It is nightfall when they reach the gate of hell, over which is written the dread inscription:
"Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye:
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here."
Entering in they are met with the sound of sighs, moans, and lamentations, mingled with curses hoarse and deep, and the beating of hands, all making a hideous din in the starless air, in which a long train of spirits is whirled about hither and thither stung by wasps and hornets. These spirits are the souls of those ignoble ones who were neither for God nor against him.
"The wretched souls of those, who lived
Without or praise or blame, with that ill band
Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved,
Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves
Were only. From his bounds Heaven drove them forth
Not to impair his luster; nor the depth
Of Hell receives them, lest the accursed tribe
Should glory thence with exultation vain."
Here Dante recognizes the soul of him who made the "great refusal," recalling thus the strange story of the aged hermit, Peter Murrone, who after fifty-five years and more of solitary life in a cave high up among the Abruzzi Mountains, was forced to ascend the papal throne, and who after a short period of ineffectual reign under the name of Celestine V., resigned, thus making way for Boniface VIII., Dante's bitter enemy. Vergil's contemptuous remark concerning these souls,
"Speak not of them, but look and pass them by,"
has become proverbial.
Soon after this the two poets reach the shores of the river Acheron, where Charon, the infernal boatman, is busy ferrying the souls of the damned to the other side. He refuses to take Dante in his boat, and the latter falls into a swoon, and being aroused by a clap of thunder, finds himself on the other side. How he was carried over we are not told. The wanderers are now in limbo or the first circle of hell, in which are contained the souls of unbaptized children and of the great and good of the pagan world, especially the poets and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, who, having lived before the coming of Christ, had through no fault of their own died without faith in Him who alone can save. These souls are not punished by physical pain, as is the case with those in the following circles, but nourishing forever a desire which they have no hope of ever having satisfied, they pass the endless years of eternity in gentle melancholy. Here Dante meets the spirits of Homer, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan, who treat him kindly and make him one of the band, thus consecrating him as a great poet.
"When they together short discourse had held,
They turned to me, with salutation kind
Beckoning me; at the which my master smiled:
Nor was this all; but greater honor still
They gave me, for they made me of their tribe;
And I was sixth amid so learn'd a band.
"Far as the luminous beacon on we passed,
Speaking of matters, then befitting well
To speak, now fitter left untold. At foot
Of a magnificent castle we arrived,
Seven times with lofty walls begirt, and round
Defended by a pleasant stream. O'er this
As o'er dry land we passed. Next, through seven gates,
I with those sages entered, and we came
Into a mead with lively verdure fresh.
"There dwelt a race, who slow their eyes around
Majestically moved, and in their port
Bore eminent authority: they spake
Seldom, but all their words were tuneful sweet.
"We to one side retired, into a place
Open and bright and lofty, whence each one
Stood manifest to view. Incontinent,
There on the green enamel of the plain
Were shown me the great spirits, by whose sight
I am exalted in my own esteem."
Leaving this beautiful oasis in the infernal desert, the poets enter the second circle, where Hell may be said really to begin. Here Dante sees the monster Minos, the judge of the infernal regions, who assigns to each soul its proper circle, indicating the number thereof by winding his tail about his body a corresponding number of times. In circle two are the souls of the licentious, blown about forever by a violent wind. Among them Dante recognizes the famous lovers of antiquity, Dido, Helen, Cleopatra. His attention is especially attracted toward two spirits, who, locked closely in each other's arms, are blown hither and thither like chaff before the wind. Calling upon them to tell him who they are, he hears the pathetic story of Francesca da Rimini, perhaps the most famous and beautiful passage in all poetry: