante knows he's about to be exiled. Even though in real life, he'd already been exiled. So he uses the story to explain how he personally cope with the impending calamity and suggest some solutions for Italy's troubles too. Despite the important historical context of the work, the divine comedy and its first of three parts in Fernow is far from a simple political allegory. It's the product of a

mind that spent decades grappling with writers like Aristotle, Ovid, Virgil. So much so that Dante felt like he could actually have conversations with them and did in Inferno. It's meet some of the characters of Dante's trilogy of afterlife in Fernow. Dante is 35 years old when his journey starts, possibly the age he was when he was exiled. The real Dante was more like 43 when he started writing the poem. Dante's fictional version of himself is more sympathetic, fearful of danger, and confused morally and intellectually than real life Dante was. Though initially sympathetic to the suffering of sinners as the poem progresses, Dante gradually learns to abandon his sympathy and adopt a more pitiless attitude towards the punishment of sinners.

He starts to view punishment as a reflection of divine justice, right? Sure. Why not? Probably a little easier that way. You can either try and analyze the justice or injustice of it all. Worry about the fairness or just let your mind go to that place of, this doesn't make a sense to me. But what do I know?

God punishes them as serious ways. Grind them up, demons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both metaphorically and literally as Dante journeys through these afterlife realms, he grows closer and closer to God. The physical journey shows him things like sinners being punished that he needs to see in order to develop spiritually. Dante, the poet, thought this was a representation

of the universal Christian quest for God, making the character of Dante sort of an average every man type. Readers learned that Dante the character is committed some kind of sin, which doesn't specify, and that he's involved in Florentine politics somehow, but the poem doesn't say much else about the narrator. Interestingly, Dante's character speaks of feeling like he ranks among the great poets that he meets in Hell in purgatory, but then also makes it clear that he'd prefer Beatrice and God's love more than to be known as a great poet. Interesting thought about the sacrificial nature of art. Can you be in all time great artists and have time to devote yourself to romantic love? If you Dante the writer struggle with that,

artists have struggle with balancing their art with the rest of their lives and continue to struggle with that to this day. Most of my comic friends, most of them are single or have had divorces like myself or you know struggle with trying to, some of them who are religious struggle with, you know, trying to develop their spirituality

and also commit themselves to their art. I've listened to many of comics struggle with balancing, getting up on stage enough to get better through craft with being home enough to have a family life or dating life of some kinds, any life outside of comedy. Comics struggling with that in the 21st century, just like poet struggle with it in the 13th and 14th centuries,

I guess, the more things change. It's interesting to note the gap between Dante, the character and Dante, the writer in Inferno. Dante, the character for example, excited to see Brunetto Latini one of his old mentors in hell the hell that Dante the writer put him in kind of weird now if you wrote a book about hell then put one of your friends in hell would they be flattered that you'd included them in your book or pissed off that you clearly judged and condemned them I don't think my wife Lindsey would like it baby you asked me to put you in the book.

You said you wanted to be included. I thought writing you in as an evil succubus, demon who tries to seduce men and to give in their souls to Satan would be pretty cool. But you seem, you know, I don't know, you seem pretty mad about it. Dante, the character of sympathetic and kind to the characters he meets,

but Dante, the writer, is the one who devised so many excruciating torments that are punishing them. The next most important character in this epic is the Roman poet Virgil. We talked about Virgil and the Nied earlier, according to Dante, Virgil is down in hell. And the reason he's down in hell is pretty fucked up. The image of Virgil that appears in Inferno,

sort of like a shade or spirit, has been condemned to an eternity in hell because he happened to live prior to Christ's appearance on earth and therefore prior to the possibility of Christian redemption. A crazy thing to believe that God would be that blatantly insane and whimsical when it came to who got to go to heaven and who didn't. He would just fuck over millions and millions of people who happened to live before the time of Christ.

How much that suck? If A, got existed, and B, hit a bunch of weird shitty arbitrary rules like that. Like, it was some miserable, low-level bureaucrat obsessed with technicalities. Listen, bud. I'm not saying you're a bad person. In fact, you seem fine. You look very virtuous live. You did unto others.

Who, you know, what you want to done into you, you know, here's the thing, but you died before to use, right? Read the fine life, fine after life print. No getting around that. No can do, you know, I don't know how good your math, but, but you died in 19 BC at 33 years of uses life to that. You put you about 52 years shy of any shot it happened by my calculation. So try not to get all been out of shape about a bad. You'll be in a mild version of hell. Take some solace on that.

So that's what you can do for you. But unfairly condemned, Virgil has received orders to lead Dante through hell on his spiritual journey. He's a wise, resourceful, commanding presence, but he's also not really all that capable of protecting Dante from hell's dangers. Makes sense. You know, you can write up all the rules you want for hell, but he's also not really all that capable of protecting Dante from hell's dangers. Makes sense. You know, you can write up all the rules you want for hell, but demons, you know, not great at following rules. Critics generally consider Virgil an allegorical representation of human reason, both in its immense power and in its inferiority to faith in God. Right? Dante needs

Virgil to succeed in his journey because he needs Virgil's common sense and wisdom, but his failure to protect Dante at times thought to symbolize that reason is powerless without faith, an important tenant of Dante's moral philosophy. Dante very much a man of his time is here, right? So many times identities at that time, heavily intertwined with the Catholic Church. In the fullest sense of the word,

Virgil acts as Dante's guide, showing him not only the physical route through hell, but also reinforcing his moral lessons guiding him spiritually. One point he sums up for Dante, what he'll all about saying that the inhabitants of the infernal region are those who have lost the good of intellect, the substance of evil, the loss of humanity, intelligence, goodwill, and the capacity to love. He forgot to add, or, I guess you forget to add AND unfortunate victims of BULSE TECKING ALICE LIKE MY SELF!

What the fuck? Are we just gonna pretend that this makes sense? And I'm down here? Because I happen to be born at the wrong time. I'm fucking- Uh, Don to the character and Don to the poet seem to regard Virgil differently. Don to the character. Regardless Virgil is his master constantly swearing his admiration for and trust in him.

Dante the poet, however, often makes use of inferno to prove his own poetic greatness in comparison to the classical barred to precede him, including Virgil. Dante the poet do a little bit of flexing, especially when literally he leaves Virgil behind in purkatory. While Dante respects Virgil enough to include him in the story, he also suggests that his poem outlasts Virgil entirely. At least that's what literary experts tell us. Virgil enough to include him in the story. He also suggested his poem outlasts Virgil entirely. At least that's what literary experts tell us.

Dante did take a long time to write this, right? Plenty of time to think about every detail. It's a lot of symbolism. Now on to Beatrice, aside from getting God's love, finding sweet, sweet Beatrice, as Dante's primary goal in the divine comedy. That's a romantic. All this symbolism and philosophy written

because a boy felt a love with the girl when he was nine. A girl who, if he did write it about the woman we thought he wrote about it, wrote about who died almost 20 years before Dante began writing it. Reminds me of a girl who lived next door to me when I was a toddler, Sarah Sargent, not even Kittie. I'm told she was my first friend. We'd play to get us to defense, you know, that separated our yards apparently is very cute.

But then we moved to Alaska when I was around three, when I came back to Reagan's when I was eight, Sarah had moved away, but would visit her grandma who lived on the street a few weeks here and there, this next summer after I moved back. And then, you know, I only saw her a few times after that in passing years later with her teenagers, but we never hung out again.

After she left that one summer, I remember listening to Starship's 1986 Sarah song, right? My mom had the tape and I would just, you know, just really daydream about it. Sarah! Sarah! Storms are brewing in your eyes. Oh, Sarah! Sarah! No time is a good time for goodbyes. Oh, Sarah, love me. Like no one loved me before. Remember the song, come on. You get it? I was over it, you know, all that by the time I was in college.

But I remember that song would come on, like, if I'm being really honest, maybe in my, maybe still in my early 20s, I would just get a little like, I would just like wax poetic in my mind. Ah, man, Sarah and I could be living out this perfect life together. I made her perfect in my mind because I didn't really know her. Beatrice is actually the one who asked an angel

to find Virgil, asking to guide Dante to hell and purgatory to her. And actually right now I got to refocus because I'm like, I wonder where Sarah is today. Not that I want to think, that was not a thing I'm very happy is today. Uh, not that I want to think that was not a thing I'm very happy with Lindsey. But I was just like, oh yeah, I hadn't thought about Sarah's Argentinian years.

She has a limited role in inferno, Beatrice does, but becomes more prominent in purgatorio and paradiso. And there are many other characters that come up all Dante's and hell, including many from mythology. Many of your famous historical characters, from dictators and religious leaders, to warriors and poets,

all others are his own political enemies, sometimes friends, acquaint acquaintances also giants serpents Centaurus more many of whom help Dante and Virgil keep on moving you know on and out of hell so many hijinks Flamengo overcome that's where it's kind of like this buddy road trip Situation similar to a video game Dante's inferno also has a number of end bosses Monsters who represent evil, that increase in their power as Dante descends down to the levels of hell.

The last end boss is of course Lucifer himself, not getting that high score unless you beat the devil. If you were ever to turn Inferno into a musical, I think for the climactic battle of Satan, you would have to throw down a little bit of Striper. BATTLE OF STATIN, YOU WOULD HAVE TO THROW DOWN A LITTLE BIT OF STRIPER. TO HELL BIT THE DEMO! Fuck yeah, you're welcome. Uh, Lucifer is a prince of hell. Resides at the bottom of the ninth and final circle of hell beneath the earth's surface. His body jutting through the planet's center.

Uh, did I mention how with each circle of hell Dante went down further towards the Earth's core? That's all this hell works. It's inside the Earth, which even Dante knew wasn't flat, or 700 years ago. An enormous giant Lucifer has three faces, but does not speak. His three mouths, busy chewing, three of history's greatest traders, Judas, the Trailer of Christ, and Cassius and Brutus, the Traiers of Julius Caesar. Now, I think it's pretty funny how Cassius and Brutus get thrown in there with Judas.

Show's where Dante's mind was. For the ancient world, had serial killers, serial rapists, serial kid didlers, but those guys not getting nibbled on by Beale's above. Cassius and Brutus are. I wonder if Cassius and Brutus ever brought that up to Satan. How they didn't make a lot of sense. This is the same Satan. Oh, didn't make a lot of sense. This is Satan's Aiden. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, few words, please. You can get back to the National Teeths with a few words.

What about Emperor Nero? He's supposed he's slaughtered Christians, killed his own mom, even destroyed much of his own city in order to have him excused up to his palace. Come on. He also allegedly beheaded his first wife, kicked his second and pregnant wife to death. Then married a young boy who resembled a second wife, had him castrated, forced him to dress as a woman, and I'm getting nodded on, are you fucking kidding me?

Also, interesting that they're getting chewed on by Satan and hell for betraying a dude who thinks to die and before the time of Christ is also in hell, just like Virgil. Now let's give him the details of this epic poem. Inferno opens with Conto 1 shortly before dawn on Good Friday, the year 1300. Inferno starts with some of the most famous lines of all time. Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward

pathway had been lost. Not as rhymy, but sounds, you know, maybe about as cool as the bars I threw down earlier. I'm not too proud to admit that. Traveling to a dark wood, 35-year-old Dante Alighieri has lost his path and is now wandering frightened and alone through the woods. Suddenly, he notices the sun shining down on a mountain above him, mountain-delectable. He attempts to climb up to it but finds his way blocked by three beasts, a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf. These three beats are pretty much directly taken from Jeremiah, five, six, the Bible.

They symbolize these three kinds of sins that will send you to hell and Continence represented by the she-wolf, violence and bestiality represented by the lion and weird. Not sure how the lion came to represent bestiality, maybe a lot of people want to fuck lions back then. Fraud and malice represented by the lion and weird. I'm not sure how the lion came to represent Beastie Alley. Maybe a lot of dudes want to fuck lions back then. Fraud and malice represented by the leopard. Three beast drive Dante back and frightened and helpless. He returned to the dark woods. He thinks he can't climb the mountain because he's somehow unworthy. Night falls and a ghost dude appears.

Ghost dude claims he was born in the time of Julius Caesar. Dante recognizes him. It's Virgil. Virgil says he's here to guide Dante back to the path which will take him to the time of Julius Caesar, Dante recognizes him. It's Virgil. Virgil says he's here to guide Dante back to the past, which will take him to the top of the mountain. Then the canto, too, or canto, Virgil gives him some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that their path is going to take them all the way through hell. The good news is that Dante, if he keeps moving, will eventually reach heaven where Dante's

beloved Beatrice awaits. Dante's then hesitant to follow Virgil because A, he's a scary fucking ghost dude guy. And B, not a Christian. Virgil tells him it was Beatrice along with Virgin Mary and St. Lucilla, who sent Virgil to Dante when Beatrice saw that Dante was lost in the woods. Convinced, Dante's like, alright, I'll follow you. You'll try and find his long lost love. He must continue to stalk the woman who may not have wanted anything to do with him.

When she was alive, you think about that, but the story? I was thinking about that. Imagine that. What if we found evidence someday that Beatrice was real and that she fucking hated Dante? He creeped her out. She was writing in her diary about a weird married stalker who was obsessed with her. March 6th, 1285, CE, theostiary. Caut Dante staring at me at the market again today.

That man gives me the heebie jeebies. Wasn't as bad as yesterday when I caught him staring intense with me while clearly beating off an alley across the street from the cafe where I had lunch, but still very disturbing. I hope he is soon exiled. Dante decides to trust Virgil, which leads to Kanto III, the Gates of Hell. Virgil leads a reluctant Dante through the gates to the world's most evil place.

The gates bear an inscription often translated as Abandon all hope, you who enter here. Sound familiar? If you ever written on Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride, when you first descend into the main meat of the ride, you pass the sign, this is abandoned hope, all ye who enter here. Nice Roy Disney.

Wait a steal from Dante, you unscriptuous mom killing fuck. JK, great Disney's a great human being. As they approach Dante, here's Christ of Torment and suffering, the cries of the uncommitted. These are the souls of people who took no sides in life, opportunists who were for neither good nor evil, but merely concerned with their own well-being. Dante the writer uses the opportunity to tell us about some of the people he thought took

no sides. He had strong opinions about that because remember this guy got kicked the fuck out of Florence and sentenced and absentee had to die because he took strong stances. So he had real strong feelings about those who wouldn't commit to one side of a debate. In this level, or Pope Celesteine V,, whose cowardice and selfish terror for his own welfare and Dante's eyes, served as the door through which so much evil entered the church. He was Pope eight years before Dante was exiled. Also, just inside the gates of hell, our outcasts, who took no side in the rebellion of angels, the biblical fallout between God and Satan. He sold reside in

the shores of the Aturon River, the border of hell. I didn't, that's one of the few words I'm questioning here that I didn't put a pronunciation guide for. Hopefully I get that right, Akaron, I think. Naked and aimless, they spend eternity racing around in the mist and pursuit of a waving banner, representative of their shifting self-interest.

While their relentlessly chased by swarms of wasps and hornets, hell wasps! Sounds terrible. Fucking hate wasps. With so many times with those little monsters, I poured gasoline on their nest numerous times and burned those bastards alive and I feel like if I ended up in hell, the wasps I burned would be coming for me. And I couldn't burn them again because I'm guessing hell wasps pretty flame-resistant. On the ground maggots and worms drink the putrid mixture of blood, puss and tears that uncommitted souls leave behind. Dante, the character is shocked. These souls are suffering so much and he's not even really in hell proper yet.

After passing to the gates, Dante and Virgil reach the fairy that will take them across the Akaron River. Oh, that's a thing. The fairy is pilot it by the famous Greek ferryman of the River Styx, Karen. A repulsive creature with blue gray skin and a tusk mouth. And I love that even though this creature's name is spelled CHAR-ON, it's pronounced Karen. Reminds you of our continually outraged, I need to speak to your manager, time traveling, Karen character.

Are you fucking serious? What? Who does this Dante think he is? Or whatever old Greek, a Roman dumb shit? He wrote this, got me a hell monster? My fucking serious? What? Who do you think Dante is or whatever old Greek or Roman dumb shit who wrote this? Get me a hell monster? My fucking name? Who's in charge around here?

I don't wanna be a hell monster. I wanna speak to the manager or author or Satan or whoever's running this shit show. Who forgot to pay the AC bill, by the way. Fucking hot as shit. Ow! Who the hell is his wasps in here? Get your hands off me.

I'll throw you in the night, circle of hell, dick. Anyway, Dante's Karen says there's no way that he's gonna take Dante to hell. Dante's still alive, it's against rules. All right, what kind of operation do you think we're running here? Dante, hells for demons and the dead. Virgil says that Dante's on divine journey and Karen has to take him.

Virgil's like, yo, Karen, can we set waiting to talk in private for a second? Look, Homeboy has a major hard on for the chick name Beatrice. I don't get it. It's not for me to judge. You know, this is like some epic Romeo and Juliet shit, you know. Sorry, that reference will make sense in a few more centuries. What I'm saying is this is some true love shit.

You don't want to stand the way true love do you, Karen? All right, whatever. I still don't speak to a manager, but fire. I'll take him to hell and stuff, I guess. So now we're in the canteau four. First circle of hell, aka Limbo. Limbo take him to hell, and so on, I guess? So now we're in the canteau four. First circle of hell, aka limbo. Limbo, according to Dante, basically an inferior form of heaven. In terms of hell, it's about as good as it gets.

Limbo houses virtuous non-Christians and unbaptized pagans, including Virgil. Many of the other great writers and poets of antiquity who died without being able to become Christians because Christianity wasn't around yet. That was that bullshit technicality stuff we talked about earlier. Dante asked Virgil if anyone's ever left Limbo and Virgil says that he did see Jesus descend into Limbo and take Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, and Rachel and it was all forgiving arms and transport them to heaven as the first human soul is to be saved.

I bet he was like, fucking lucky must be nice. This was called the heroine of hell happened in CE33 or 34. But that was it. No one else should hold their breath. I love that there were years attached to this, by the way. That's when, that's when, you know, I mean, I get that it's, you know, coincides with when she's died,

but it's kind of funny to attach dates to him coming down there and just grabbing a few people. Now it hasn't been down in a while. Last time I saw him, I think he popped around about 71, 72. He grabbed James Dean, Marilyn Monroe. I think he picked up Jimmy Hendrix. He wanted some guitar lessons or something. The duo keeps going.

As they travel to the first circle of the abyss, they come across a handful of the greatest poets of all time, Homer, Horace, Ovid, me, D.K. Luke and Dante says they accept him as one of their own. Sweet. Dante just put words in the mouth of the greatest poets in history, right? Saying that he is worthy of being in the same, spoken in the same, you know, sentences them. No shortage of confidence with this guy. Dante and Virgil continue and reach a great castle surrounded by a flowing brook and seven gates, symbolizing the seven virtues of chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

I forgot what temperance meant. I had to look it up, abstinence from alcohol. Why? Why is that listed as a virtue? What happened to having a good time? What happened to turn in water into wine, right? Jesus liked to drink. He was virtuous, come on. Come on. Lighting up on the

temperance. Virgil tells Dante, Dante fucking downer, that the castles were the wisest of men of antiquity live. After passing to the Seven Gates, they come to a beautiful green meadow where Dante meets a number of historical figures. I mean, I guess this party hell really isn't that bad, right? This green meadows and stuff. Many of them associated with the Trojan War and the Roman Empire. He meets Julius Caesar, Electra, mother of the founder of Troy,

and elite Romans of all kinds. And they funny again, that Caesar is not having considering the due to betrayed him, or seen on par with Judas. Dante meets Saladin, a Muslim military leader known for his battle against the Crusaders, as well as his generous chivalrous and merciful conduct in counter to group of philosophers,

including Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. And then he moves on to the second circle of hell, lust, hellus of phoena. Hopefully there's gonna be some kind of sweet demon orgy. Please let there be a demon orgy. The second circle of hell lust is the first circle of incontinence. That broad range of sins we mentioned earlier that will send you to hell. On this case, incontinence does not mean shooting yourself,

but rather fleshly sins that originate from unbalanced passions, emotions, and desires. The sins of lust also called carnal, malefactors. The second circle of hell is where the real punishments begin. Dante describes as a part where no, a part where no earth, yeah, a part where no thing gleams. I guess a part in terms of in place of place there. Doesn't sound like a sex Georgie. At the border between circles one and two, a creepy-ass monster named Mino, sidetracks, Dante, and Virgil. Mino's the king of creed and Greek mythology, but in inferno,

he's a giant, grotesque, serpentine beast. He's essentially the Saint Peter of Hell. He decides where the souls of the sinners go for their torment. They're hearing a given sinner's confession. Minos curls his tail around him in a specific number of times to show the circle of hell where the sinner is going to be heading off to. Virgil talks his way out of an altercation with Minos and the duo continue. Inside Dante and Virgil watches the souls of people who were overcome by lust swirl around that a violent, continuous storm never finding peace or rest. It mirrors how they were carried away by their passions and life. But now they can see the bright, voluptuous sin as it actually is, a howling darkness

of helpless discomfort. Because the sin of lust takes two to tango, Dante puts this sin as the lowest on the totem pole, because it's not a selfish sin. As you can guess, lots of people from history show up here. Cleopatra, Achilles, Paris, Dido, Helen of Troy, name of Fueh, all people who cheated on their spouses in life. There's actually so many noble women in this circle that the fifth canto is often referred to as the canto of Queens.

I bet a lot of the cult leaders we've covered would end up here as well. Father Yod, ballin' baby, down in this circle of hell. Maybe he and the rest of Yahuwah 13 is banned will be playing some kind of rolled songs to add to the torture. All right, I feel like they could be a hell's house band. Come along, baby.

Come along, baby. Come along, baby. Gonna take you home. Come along, baby. Come along, baby. Come along, baby. I did you remember how bad they were? Never forget. Never forget the hellish sonic torment of Father Yod's Yahuwah 13. Overcome by pitting anguish for the poor souls,

trapped in the second circle of hell, Dante Faints, for moving on to circle three, I should add that our own time-set God, Luciferina, rumored to regularly stop by the circle of hell to strike Minos, rescue some of the poor souls of lust who've ended up there and takes them to Nimrod's heaven, aka his Alpha and Omega Ball sack, and lets him get to some heavily fucking.

That's what I've heard. Hello, Safina. Now we're in Kanto 6. And if Dante comes to the duo, move it along to the third circle of hell, gluttony. Dante notices the smell immediately. No bueno. The souls of glutton are overseen by a giant three headed worm monster named Serbus, also known as the Great Worm.

Okay, makes sense. He's a worm. He's big, he's the Great Worm. Virgil thinking quickly fills this monster's mouth with mud, and he and Dante proceed safely past him. Seems like a pretty easy monster to outsmart. As they progress through the circle, they notice that sinners here are punished by being forced to lie in a putrid slush of icy rain, shit, and decay. It's described as a great storm of putrefaction. The vile slush symbolizes

personal degradation of one who overindulges in food, drink, and other worldly pleasures. I feel like I'm being person attacked. Son of a bitch, I might end up there. Why are donuts and cheetos so delicious? Why does whiskey keep tasting better than the more you drink? Not my fault. The centers are so deeply lodged in the slush that they can't see the other sinners nearby representing the glutton selfishness Dante gets political a bit in the circle speaks to a character whose name and Italian meant hog He thought to be one of his political contemporaries now It knows exactly who Dante is dishing here

And the first of several political prophecies in the infernal this hog predicts the expulsion of the white gulfs Dante's party from Florence by the black wealth this hog predicts the expulsion of the white gulfs Dante's party from Florence by the black wealth making a marking the start of Dante's long exile from the city. So Dante the character not thrilled about the information Dante the author already knows about and he and Virgil move on. Hanto 7. Fourth circle of hell. It's greed.

Fourth circle is guarded by someone named Pluto unfortunately not related in any way to the cute and continually happy Disney dog. Historians think Dante was actually referring to Plutus, God of wealth and classical mythology, not Pluto, classical ruler of the underworld who was more akin to Lucifer who will show up later, a little confusing. In fact, it could be a lot like Shrek, now it combines a great deal of characters from past works and something new. Dante's version of Pluto, fucks with Virgilgil and Dante by uttering the cryptic phrase, the door of Satan, the door of

Satan, proceed downward. That's a creepy ass phrase, utter. You should utter that to a stranger, right? And then just leave and never talk to him again. Maybe I have to get something to eat and drive through or a coffee just just right before you leave after you finish, after you finish pain. It's like the door of Satan, the door of Satan proceed downward. I don't give that barista or fast food slinger something to think about for a while. Virgil knows Dante is not ready to get right to Satan though, so he pushes him into the fourth circle. Here they see people being tormented for displaying greed. They're divided into two groups, the avaricious and the

prodigal, those who hoarded possessions and those who lavishly spent it These people are unrecognizable because they're greedous force them to lose their individuality But Dante says he does recognize some cardinals and popes can't not take a few more political shots These sinners are forced to joust with heavy stones as weapons They push the stones with their chests symbolizing their selfish drive towards accumulating a great fortune. Following lines are sort of a beautiful and terrifying look into human nature. Dante writes, here too, I saw a nation of lost souls far more than were above. They strained their chests against enormous weights and with mad howls rolled them at one another. Then in haste, they rolled them back,

one potty shouting out, why do you h hoard and the other? Why do you waste? If you look some past sucks objects might be found in the circle like the bloody benders H.H. Holmes bell gunnets I kill him for that money Hange bange uff d'oeuv to kiddin' on demand for a demon. I'm not just an inhaler. I fun me. No something like that I'm not joustin' in hell, ain't life fun, me. Yeah, something like that. Virgil and Dante now proceed onto the fifth circle in Kanto eight. The fifth circle of hell addresses the sin of wrath.

The land of the angriest fuck and the sullen, those who didn't express their anger in life. Who might be here from the suckverse? So many have had such wrath, but since they also tended to commit, you know, violence as well, another circle of hell awaits the Unibomor, Timothy McVeyigh, aka,

noodle McDryween, the Columbine shooters and so many serial killers. So many suck subjects committed so many sins, hard to figure out which circle to put them in. My notes, the giant grotesque serpentine beast, what it has had to sort them out, I guess. The fifth circle contains another of hell's rivers, the river sticks, a swampy, fetted cesspool, in which the wrathful spend eternity struggling underwater with one another. Meanwhile the sullen lie bound beneath the Styx waters choking on the mud, unable to

express themselves. Interesting look at those who felt so much anger but didn't express it in life. This was the last circle for the sins of incontinence. Things get worse from here. Dante and Virgil now catch a ride across the River Styx. As they traverse the River Dante and Virgil watch the hordes of angry assholes fighting each other in the soul and masses, gurgling below. Then out of the water pops up a riding soul name, Philippe Argent, Argenti, Philippe Argenti, a prominent Florentine politician

from the well-known Edamari family, who happened to be one of Dante's political enemies. Stought that Filipino, Filipino. Sorry. Philippe, confiscated Dante's one of Dante's political enemies. It's thought that Filipino, Filipino. Sorry. Philippe, confiscated Dante's property after Dante's expulsion from Florence. As the duo watches, Philippe is seized by the wrathful souls and dragged away just as Arginty enabled the seizing of Dante's property.

He himself is seized by all other wrathful souls or by some other wrathful souls. Nothing like dishing out some literary revenge against political opponents. After this Virgil and Dante see some lights up ahead, which Virgil says is the city of dis. This is the old term for the king of the underworld, like Pluto or Hades.

This can also be interpreted as Lucifer. Basically they're headed to Lucifer Town, Devil City. As they approach Devil City, Dante sees high towers that resemble fiery red mosques. Some symbolism there for sure. It would be for a Christian writer at this time, easy to label Islam as evil.

Muslims were one of the most consistent enemies fought by Christian medieval states. Crusades have been warred, had been waged against them. Many Christians painted Muslims as evil adversaries. And as we were reminded of last week, a lot of, you know, Muslim rulers didn't care much for Christians either went, went both ways. The walls of this guarded by a bunch of fallen angels. After approaching the gates, Virgil is unable to convince the demonic guardian angels to let them enter and pass through. Kanto 9 begins with Dante getting threatened by the theories, deities of vengeance from Greek mythology.

Not a warm welcome in Devil City. Virgil tries to talk him down, but the furries start attacking Virgil. Then they threaten to sick Medusa on the dynamic duo, and Virgil covers Dante's eyes to protect him. But it's looking like they're done for. When a huge angel appears directly from heaven, what the shit? It opens up the gates for the duo by touching it with a wand, and then rebukes the devils

for not letting the travelers in. They banishes. Okay? Seems like he could have just, you know, taken them on out of hell, but I guess that wasn't part of Dante's journey. His interactions believe to symbolize that humanity can have all the instruction and reason and science it wants symbolized by Virgil, but if they don't have faith, aka sweet angels to save them, they're doomed.

Virgil now warns Dante that they're entering the bad neighborhood part of hell. From now on, Dante shouldn't make eye contact with any of the souls they come across. That's when you know you're really fucked up. When you live in one of hell's worst neighborhoods. When you're jealous of souls being tortured in, you know, gated communities out in hell's comparatively posh suburbs. Kanto 10, the sixth circle of hell. This is the level that houses the heretics, those that ten, the sixth circle of hell.

This is the level that houses the heretics, those that doubted the dogma of the Christian religion. Pope must have loved it when he made it to this part of the story. Dante the poet named drops Epicurus, a famous classical Greek philosopher who believed that the soul dies with the body. Epicurus and his ilk are trapped in flaming tombs here forever.

Epicurus getting severely punished for not believing in the soul before Christianity was even a thing. Dude lived in the 4th century BCE. Like God could maybe cut him a break. So as the parent navigate through a giant flaming graveyard, they come across a flaming tomb that houses the pair of Epicurian Florentines. To no one surprised, these Florentines are more political figures that Dante didn't care for. The first person was a, uh, uh, Ghiblin, political leader named Ferranata, DeGlie Uberti, who died the year before Dante was born in 1264. Dante was not a big fan. Poor Ferranata, poor Ferranata was actually condemned for hearsee, or hearsee, years after his own death. Ferranata died at Florence in 1264 and 1283, his body that of

his wife Adaleta were exhumed, tried, and wait for it post-humously executed. I think I might have, I just recall in an email now, I've gotten about the word posthumously. I think it's how you're supposed to say that, not post-humously. Post-humously. Hopefully I got that correct. I'm continually mues by how fucking insane our species can be, by the way, with this posthumously execution.

Digging up a dude has been dead just shy two decades his wife corpse to guess and she'd been dead for about the same amount of time Convicting their corpses sent to them to death. I sent you both to death But like but more deaths than you already have experienced it guards hang them until they're more dead Then they the currently are just make them more dead. Come on, someone help out. According to Baccaccio, in his commentary on Dante, the Inquisition discovered among other things that Ferronauts had denied life after death. He was of the opinion of Epicurus

that the soul dies with the body. And that's why he could sent hell. Also, they didn't like that the guy was fond of good and delicate vines and ate them without waiting to be hungry. For this sin, he's damned as a heretic in this place. Crazy, right? He gets sent to the sixth circle of hell, partially for eating food when he wasn't hungry. Now on to Kanto 11.

We're still in the sixth circle, the level for Heresy. Dante sees two more famous figures. Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Pope Anastasius II, according to some modern scholars, Dante gets this wrong. They think he meant to say the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I, the first who was notorious believer in monophysite Christianity, which held that Christ was not a human being, but was altogether divine and simply taken a human body during his time on earth. Not a big deal to many of us living in the modern day, but the Pope didn't care for that

point of view. No agreed to disagree with Popes. Greed a burn, motherfucker. Back to Dante's journey, they prepare for a descent into Lower Hell. Virgil takes the time to explain the layout mindset of Lower Hell, in which the sins of violence and fraud are punished. This conversation, Virgil asserts that there are only two legitimate sources of wealth, natural resources and human labor and activity. He says that,

Usury, the sin punished in the next circle, is an offense against natural resources and human labor. Because, Usury is the sin of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest. Virgil says it's a form of blasphemy, because both natural resources and human labor come from God. Sounds like Dante maybe didn't like the interest. He was paying on some loans. He was pissed about it. I also sound anti-Semitic. The Jewish community in Florence wasn't formally founded in 1437 until 1437. But right around the time Dante was exiled, a number of Jews had just moved into Florence and many of them were money lenders. I guess he maybe Dante owned one or more of them some money. If you have a little discussion about bank loans while in hell Dante and Virgil then descend a jumble of rocks to reach the seventh circle of hell on the way they tried to evade the Minotaur, but the Minotaur sees

them, catches up with them and bites the fuck out of Dante. Virgil tries to assure this monster that Dante is not the right guy he's supposed to bite. He's not your hated enemy, which is theses. The mythical king and founder of Athens, plus we've beaten him. But the Minotaur doesn't listen because he's a fucking dumb, angry, easily confused monster. He's not worried about who he bites. He's a monster in hell. He's one of the punishers. Not one of the people worried about further punishment.

Minotaur charges at Dante and Virgil that have to run as fast as they can onto the seventh circle. Dante's canto 12 begins with our heroes in the seventh circle of hell. Theme here is violence. There are three rings within this circle for the three houses of violence, violence against others, violence against oneself, and violence against God, art, and nature.

Violence against art, all right. So many past stuck topics, gonna be stuck in this level. Most of our serial killers, I imagine, at Camper, definitely committed violence against others, himself, nature. He attempted suicide multiple times while awaiting trial for killing committed violence against others, himself, nature. He attempted suicide multiple times while awaiting trial for killing his mom and others. He tortured animals.

He set some fires as a kid, killed 10 people including his grandparents and mom. Mother, why can't I find you in hell to put your head on a hell stick? Why do I burn mother? Is it because of the windpipe, fucking? A daunting Virgil makes their way to the border of the first ring of the seventh circle, come across another of Hell's Rivers. So many rivers down here. The Fleggathon, one of the rivers of Hades

made out of boiling blood and fire, it's not like a shitty river. Generally, I like rivers. I'm pro-river most of the time, fun to raft on, fun to fish on, but just sit on the banks on and listen to the rapids. This river sounds terrible though. Probably not very good fishing,

probably don't want to eat what you catch in a river of boiling blood. Crammed in the bubbling blood waters to blister and pain for eternity are the souls of those who were violent towards people and property. She could teelo can probably be found just calmly backflutten down this river. Oh, that's a big deal. She could teelo like it here. No one cares about Jackson's shame cog. Hell is much too like. Also, including this river, are all the murderers the war makers the plunderers the tyrants Sort of made for Hitler really also the young Turks from last week Centaurus half men half horse people they patrol this ring their job is to shoot arrows at anyone who tries to crawl out of the boiling river It doesn't really seem like it would stop many people right like it in shot with arrows

It doesn't sound too bad to me if you're all ready? Like it in shot with arrows. It doesn't sound too bad to me. If you're already in a river of literally boiling blood, it's also on fucking fire. If I'm burning alive, if I'm being boiled already, I don't fuck, fuck arrows. I'm going to charge one of those centaurs. One of the centaurs, Nessus offers to guide the poets along the flagathon river. Along the way, he points out a bunch of Greek and Italian

tyrants, other historical and mythological figures, rising in agony. You know what, and this is interesting, in 1485, Florentine Renaissance Master, central, but the, but the Chalet, illustrated Dante's Divine Comedy. And I couldn't help but notice looking to the illustrations that one of the murderer dudes stuck

in that boiling blood river looks a lot like my dad. I'm talking identical. I don't know if that means anything, but definitely, you know, I'm gonna put some more notes in an ever growing, very concerning, gigantic file of possible murder clues. I've been compiling on, you know, with my dad.

Probably nothing here, but you just, you just never know. It's just growing bodyvelets, you know, and all that. Anyway, after a little river ride, it must have been a hot-ass boat, the duo move on to the next ring. The beginning of Kanto 13 finds a two-in-a-strange forest. Dante is told all the trees used to be people, for the people who have attempted or committed suicide

and have been damned to spend eternity in hell for violence against the self. In hell, these souls are transformed into gnarled, thorny trees and bushes and then fed upon by harpies hideous clawed birds with the faces of women pretty harsh Dante in his contemporaries didn't have a good understanding of how crippling clinical depression was back then not much tolerance towards suicide and this forest Dante also sees uh profligates people who are unprincipled or promiscuous, hey, oh, Luciferina, maybe now we're gonna stumble upon a sex orgy,

all right, some kind of hell orgy, some sexy-ass goth girls, that's a tattoos and latex, maybe kind of a suicide girl, kind of kinky vibe. I don't know, no, we won't. Soulstuck here are being chased and torn to pieces by dogs. One of the dogs spotted, rumored to have one eye, three legs. Looks like a pit bull, responds to both jangles interesting Dante speaks with Pierre de la Vignade a former advisor to emperor Frederick II who's a tree now in life

Pierre fell into disfavor with the court was accused of being a traitor than was blinded and imprisoned before he killed himself It was like his oppressors did most of the heavy lifting here when they came to a suicide It was like he got really screwed here down to the writer once again uses the opportunity to play politics a bit. Pears presence in the seventh circle as opposed to the ninth circle, which is for traders, means that Dante believes Pierre was innocent of the accusations made against him. Dante also learns that the suicides have a unique fate in store for them after the final judgment. The day of judgment also known as the final judgment is when Jesus, son of God, will judge the living in the dead before destroying the old heaven and earth, Jesus, son of God, will judge the living in the dead

before destroying the old heaven and earth, which are corrupted of sin according to Christianity. But here in Dante's hell, the suicides will not be allowed to be resurrected before they're judged. They'll have to maintain their tree form. Still get chewed on by harpies. They don't get to be part of a second chance here. Since they threw their bodies away,

their own corpses will also hang from the tree's limbs. Gosh, oh my heck! Real harsh here. Immersals get their cases sent to Jesus' court of appeals, but suicides never get a new trial or a pardon. Fuckin' what? On to Kanto 14 now. Now they're in the third round of the seventh circle of hell, for those who are violent against

God, nature, or art. It's basically a giant desert that reigns fire. It's a recreation of the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, cities that God destroyed the Old Testament for being too sinful. The blasts, femurs, those who are violent against God have to lie on the ground and face the sky while flames rain up down upon them. The Sodomites, those violent against nature, according to Dante, have to run in circles enduring the torment of nature, or in this case, raining fire. Finally, the users, the ones who are violent against art, crouch, huddled, and weeping,

bearing how they were inactive in life. Not a real progressive view on homosexuality back at the dawn of the 14th century, Italy, because by Sodomites, he did mean homosexuals. They're being punished more severely than murderers. If you really want to be punished in hell, kill somebody. But if you really, really, really want to be punished in hell, you stick your wing in someone's butt. Someone who wants to stuck there.

On to Kanto 15 now, still in the flame desert. Kanto 15, Dante meets his old teacher, Brunetto Latini. Dante addresses Latini with genuine affection, expresses distress that he is in this place in hell. Some scholars theorize that Dante does his to refute suggestions that he only placed his enemies in hell. Or did he do it to show how powerful of a sin the church at that time thought Sodom he was?

The team was a great, wonderful dude by Dante's account. But he stuck his peepy noodle and some poo-pulls. Now he trapped in the seventh circle of hell forever. Very mysterious ways. After a chat with the teenie, it's on to Kanto 16, the dynamic duo encounter three men who are Florentine, Shroom Dante admired. This Kanto is all about how to save Florence from its current political instability. As I can imagine, many of you really need to hear more about early 14th century Florentine

politics, and this is already going to be a huge episode. Let's give it. Kanto 17 opens up on revealing that a dark shape rising up from the filthy depths of the abyss. At the end of Kanto 16 is in fact the monster, Jerry and it's fucking Jerry. Luckily, it's not Jerry five bucks from his VDUM. I'll be wearing crossover if you showed up here. Five bucks for the next place in hell. Jerry and his the grandson of the offspring of Medusa and a giant.

He oversees the eighth circle of hell. Or fraud is punished. Dante described Jerry as a monster with the body of a dragon, tail of a scorpion, hairy arms, and the face of a Justin honest man. Kind of a weird detail with the hairy arms there, because that making more monstrous. He had the body of a dragon, the tail of a scorpion and worse, very hairy arms. But for fraud, that tracks, right? It's faced in, you know, he's looked honest, but he's a monster. Virgil announces that they must fly down from the cliff on this crazy monster's back

and soon they are swooping into the great abyss. 18th, the eight, canto, there we go. 18 starts in the eighth circle. This circle of hell is known as the Malibolge, a word that means evil ditches, and it's divided into 10 bulges, or evil pockets, separated by great folds of earth, with bridges between them. It's a very intricate level of hell. The pockets are for all different types of fraud. The pockets lead to a well, which forms the neck of a funnel that we'll get into in a bit. That's a funnel is where this kind of all ends. Dante and Virgil

assume surrounded by panders and seducers, Their punishment is to line up in two lines, one on each edge of the ditch, and receive lashings from whips via horns demons for eternity. Not a bad deal for hardcore massacists. Oh, Albert Fish, you probably love this level of hell. Show me! It's the Mac and my Fat Bottom. There's a thing you got, demonly bearcat. Put your back into it, be able to vote Bimboche.

I can't comment as my ass is covered in blood, my mouth is full of peanut butter. And the group of seducers, Virgil points out Jason, the Greek hero who led the organauts to fetch the golden fleece. He gained the help of the king's daughter by seducing and marrying her, only to later desert her for another woman.

They pass across the first bridge to the second ditch. The second ditch is for insincere flatarers. It was just fucking hilarious to me. Way worse than a murderer is an insincere flatarer. Those who abused and corrupted language to play upon the desires and fears of others, basically manipulators, ask-kissers. And I think this is more about Dante than it does about some Christian-based notion of hell that Dante hated askissers more than murders It clearly had it with askissers guess in the some of those types got him exiled from Florence Other punishments to lie in a river human shit where they fight and holly each other Dante of course runs into somebody he knows from Florentine politics in this turd stream

Kanto 19 now from a creepy from a creepy bridge of mangled earth Virgil and Dante look over ditch three into the eighth circle of hell Where they still are Dante finds the Simone X guilty of simony Or Simon East. Excuse me. The practice of selling church offices favors other sacred things basically people who try to charge for salvation agree with Dante here the eighth circle of hell seems about right for these assholes. Most of the co-leaders we've sucked would be, I imagine, stuck in this hell ditch. Dante expresses his distaste for the corrupt among the church pretty thoroughly here. These centers are dumped un-seremoniously into holes head-first, and then their feet are set on fire.

The heat of the fire is proportional to their level of guilt. Dante writes, and let's add some background music now, uh, to, to live in this up a bit. foot fire, Jim Jones, Tony and Susan Alamo and David Kuresh stay in those hellholes, blasphemy mercs. Meanwhile, the character of Dante at this point in Ferno seems to be making his peace with all this punishment. He feels bad for people, you know, or dead. He felt bad for people a lot earlier.

Now he's developing more of a, who might have challenged the wisdom of God? Ah, fuck him, they deserve it, mentality. Now we move on to Kanto 20, the fourth ditch, Dante and Virgil cross a spooky bridge, another one to see sorcerers, astrologers, diviners, basically anyone who claims to be able to tell the future, getting punished. They're punished by having their heads twisted around so they're facing backwards. They permanently look like that girl from the exorcist. Pretty sweet horror imagery here. Very cinematic. I like it. They have to walk backwards for all eternity, unable to see their own future even a step ahead for good measure. They're also

continually blinded by their own tears. Even though Dante was cool with the idea of punishment, this site does move him to tears. He expresses that it's horrible. These people are being punished this way. Virgil wants none of that. It says, here pity only lives when it is dead. I, wants none of that. It says, here pity only lives when it is dead. I wait, he says, for who can be more impious than he who links God's judgment to passively. Essentially, he says, if he distorts bad God, this is what you fucking deserve. This is an easier way to say that. The sinners of this pit are a bunch of soothsayers and magicians from history, including the prophet Tyrecyus, an ancient Greek who was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo himself.

Watch your ass, David Blaine. Ease on the illusions. If you don't want to end up in this hell, ditch you two birthday party magician that pick a card, any card, devil bullshit, gonna set your soul on fire and a burn that silk shirt ears off your fucking warlock chest. Soon we're in canto 21, the fifth ditch. The duo crosses another bridge, find themselves in a special personalized hell for the worst of the worst corrupt politicians. The politicians have emerged in a lake of boiling tar, represented

the dark stickiness of their corrupt deals. I had to wonder if Dante helped inspire politicians to be tarred and feathered centuries later, but it appears the politicians were already being tarred and feathered in England a century before he wrote this book. These held bound politician's souls are guarded by demons called the male branch, which means evil claws, who tear them to pieces with you guessed it, evil claws. They also use grappling hooks, especially when the politicians try to climb up to the surface or get out of the tar. Suddenly one demon throws a senator from Tuscany into the tar, scaring Virgil, terrifying

Dante. Virgil makes Dante a hide and goes up to the demon who did the tossing, a demon who turned out to be the leader of the male branch, an end boss demon named Malacoda or evil tale. Virgil asks if they can pass. Malacoda says, yeah, fine, you can go. Then he gives him some bad intel that sets him up. He tells him that the bridge across the six ditches is shattered.

Now, they have apparently construction problems down the hill. As it results of the earthquake that shook hell at the death of Christ in 34 CE, but there is another bridge further on you can find. Malikot then sends a squad of his demons headed up by Bob Aresia to escort the poets. These demons add a sense of dark satirical humor to the end of the 21st canta when one of the demons rips ass.

And Dante says, and he made a trumpet of his ass. Noice. And even Dante was above the occasional fart joke. Canta 22 continues dealing with folks struggling in his corner of hell. Dante encounters more politicians. He doesn't like the male branch. Nice enough to pull the politicians out of the tar. So Dante can have a word with them. Then they use the opportunity that they, after they've been pulled out to slice them up to bits. One of these politicians escapes

stives back into the tar. Then a couple male branch go after him, but they get stuck in the tar as well. Start flapping around. You know, it's a little bit of, we interrupt your regular, your regularly scheduled hell programming to give you five minutes of Charlie Chaplin style physical comedy. Uh, Virgil and Dante try to sneak away from the pissed off demons, but they don't get that far before the male branch realized that it's all Dante's fault that they got stuck in the tar. He was the one that wanted to talk to the politicians in the first place. They start going after the duo, Virgil scoops up Dante, slides that have danger into

the sixth ditch, the land of the hypocrites. Cantow 23. Or Cantow. The punishment for hypocrites is that they have to walk in circles forever while wearing heavy robes made of lead that are painted to look like gold but are actually worthless. They're outward appearance shines brightly while underneath, they're heavy and just pointless. Very symbolic. The big spender here is Kayafus, the priest who confirmed Jesus' death sentence, who lies crucified on the ground while the other sinners walk all over him as they walk in super heavy cloaks. They just keep getting more brutal as the poets descend deeper.

They climb down the ruined rocks of that bridge destroyed by the Great Earthquake, after which they crossed the bridge of the seventh ditch where they come to an enormous hole, a big pit full of magical snakes. Yep, even worse than your average Indiana Jones style run of the middle snake pit. Because this snake pit is where thieves go to get punished. Good thing, no, these snakes can fly since snakes don't, can't do that ever.

JK, who would ever think that flying snakes aren't real? What kind of canned dumbins would ever think that? Inside the pit thieves sit around while vipers attack them when bitten, the thief transforms into some kind of animal or object then they undergo a painful process to reconstitute themselves into human forms. Just as they stole another property in life,

now their identities are stolen constantly. Sounds very painful. Like always, Dante meets some not-so-happy folks. He comes across Vinny Fucci, former thief, who identifies himself reluctantly as he's currently a little preoccupied by being bitten by serpent on the juggernaut vein. He then immediately bursts into flames and is reformed from the ashes like a phoenix and that rinse and repeat shit goes on forever for this guy. In his pain and suffering, Fucci lays down a dark prophecy about Dante. It's more exile,

banishment stuff. Kanto 25 begins with Fucci,ly and an obscenity to God, possibly a hand gesture for good measure for which he is immediately swarmed by serpents. That's not punishment enough for being mean to God. So then the center caucus arrives on the scene. And for some reason, caucus has a fire breathing dragon on his shoulders and snakes covering his horse body. It's got a kind of shit going on. he fucks up. Food. You're real good. Then don team meets five thieves from Florence. These shades of sinners destined to bite each other and turn into mangled mutations forever.

Soon we're in canto 26th, the eighth pouch of the eighth circle. The eighth pouches for evil counselors and advisors. Maybe all the boys, count leaders found guilty of pedophilia. Maybe this is where they go. Those dudes were, you know, pretty terrible counselors But not sure that those the type of people Dante had mined the hell ditch is full of people who use their positions to get others to engage in fraud Everyone gets their own personal bubble of fire

Odessius Diomedes Odessius is fighting companion the Trojan war their burning eternally in this eight circle of hell for using the Trojan horse. How dare you guys be sneaky? Trojan horse, aka super fraud. Feels like Dante would have been a terrible military planner. Now we can't do that, you guys, it feels sneaky. Now we can't fight that way. Dante also uses this opportunity to flex on Homer

and has Odysseus narrate a story about his last journey, a tale that Dante the poet made up entirely. Odysseus tells Dante about how he set off to see again, died in the shipwreck, literally adding a sequel to the Odyssey here, Balsey. Then we're on to canto, 27. Dante gets political again, complaining for a while about the pope and Florentine politics. Again, let's skip it. We've heard enough about Florentine politics.

Canto, 28 is the ninth ditch. In this pocket, divisive individuals or architects of discord are punished. Sores of scandal and schism. People who like to get other people riled up and then watch the world burn. People who like to watch the world burn, does that include people who want to watch the world literally burn?

Like Doomsday preaching coal leaders? Maybe Jim Jones is in this ditch. The centers of the ninth chasm are damned to walk around the chasm until they arrive at a devil who slashes them with a long sword. Their bodies are sliced and mutilated in proportion to their divisive lives as their sin was to tear apart what God had intended to be united.

He sold within force to drag their horribly mangled bodies around the ditch. And as soon as their wounds started to heal, they get all sliced up again. Sounds terrible. Gone to the polar places, the places places the prophet Muhammad in the religious schism part of the eighth circle of hell, not inflammatory at all. Dante.

Dante really goes after it, even condemning Muhammad's son-in-law Ali. Again, no love loss between Christians and Muslims in the 14th century. There are also more Italian and Roman politicians that Dante didn't like. These folks have their tongues cut out, their limbs cut off, their throat slit, their noses cut off, their ears ripped out. Okay, the horrible shit. Dante sees Bertrand de Borne here, a French knight who lived from 1140 to 1215. The knight carries around his severed head by its own hair swinging it like a lantern.

Bertrand said to have caused a quarrel between Henry II of England and his son Prince Henry. Bertrand's punishment was decapitation since dividing father and son is like severing the head from the body. Now we're into canto 29. Still in the eighth circle of hell, fraud, now we're in the tenth ditch. So much creative punishment. The current ditch is for falsifiers. These are people like alchemists, herdlers, counterfeits, because they're a disease on society according to Dante. They're condemned to experience every disease known to man at the same time. Sounds extremely unpleasant.

General warts and colon cancer on top of some syphilis, scabies, measles, jockeach, throwing some plague, brisitis, handjob warts, sprinkling some malaria, maybe a sinus infection. You get it, everything. While some lie faced down on the ground and some mission others run around tear each other apart. I bet when you already have literally every disease you can possibly have, you don't only care about being torn apart.

Now in Kanto 30, Virgil and Dante suddenly approached by the spirits of two imposterous, running rabbit through the pit, one sinks his tusks into another's neck, drags him away like a wild animal with his prey. I'll kind of crazy shit going on next Dante meets counterfeiters. They're afflicted with a terrible disease, it seems like dropsy, an illness where the body retains too much fluid, which gives them bloated stomachs, an inability to move, and an unbearable thirst. Then one of the counterfeiters, counterfeiters, points out the perjurers who suffer from burning fevers.

The counterfeiter who pointed out the perjurers and one of the perjurers start yelling at each other, they go back and forth with this verbal abuse until Virgil rebukes Dante for a listing to this exchange. Dante expresses this sincere shame and Virgil forgives him. Now they come to the well of the Malibolge, the portal to the final circle of hell, the ninth. A bunch of giants guard this passage.

Among the giants, Virgil identifies one named mother fucking Nimrod. Not even Kitty. A giant said to have tried to build the tower of Babel, a Unite Mankind. A dare he wants a Unite Mankind. And Nimrod shouts out some unintelligible gibberish at Dante. What the shit Nimrod? Our time's a God Nimrod is not only down in hell, but

is the entrance to the ninth circle. Hmm. Nimrod obviously working under cover or something. Clearly just gathering some intel so he can figure out how he wants to renovate his own butthole hell or something. Nimrod and other giants, many of them giants who fought with Greek gods stuck in place in the ground. Their upper bodies chained in place. Also a giant there named Antius. He didn't join in the rebellion against the Olympian gods.

He isn't chained but still condemned just for being a giant, I guess. It's not always fair, not his help. Also coming from Greek mythology, Antius was an African giant who was invincible when in contact with the earth, but was lifted into the air by Hercules and crushed. Luckily because his hands are free, Virgil convinces Antius to give them a lift down to the Ninth Circle of Hell. Antius takes the poets in his large palm, lowers them gently to the final level. He was like a nice fucking giant.

He even do anything wrong. Stuck in this bottom of hell. Now we're in Kanto 32, the Ninth circle baby, the dark heart of all the darkness, where traders chillax, literally chillaxing. As the bottom of hell is a great frozen lake, not fire. Cassitis, sinners are frozen inside lake, Cassitis, though all residents are frozen, the eyes, those who committed more severe sins of treachery, frozen deeper in the lake than others. This lake of ice divided into four concentric rings or rounds of traders

corresponding in order of seriousness to portrayal of family ties, portrayal of community ties, portrayal of guests, and portrayal of lords. Each of the four circles are named after an individual who personifies that sin. Round one is named Kena after Kena, the biblical figure who killed his brother Abel. And Kena, those who portrayed their kin, Stan frozen up to their necks in the lake's ice. Round two is named Antanura, after Antanura of Troy, who was Primes counselor during the Trojan War.

Those who portrayed their country and party Stan frozen up to their heads, Dante then goes a little ape shit in this section, Ripsadood's hair out for not telling him who he is. Hell's rubbing off on him. He's getting in on the torture. Virgil tells him fucking calm down, not in that place. Turns out the dude who's hair ripped out is another dude from Florence whose politics he didn't like.

Of course, he just can't let it go. And ex-hout, I imagine him just constantly consumed with being exiled right just anybody who will listen is like you know and then I was fucking fair and then Giovanni you know I mean you tell me Giovanni tells me out and I just because I said this like two years ago and I don't think that's cool and people just like slowly walk away you know just walk away leaving just go tell somebody else he says Christ he's still at it fucking three years he won't shut the fuck up about it can't tell 33 stars with one of the more fucked up scenes in the poem.

The duo comes across a man named Count Oogolino. Count Oogolino is just not a way at the tasty head of another soul nearby. A head that belongs to another trader, archbishop, Ougolino, and a life according to legend, when Ougolino and his sons denying them food, Ougolino, it's more fun to talk that way. It was driven to eat the corpses of his dead children.

So now you choose on Ruggieri's head meat forever, fun. Round three, the third ring of circle nine is named Talamea. After Talamea, who murdered his house guests, Talamea invited his father-in-law Simon Macabias. Yeah, I think it's Macabias. And and his son's to a banquet and then killed them. Sounds like a dick move. In Talamea, those who portrayed their guests spend eternity line on their backs in the frozen lake.

Their tears making blocks of ice over their eyes. Even the release of tears off limit for these naughty boys. Here Dante encounters Fra Albuygo, a friar who asked Dante to remove the visor of ice from his eyes. Like the others, he tells Dante a story in 1285, Alba Ego, Alba Ego, so it invited his political opponents. Why, my hand wants to do this, every, so fucking annoying.

Every time I try and speak in a time accent, my right hand goes up, my fingers come together, like an asshole. And anyway, in 1285, Alba Ego invited his political opponents who happened to be his brother and his nephew to a banquet, then Albrigo's men murdered them both. And then Dante finds out that this Albrigo fellow is somehow still alive. Like as, you know, this is happening, the dudes actually still up there on earth. And then Albrigo explains that a living person's soul can fall into hell, can fall into Talamea before they actually die.

And up on earth, a demon inhabits their body and tells the body's natural death. The message here, keep your eye on your grandparents. Is Nana Nana? Or is she a soulless fucking demon wearing Nana skin like a cheap Nana suit? Yes, Stabbern find out. J.K., don't do that. Please don't do that. Now the message here is that some crimes are so bad, the afterlife comes for the soul

before the body's even cold, then throws it in the frozen basement. Maybe here Dante is just trying to explain how, if you're not careful, you can become so bad, you're not even human anymore. You're demonic. I'm sure people who've listened to the majority of the serial killer episodes here can relate to that. Or maybe Dante, who an exile has to stay as a guest, a lot in different people's homes. Maybe he just really wants to be treated better

by his fucking host. So he makes being a bad host. One of the worst sins imaginable. I feel like again, this says more about Dante than it does about some Christian-based vision of hell. Around four named Judeca, after Judas Iscariot, the Apostle who betrayed Jesus, in Cantal 34, Dante follows Virgil into Judeca

into the lowest depths of hell. As they enter the ring, Virgil says, the banners of the King of Hell draw closer. Dante immediately notices that. Dante immediately notices that, unlike other parts of hell, Judeca is completely silent. All of the sinners here, fully encapsulated in ice, distorted, twisted into every conceivable position,

entirely immobilized. Traders to their benefactors are trapped here. The duo quickly realize that it's impossible to talk with any of them so they move on to the center of hell. The bottom of the funnel, a huge mist shrouded, formed lurks ahead and Dante approaches it. It's the three headed giant Lucifer, the end boss of all end bosses, plunged way steeper to the ice where he fell when God hurled him down from heaven, and Dante describes him.

He had three faces, one in front blood red, and another two that just above the midpoint of each shoulder joined the first, and at the crown, all three were reattached. The right looks somewhat yellow, somewhat white. The left and its appearance was like those who come from where the Nile descending flows. Probably probably should have picked music. It was a little less loot-based and darker in tone. I would have written this all a little differently, right? Maybe something like to make it fair, I should probably play the same music.

The devil is a monster with three heads, yo, and all of them suck. So don't kill a rape, be a good host, you know? Don't be a schmuck. Or one of those heads will eat you dead and you'll be stuck. In the ninth level of hell forever, you silly bad boy fuck. I mean, come on, Admittedly, not my best work there. But it did rhyme better than Dante's. So poetry wise, probably poetry experts would say I did a better job. I think we can all agree on that. Uh, with the three faces of Satan's symbolize,

uh, has been up for debate for hundreds of years. Most people agree that the symbolism of three is a bastardization of the Holy Trinity, the father of the son of the Holy Spirit. Satan is sort of like a reverse God, impotent, ignorant, full of hate, and contrast to the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving nature of God.

It seems weird that the God who let all these sinners be tortured for eternity is considered all-loving. Remember that Dante thinks God's punishment for these sinners is a courtesy to them. A great disagree here, Dante, never really a courtesy to be tortured, I don't think. I don't think anyone who's ever been tortured for any reason has ever thought, thank you.

Thank you for this great courtesy. Oh, this feels fitting. Satan is frozen here punished because he wanted to be as powerful as God. I don't really understand that. Like, who cares what he wanted that? Right? God's all powerful. Why is he threatened by Satan anyway?

I'm sure I'm missing an important point here. Satan was the first sinner who paved the way for the punishments faced by all the rest as the crash of his body and hell excavated the underworld in which the damned are now held. Way to go, Satan, you fucking dick, ruined everything. Satan can't talk here in the lowest realm of hell. He was given the opposite of what he wanted,

stuck in place with no power, no voice, no authority. And one of his mouths is Judas, who betrayed Christ and then the other two are Cassius and Brutus who betrayed Caesar. We already went over, you know, what was going on there? These fuckers get nodded, nashed on for the rest of time. Virgil and Dante, after witnessing Satan himself, began their escape from hell by clambering down Satan's ragged fur feet first. Virgil tells Dante to hold on to him as he climbs down Satan's back, waiting for a moment when the wings are open so they can have a safe passage below. When they

reach Satan's genitalia, not kidding. The post right down the final river of hell, the river of forgetfulness known as the Leth. I should have got a pronunciation guy for that. Dante wrote here, when we had reached the point in which the thigh revolved, just at the swelling of the hip, my guide, with heavy strain and rugged work, reversed his head to where his legs had been and grappled on the hair as one who climbs. I thought that we were going back to hell, hold tights, my master said. He panted like a man exhausted. It is by such stairs that we must take our leave of so much evil.

Oh my heck! Just repelling down Satan's pubes! Or an adventure! It is by such stairs that we must take our leave of so much evil. Oh my heck, just repelling down Satan's pubes or an adventure. Not every day you get to traverse your way down the devil's ball here, you know. Donnie doesn't explain Satan's genitalia in any detail. It's too bad. Well, it'd been fun if he and Virgil would have, you know, like springboarded off a Satan's pecker into purgatory or something. Maybe pull the triple gainer as they dove out of hell. Donnie and Virgil go past Satan's balls, relax thereof, something by not mentioning his nuts.

Dante was implying that Satan doesn't have any balls. And they passed to the center of the universe to gravity, from the northern hemisphere to the land of the southern hemisphere's ocean, all these kind of crazy concepts for the 14th century. Virgil's pumped about the trip between hemispheres, explains a bunch of nonsensical physics to Dante. It's a little weird. Finally very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, Satan's legs on one side his body still frozen in the ice above. I was out pausing to rest the poets make the long journey to the other side of the world where they are delivered through a round opening into the world under the stars.

The emerge from hell in Easter morning just before sunrise and many have expressed their disappointment over this anti-climactic end with Lucifer. Why not an end boss fight? Why didn't he dick dive? Because that's God's job to fight Satan, not to dick dive. And God already punished Lucifer. From here, Dante would move forward to two more large poems about the afterlife in search of Beatrice. First to purgatory, then to heaven. This is the end of Dante's Inferno, the opening third of the Divine Comedy,

which we were tasked by our space losers to analyze. Check out the entire Divine Comedy to see how the story unfolds. So what the fuck was this whole journey really supposed to mean anyway? Why take this hell tour? The primary themes of inferno have been pretty much agreed upon by most literary critics and scholars. It's supposed to be the perfect nature of God's justice, evil as the contradiction of God's will and the nature of storytelling. Let's start with the perfect nature of God's justice. The inscription over the gates of hell in Kanto 3,

abandoned all hope, you who enter here explicitly state that God was inspired to make hell because he sought justice, according to these scholars. It was sticky humanities shit. The exists or hell exists to punish sin and the suitability of hell's specific punishments testifying to the divine perfection that all sin violates. This is the crux of Dante's message. God is good. He's so good, he has the most perfect ways to make you feel super bad forever, so try really hard to be good, okay? Somewhere in this weird, arguably horrific angry dad lesson, it's supposed to be some sort of

balance. Sinners receive punishment in perfect proportion to their sin and to pity their suffering is to demonstrate a lack of understanding of God's love. I don't know, but that's what's supposed to be. Or in Dante's inferno, sinners receive punishment and perfect proportion to how much their particular sin chapped Dante's ass. The next theme, a little more complicated. I thought that was pretty complicated. The next theme is the idea that evil is the contradiction of God's will. Basically, Dante says that there's no objective baseline for good or bad, just the ever-changing will of God's will. Basically, Dante says that there's no objective baseline for good or bad, just the ever changing will of God. Right? The whole mysterious way is the accepting a bribe can land you in eighth circle murderer. You know, you go to the sixth circle.

How does Dante come to conclusions like that? Well according to scholars, while murder is much more disruptive to organize society, Dante illustrates that God doesn't care about human beings happiness or the harmony of life on earth as much as he cares about, you know, God's will in heaven. So I guess it just sucks for us down here. Using this logic, Dante considers violence less evil than fraud. Of the two sins, he feels that fraud is in greater opposition to God's will or something like that. I should say that in Ferno is not a philosophical text. Its intention is not to think critically about the nature of evil, but rather to teach

and reinforce existing church doctrines at the time that Dante found to be relevant and important. It's basically one long text that ends with Dante saying as God in regard to God's punishments, I don't know how cut I said so, right? Because just don't worry about it. The third theme of the inferno is the idea of storytelling as a way to achieve immortality. There's no hiding how proud of himself. Dante is having written this poem.

Several shades in inferno ask the character Dante to retell their names and stories on earth upon his return. They hope perhaps that the retelling of their stories will allow them to live on in people's memories, maybe even offer some improvement to their state. Dante, as a character, doesn't always do that, but the poet Dante was all about advancing his own legend. And he did with this book. Dante's Divine Comedy was partially a big flex.

A big, oh you think you can write an epic poem? Bitch, I can write the most epic of all epic poems. Get ready for more ancient, methodical illusions and contemporary political references. You can fucking handle all intricately woven into an epic hero's journey motherfucker. You know, there's a little bit about that. And where did Dante head on with his next journey? After Inferno, Dante makes his way to purgatory in the purgatoryal section

and Roman Catholic doctrine purgatory is the place or state of suffering inhabited by the souls of sinners or paying for their sins before going to heaven. Some forms of Western Christianity, particularly within Protestantism, denied its existence. The Catholic Church holds that all who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified,

undergo the process of purification. So as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven, this is where praying for your dead relatives comes in handy, you know, because praying for them can expedite that process. There's no real concrete, you know, this is what it means, 100% scriptural basis for purgatory, by the way. Mostly just heavy interpretation of second Corinthians 510, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he has done, whether it be good or bad.

In the purgatory of Dante and Virgil keep going in their journey. They climb to different levels of purgatory. They meet more historical figures and encounter more heavy symbolism. The theme of the work changes as Dante stops seeing souls and need to be punished and start seeing other characters as pilgrims. On a quest of spiritual purification, this next section offers a more sympathetic and psychological view of sinners, like an passage when Virgil explains that sin ultimately derives from distortions of love. Dante realizes as obedient Christians tend to do that life is a pilgrimage and that he must learn to reject the deceptions of the temporal world. I'm sure he's thinking about that a lot as he's been exiled too. At the end of the section Virgil says Dante is ready to keep

going on his own. Dante reaches a beautiful forest where a woman named Matilda explains that Dante is in the earthly paradise on his own. Dante reaches the beautiful forest where a woman named Matilda explains that Dante is in the earthly paradise or the Garden of Eden, in which human beings were originally created and lived in innocence. Then in a stream Matilda washes away Dante's memories of his sin

so he can now proceed to heaven. Then Dante arrives in paradise or heaven in the paradise. So the final section, the third part of the divine comedy. And heaven, Dante and Beatrice finally get to spend time together, although she appeared briefly at the end of Perkatorio, 14 different cantoes are dedicated to Dante and Beatrice fucking the shit out of each other in this final chapter. There's, uh, there's verses like Beatrice, Oh Beatrice, I journey through hell to suck

in your sweet taste. Beatrice, Oh Beatrice, hop on over yonder and sit on this stalker's face. You know, like, there's that kind of stuff. That's a direct quote. Take a, be kind to us, Daphina. You're going to give me stuck in one of the lower levels of Dante's hell. No, Beatrice who's taught by or thought of by scholars to represent theology actually outlines the structures of the universe for Dante. Okay, so maybe she represents theology or maybe, you know, he just wrote this all about a girl. And yet paradise is depicted as a series of concentric spheres surrounding the earth. Dante loves circles and rings within these circles.

Dante can discern the human form of Christ. The divine comedy ends with Dante's flash of understanding about how the circles fit together and how humanity relates to divinity. But Dante can't describe it to the reader. Fucking bummer easy, easy cop out there. Wonder how many pieces of parchment he burned through trying to describe it to the reader. Fuckin' bummer. Easy. Easy cop out there. Wonder how many pieces of parchment he burned through trying to describe it? Before he finally just went,

ah, fuck it, I've worked on this damn book for over a decade. Time to wrap it up. God bestows the answer to basically the meaning of life that we don't get to hear. Upon Dante and a flash of light in Dante's soul is finally at one with God's. But already my desire and my will were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed by the love which moves the sun and the other stars. And that's the gist of all of it. We could have

spent many additional hours digging into more of the details, but I felt like, you know, we gave a good, like two and a half-ish hour overview this part. Now interesting question time. So how much did Dante influence the modern Christian view of hell with his inferno? How much of our vision of hell comes from Dante and other non-biblical authors and how much comes from the Bible itself? Hell as most of us Westerners think of it today actually is not definitively mentioned in the Bible. Four different words in the Bible have been translated into the English word hell. The Hebrew word, shiel, the Greek words, Hades and Tartarus, and The Hebrew word, shiel, the Greek words, Hades and tartaris, and Gahana, a Hebrew word, transliterated into Greek.

But none of those words necessarily meant what we now think of as hell. None of those terms translate, you know, perfectly to eternal fire, repunishment at all. How crazy is that? My Pentecostal pastor, grandfather, not pop a word. Grandfell bill seemed to have really missed that back when he was preaching.

It literally never scripturally describes hell as we think of it today. Interpreting, yes, but interpretive, I think, influenced by literary non-bedlical works. Within scripture, interesting to track how the conception of the afterlife has changed over the centuries. Ancient Jews did not believe in hell because they didn't believe there was any soul to be punished. They traditionally did not believe the soul could exist at all apart from the body. On the contrary, for them, the soul was more like the breath.

The first human God created Adam began as a lump of clay, then God breathed life into him, Genesis 2.7. Adam remained alive until he stopped breathing. Then it was dust to dust ashes to ashes. Ancient Jews thought that was true for us all. When we stopped breathing, our breath didn't go anywhere. It just stopped. To refer to this, Ancient Jews used the term shield in the Hebrew Bible, a term scholars used to refer to the Old Testament in a few other important Hebrew religious texts. Then into

English, shield has been translated as grave and translated into Hades, and it has generally agreed that both shield and Hades do not typically refer to a place of eternal punishment but to the grave, Generally, greed that both shield and hatey do not typically refer to a place of eternal punishment, but to the grave, the temporary abode of the dead or the underworld. Six feet under is what it may just refer to a whole in the ground. But Jews began to change their views over time. About 200 years before Jesus, some Jewish thinkers began to believe that there had to be something beyond death, a kind of justice to come. This view of the coming resurrection dominated the view of Jewish thought in the days of Jesus.

Also, the view he himself embraced and proclaimed throughout the New Testament. So what did Jesus think about hell? In traditional English versions, Jesus does occasionally seem to speak of hell. For example, in his warnings and the sermon on the Mount, anyone who calls another a fool or who allows their right eye or hand to be or who allows their right eye or hand to be, or who allows their right eye or hand to sin will be cast into hell. Matthew 5.22, 29.30, but the word Jesus actually used was not hell, but was, you know, in Hebrew

was Gehenna. The term originally did not refer to a place of eternal torment, but to a notorious valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem, believed by many Jews at the time to be the most unholy, God forsaken place on earth, on actual earth, a place where according to the Old Testament, ancient kings sacrificed some of their children to foreign gods by burning them alive.

Also in the ancient world, with a Greek Roman or Jewish, the worst punishment a person could experience after death was to be denied a traditional burial. And many scholars think that Jesus developed this view into a repugnant scenario. Corpses of those excluded from the kingdom would be unceremoniously tossed into the most desecrated dumping ground on the planet.

That was hell, this valley, literally hell on earth. Jesus did not say souls would be tortured there, but that they simply would no longer exist. Other past years, however, do seem to suggest that maybe Jesus did believe in hell as we know it today. Most notably, Jesus speaks of all nations coming for the last judgment in Matthew, chapter 25, verses 31 through 46. He says that the wicked those who refuse to help those in need are sent to eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Still though, translation problems. Does this verse point towards a hell similar to Dante's, or does it mean the wicked will

be buried in the cursed land where idolatars used to burn their children in Gehenna? The closest we may get to the biblical hell being a physical place is in Luke 1st 26, which describes a great chasm between heaven and Hades that is set in place, so that no one can cross from one side to the other. Still there, hell, you know, very vague idea. Also described as a place of weeping and national of teeth in Matthew 1350 and a place that is down or below the earth and Psalms and proverbs, kind of once again, translation problems in addition to hell. A grave is also below the earth, sent to hell, or just dead and buried. No longer possessing breath. Even if hell is, you know, what is

being referenced in all these verses, the hell spoke of still at best a vague concept. Certainly not what is often described from an evangelical viewpoint. For example, the primary evangelical organization in the UK, the evangelical alliance produced a report in the year 2000 entitled The Nature of Hell.

It was not an unsubstantial document. It had 22 conclusions. Here's a thrust of their argument. Hell is separation from God. Hell involves severe punishment. Those scripture used is often metaphorical. Hell is a conscious experience of rejection and torment. Hell involves degrees of punishment and suffering in hell related to the severity of sins committed on earth. Hell is a realm of destruction which could be of actual existence of individual sinners or to the quality of their relationship with God, hell is eternal, though not necessarily as a ceaseless, conscious experience. So to do catch that part about hell involving degrees of punishment related to the severity of

sins on earth, that for sure is a thousand percent Dante. That is also a thousand percent not taken from the Bible There's no reference of degrees of punishment and suffering in relation to sin no matter how you might try and translate various words The visions of a place beneath us were demons tormented dead in all manner of disturbing ways that vision comes from the 14th century Not from the first century comes from Dante not from disciples of Christ Interesting stuff, right? It speaks to how powerfully Dante's influence can still be felt seven centuries after his death. Now let's recap.

Dante's divine comedy is a poem that has flourished for centuries and is still considered a classic. Powerful symbolism, shocking depictions of life after death have continued to astonish generations of readers. Dante pulled from his life experience and is writing the loss of his love, beatris, struggles with the Pope and Florentine politics, ultimately his exile. All these themes run through the divine comedy and inferno in particular. The plot relatively simple, right?

Dante loses his way to dark forest, comes across the Roman poet Virgil who guides him to the nine circles of hell. The punishments get more intense as they go from thrashing around with other Souls and lakes to shit to walking around flaming deserts to having your head permanently twisted around 180 degrees. Along with that is the constant torture inflicted on the punish by Satan's minions, a whole cast of centaurs, giants, demons and serpents. As a literary work, Dante's inferno is many things. Propaganda for the church, Dante's personal shit list of Florentine politicians he didn't like. Big rant against the corrupt papacy, a walkthrough of the many, many ways in which people can have these shit beat out of them

and evaluation of evil. One of the worst things a person can do, the punishment people suffer in Fernow is disturbing and surreal, equal to anything you might come across in a modern horror film. For more than a hundred years, it has been a staple in schools and universities and has continued to provide inspiration to poets and artists in our time. It's one of the texts that shapes how we think about hell and popular imagination. And I don't know why I said for more than 100 years.

I guess in America, it's been a staple for more than 100 years. How would you structure your hell if you wrote something you can do in Ferno? That's what I was thinking about after all this, who would you place in the lowest levels? Who would you base punishments on? You know, or what would you excuse me, base punishments on? Would you base it on what affected you personally or would you try and be more objective, really trying to think about the worst things a person can do?

Would a child murder be placed in a lower circle than an adult murder? Would an architect of genocide be placed in a lower circle than a serial killer, who's placed in the very lowest level? Who is Satan? Ashton is teeth on? Would everyone stay in hell forever or for different lengths of time depending on what they did a hundred years for every murder, 1,000, 10,000? Or would you not send anyone to hell? Would you destroy hell? Do you not believe in hell as a concept? I or would you not, you know, want hell to exist? I think examining Dante's inferno is a good way to examine the concept of crime and punishment. What are the crimes?

And what are the appropriate punishments in your worldview? I'm not sure who I'd punish the most out of the dirt bags we've sucked, you know, my brain for whatever reason goes immediately to Joseph Duncan, Bob Pradella, David Parker Ray, the toy box killer, put them in the lowest pits. But why did their names jump out? Right? Are they any worse than Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Gary Ridgeway, Richard Ramirez, Ed Camper, so many others. Should Hitler be punished more than, say, John Wayne Gacy, who should be punished more

Cambodian's Pol Pot or the three pauses of the young Turks? It's really kind of tough the more you think about it. You know, what are the most evil acts one can commit? I don't know. When do you max out on evil? I don't think it's what the guys who betrayed Julius Caesar. I'll say that, but I don't know who it should be. Maybe you do. Time now for today's Top 5 Takeaways.

Number one, Dante's Inferno is one of the most influential pieces of literature of all time. Together with the other two parts of the divine comedy, it helped unify and popularize the Italian vernacular language and it gave Christian values its own epic poem. Number two, Dante Igari, the author and narrator of Inferno lived in tumultuous times at the end of the 13th century influence when being in politics meant you could be on top of the world one day and exiled with your property seized or worst, you know, bird alive. The next after being exiled himself Dante used Inferno as his personal

shit list of people he thought should be in hell, including several popes. Number three, each of the punishments dole out to the sinners is directly related to the kind of sins they committed in life. You have cake and candy and your face in this life, each shit forever in the afterlife. Number four, Dante climbed down Satan's pubes to get out of hell. Just wanted to make sure you didn't forget about that part. Number five, new info. I love this. Charlie and the chocolate factory thought to be a modern reimagining of Dante's and

Ferno, not even kidding. Think about it. Willie Wonka's tour through the candy factory, he and the kids take a unique riverboat ride, where Gene Wilder goes off on a monologue that could easily fit in Dante's and Ferno, is the magical chocolate making facility actually hell. Wanker's words seem to describe a descent into hell as he says, are the fires of hell a glowing

is degrisly repromoing. There are more comparisons as we learned in inferno, the different levels of hell have punishments that reflect various sins. And will they won't cut the chocolate factory? The kids are punished in a way that relates to their respective sin. For example, Augustus Gloupe eats enormous amounts of chocolate on the reg, and the factory he almost drowns in a river of it. Or Violent Beauregard, who commits theft for stealing gum, and is promptly turned into a blueberry, right? Denny Stolen.

At the end of Dante's Inferno, Dante climbs up and ascends out of hell, climbs up Satan. I guess, you know, just, yeah, and will he walk in the chocolate factory? Charlie ascends off into the sky in a glass elevator. Is Willy Wonka Virgil? Is he Satan? Is Charlie's Guide? Many probably not Satan, I guess, be more Virgil. Many modern works, oh, a lot to Dante and his comedy, actually.

J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, authors of two of the most important 20th century works, Lord of the Rings, and the Chronicles of Narnia have expressed their indebtedness indebted, there we go, indebtedness. Not indebtedness, not indebtedness to Donty. I'm gonna get out of here. Time suck, tough, right takeaway. Donatez in Ferno has been sucked.

At Epic Palm, turning to him, Epic Suck. I don't think we'll be doing a suck this long again anytime soon. I say that, I hope not. So many words, so many words, but I hope they were words that we're fun to listen to. Good luck ever viewing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the same way ever again.

And you're welcome for the poetry. I put together, you know, I could have just, I could have published it in a book. I'm sure it would have sold really well. Guys, you know, it's put in here. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all their help making time. So Queen of Bad Magic Lindsay Cummins,

Reverend Dr. Joe Paisley, Scripkeeper Zach Flannery, Sophie Fax source for sevens, Biddelixer, Logan, the Art Warlock Keith, running BadMagicMarch.com, working on our socials with Liz Hernandez. And again, new and improved customer service email for BadMagicMarch.com is store at BadMagicProductions.com. Thanks to those of you who have joined

the Cult of the Curious Private Facebook group, thanks to Liz Hernandez and are all seen eyes running the Colt of the Curious Facebook page. Thanks to beef steak and our moderators on Discord, easy link to Discord from the Time Suck app. Thanks to all you space, there's space lizards, plain time suck trivia on the app early into round eight with 14 77 points, Bailey 96 Hannah in lead. Next week on Time Suck, are you ready to head down under those from shrimps on the barbie, wrestles from sharks, get stung by some jellyfish? Even more importantly, are you ready to learn what the fuck a brumbiest? Next week on Time Suck, we head to Australia, specifically Western Australia.

Go back to a tough few years in its long history. When World War One veterans returned from combat, we're given plots of land to farm by the government only to have their plans fucking destroyed by Eamus. Not kidding, this powerful bird. The only bird with calf muscles, which is pretty creepy. Today, numbers around 60,000 or 70,000, that's what efforts made to curb their reproduction

and limit the land they can roam on. Back in the 1930s was not uncommon to see giant flocks of Emo called mobs that would number around 20,000. Fucking 20,000 Emo's, all working together. Some crazy gang. And those Emo's, they love to eat the wheat crops that the farmers were growing.

And they would fight them for it. Big, aggressive birds. They love anything shiny. They can kick at you. They can scratch you with their talons. They're more like a dinosaur than a bird. And Aussie farmers getting kicked by these modern velociraptors decided they weren't going to lose their farms out of fight. And they grabbed some machine guns. The government joined in. Send out a mission of three military

men plus a camera crew to document the great Emu war. Emu's were planned to be killed in the thousands. Things did not go as planned. Did the Emu win the great Emu war? You'll have to tune in next week for a more lighthearted and just crazy episode to find out. Now let's head on over to this week's time Sucker Updates. Updates, get your time Sucker Updates. I'm going to start off with an Israel Keys update

from a few weeks ago. I'm just pronounced the name of a town only two hours from here, but I've been to, damn it. Top shelf, lizards, sack, sham slam, spaces are named, not real name. Shares this and so much more. He writes, dear mother suck master was super psyched, disheartened to hear you discuss

the town I live in. During the Israel Keys suck, callville, Washington first office not callville It's pronounced callville. I know that I just forgot. There's absolutely no way you'd know that unless you asked someone Don't sweat it. Anyway, thought you should know that some even scarier things or thought you should know about some even scarier things regarding the Israel cult shit They still have a compound around here on the Columbia River and even own a winery So I'm yeah, I'm guessing here this is a people who were part of that, excuse me, that church that they were involved in. They are, they're about seven eight families up there, all with the last name Israel and

they are all way anti-government have super weird hippie names like honesty, fortitude, confidence, victory. One dude even named his kid success and it seems that kid has done everything conceivably possible to live that name down. He has never held down a job. He's constantly in trouble with a law and has wrecked more cars and county and private property than it's normal for even your average crew up. He's been tazered a few times. He spends many nights in county lock up.

They won't keep him in there though because he's shit house crazy. People around here still talk about the keys family and all that weirdness. I asked around about it and most people were just like that was a weird fucking time man, just fucking weird. Being born and raised in Spokane, I never really heard about it, but it's strange to hear about it after all this time. Also wanted to share a Cummins lock experience, that is interesting that they're still talking about it there. Also wanted to share a Cummins lock experience that should dispel any doubts that the government has you on record, I'll be it completely unintentionally.

I work in federal law enforcement up here in Stevens County for the sake of safety of both myself and my job, I'll decline to say which federal agency but we're a big one. Anyway, one night I was listening to the Yahim Crowl suck, of course, in my work truck. I suddenly got a text from one of my partners, also working that night. He said, dude, I don't know what in the flying fuck you're listening to, but you've been hot-miking that shit for the last 10 minutes and the radio ladies are really upset. Sure enough, the poor radio dispatcher ladies had been subjected to tales of peanut butter and showbiz for the better part of 10 minutes.

My leg had been accidentally pressing the radio transmit button next to me and I hadn't felt it because my wallet was in my cargo pocket. It was poor ladies. Anyhow, I got called into my boss's office the next day and he asked me when the hell had happened that night. I told him what I was listening to and he just laughed and asked me, Yamo time suck. So we eat.

So while that could have really fucked me, it ended up, turned out okay. Also, all of our radio transmissions are recorded by some nerd think tank in DC. So take heart and know that your mush mouth, sultry voice is immortalized digitally in some archives somewhere and they know about Kroel's de deviance in ways they never wanted to. If you read this on the suck, please exclude my name, but just know that you've got some real fans up here, managed to get most of my shift listing the time suck.

And if you could give a shout out to Charlie 16, Charlie 33 and Charlie 22, they'll know exactly who you mean and we'll get a kick out of it. By the way, just to make this extra creepy, you and I were born on exactly the same day, actually lived in Spokane at the same time, while you're at GEO. So yes, we should get an apartment together. JK, did the best, been a huge fan since Crazy Capital F, still waiting for the merch store to make those greeting cards. Hope to see you back in the Spokane Comedy Club soon. Our best to your family and everyone's a suck dungeon.

Really glad this email was so long. Your faithful spaces are jam slam. Thank you. thank you. Mystery, mystery slammer. I appreciate that information. About Callville, interesting that there's some compound up there currently, somehow related to that Christian identity church, the keys belong to.

Yeah, I'm sure the locals have not forgot about all the keys stuff, and glad you didn't get fired. Now for another true crime update, Super Sucker Ryan Moore has reason to believe my dad may be the Zodiac killer. I love how this is starting to spiral out. He writes. So with all the talk at Dan's dad being a serial killer, I was wondering if he really could be a serial killer. So after about 30 seconds of searching for stuff online,

I'm pretty sure he's a Zodiac killer. First off, he was presumably actually alive in late 60s, early 70s, fucking sure was. Second off, we weren't there with him during that time frame, so maybe he was out murdering people and sending letters. Yep, again, I sure shit doesn't know where he was that time. Third, the picture's from a couple weeks ago where he was in all the crime scenes on Instagram and Facebook.

Do look suspicious like the composite sketch of the zodiac I couldn't read more I've attached a photo of the two side by side both are white males with glasses and a similar haircut mm-hmm fourth maybe when Dan was a child he was spoken to in ciphers like the zodiac killer would write which is the cause of his mush mouth exactly seems pretty rock solid to me, Ryan Moore. Thank you, Ryan. Right, for putting more pieces together. Gonna have to put that in my file. We're gonna, we're gonna fucking get this out of the bitch

on these days, he's gonna come over to my house to visit, you know, for like Thanksgiving or something. And that's when the SWAT teams gonna grab him. We're gonna solve a lot of crimes. Can't wait till he hears about all this. I wanna see how long this is going on before it gets back to him. Now for the first Armenian genocide update,

which is not funny. I'm laughing about the previous thing. Coming in from meat sack instructor, Catherine Yeager, Katherine Wrights. Hey, Dan, I just wanted to say thank you for covering the Armenian genocide. I'm a social studies teacher. And on my first day of student teaching,

the first thing one student ever said to me was, have you ever heard of the Armenian genocide? May seem like a weird question to ask a teacher, but the student was Armenian-Iranian. Slash-Iranian. I said yes because I knew what had happened and knew that the Turkish government denied it ever happening. But until your podcast, I did not know the details. Now that I do, it puts that question into even greater perspective.

The student was almost definitely the descendent of survivors which after listening to your podcast just awes made that anybody survived that horror. Your episode may be think about her. I hope she's doing okay. She'd be a senior in high school now. Thank you for your show. Thank you for your comedy because it's something my mom likes too,

and it's something that we enjoy together. Much love, Catherine, or AKA K. Well, that's, yeah, that is a very interesting K. Yeah, I'm guessing that your, excuse me, your student, former student, you know, was probably descended of somebody who was heavily impacted by this. That had, you know, family members

who probably did die. I mean, statistically odds are, it was crazy. I just talked to another podcast the other day, some people wrote into Sam Tripoli, a friend of mine, about the Armenian genocide episode because Sam is Armenian-American. And then he called me, we talked, and he talked about how his great grandfather,

several of his like great, great uncles, you know, a variety of family members were killed in the Armenian genocide and that, you know, his, who he's descended from escaped, got out, you know, they made it to Glendale, California. And that's, you know, why he's around is because they were able to escape. One of his family members was very young Crazy crazy stuff Another Armenian genocide update from an Armenian American meat sack, Oshin a Rakhilian sorry if I'm messing up your last name Oshin writes suck master and crew

I just wanted to take a moment say thank you from the bottom of my heart for shining a light and they're on the Armenian genocide I'm a full-blooded Armenian American descendant from genocide victims and survivors My great-grandmother's entire family wiped out as Ottoman Turkish soldiers decimated their entire village. She was hidden in a forest at the age of three, was picked up by Russian soldiers. That's fucking crazy, little three-year-old. Given to another Armenian family on their way to neighboring Iran, if you're interested, I can always expand as her story was, is truly remarkable, filled with unimaginable heartbreak. On behalf of Armenian space-liters worldwide, like to crown the Suckmaster and all crew

honorary Armenians. Hail Nimrod, Hylusefina, Praiseful Jangles, thanks again, Oshin. Thank you, Oshin, for standing that in. Man, what a crazy family history you have. Honored to be an honorary Armenian, especially because I'm a huge system of a downfant. Can you get other Armenian Americans to somehow get a petition going to just really guilt trip system of a down to please make another record? Come on.

What do they do? What do they do in? They can use it to raise more money for Armenian causes. Surge, just fucking put your pride aside and work with your former bandmates. Um, but thank you. Again, Oshin, to present that in. Uh, heavy stuff. Let's end with some silliness.

Super sucker Charles Jenkins got Cummins Law in front of the law. He writes, Cummins Law got me out of a ticket. We got real lucky. Oh, great profit in Imrod. Can't go deep into personal details right now. Just know that shit is a little fucked up for me. I was pulled over on the way to work tonight while listening to the road suck. I, uh, oh yeah, the truck stop killer.

I paused the time suck app when I saw blue lights behind me went to a sphincter factor of 10. My tags are expired. I don't have a license at the moment. It's a much, much longer story than this one. Just as this awesome polite officer of the law is getting into my bullshit. My phone decides to broadcast through my car speakers one of your bullshit ads for Captain Whisk or Horn.

I have an Android and can't hit pause on my lock screen and my phone decided not to take my thumbprint. For what seemed an agonizingly long time, I'm struggling to put my password on my phone to shut your ridiculous gob up. The look on this cop's face was priceless, which was done with me. I could have been jailed tonight, but I believe you helped me out with your ass and eye nonsense. I'm trying to straighten my shit out,

but it has been difficult to do certain circumstances. I've never been arrested, I have no record, thanks for keeping it that way. Everything you do is terrible, worst things I've ever heard, 5 out of 5 stars. Charles Jenkins, thank you Charles. I am what a fucking crazy stroke of luck that was.

I sincerely do hope that the officer that pulled you over was just so disturbed by the nonsense come to you speakers. It was just like, I don't need to deal with this bullshit. This is more paperwork than I want to put together right now. And just let you go. And I hope you get everything straightened out soon. Hope until then the suck continues to be a nice place of escape for you and some amusement.

Thank you to everyone for your messages, Charles and everyone else for continuing to listen, for continuing to spread the suck, all the stuff, hail Nimrod to you all. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. Thanks, time suckers.

I need a net. We all did. More bad magic productions content throughout the week if you're interested. Campfire Horror with Scared to Death, late Tuesday nights. So many laughs with Is We Down Wednesdays at noon, Pacific time. Also, if you want less darkness, little inspiration nuggets, every Monday through Friday, with incredible feats. This comes out

first thing early in the morning. Please don't try to descend into and then out of hell this week with an ancient Roman poet as your guide, you might not escape like Dante did. Stay up here in the surface, we're safe, and just keep on sucking. You know, it's pretty easy. And in the fourth pit of the eighth circle of hell, the sorcerers wanted with their heads ripped around on their necks, facing backwards so they could never see the future as the damned, wandered endlessly through a fiery pit of nothing but darkness and desolation. Stuff, is this helping you go sleep? I'm kind of thirsty, I get some water. No, no, In the fifth pit of eighth circle thing, water drinkers get fucking pipe shoved up their

asses. Then leak of their fluids for their greedy, disgusting, quenching of needs and things. That's right, I remember now. Thank you. Good night. Good night, buddy. you. Good night. Good night, buddy.