Cantos 5-7

During Cantos 5-7, Dante continues his journey through the circles of Hell and on the way learn of the relationship between crime and punishment. Travelling through the second, third, fourth, Dante meets the souls of those who have committed sins of Lust, Gluttony, and Avarice. Part of the Seven Deadly Sins, these three sins are categorized into a group of evil thoughts known as Lustful Appetite. In these Cantos, Dante realizes that the crimes a soul commits on earth are determinant of its punishment in the underworld. Those who had lusted for earthly pleasures in life thus suffer the torrential storms that molest their sin-stained souls and the bestial judgment of Minos’ serpentine tail. After passing to the third circle of hell, Dante finds Cerberus guarding the souls of the Gluttonous. Having lived their lives in greed and excess, these souls now dwell in the underworld in the excrement and waste that pours from the sky. Cerberus, like these greedy souls, fights for even the simplest earthly material: mud. Unlike Aeneas’s Sibyl, Dante’s Virgil grabs merely a handful of this excrement filled mud to pacify the ferocious dog. Continuing onwards to the fourth Circle of Hell, Dante discovers the lair of Plutus, the god of wealth. In this circle, the priests, popes and cardinals of Avarice and those that led Prodigal lives of waste are condemned to an eternal competition, pushing weights in shameful song, screaming “Why hoard?” and “Why waste?” It is interesting how Dante, a Catholic, would directly criticize the religious leaders of his own faith for hoarding wealth by condemning to this fifth circle of hell. It makes me question the integrity of his faith. As Canto Seven ends, Dante is left entering the Fifth Circle of Hell to explore the River Styx, its ferryman Phlegyas, and its unfortunate residents of Wrath and Sloth.