Dante’s Hell: Two sides of the same coin
VIII) Fourth Circle: Greed
Upon entering the Fourth Circle, Dante and Virgil are confronted by a being that is alternatively called “Pluto” and “Plutus”. Called “mankind arch-enemy’s”, this entity, called by Virgil the “cursed wolf of Hell”, after frightening the visitors with an ominous sentence, is promptly shut off by Virgil, who reminds him that their journey is ordered by the powers of Heaven themselves, which makes Pluto/Plutus fall onto the ground, vanquished. Dante here reuses another figure of Greco-Roman mythology, or rather two figures conflated into one: Plutus, the Greek god of wealth and riches (it makes sense he would appear in the Circle of Greed), and Pluto, the alternative name for Hades/Dis Pater, the ruler of the underworld and king of the dead in Greek/Roman mythology. This confusion was originally present in the Greco-Roman culture itself: “Pluto” means “the wealthy one”, “the rich one”, and already the Greeks and the Romans had established that the god of the underworld ruled over both the dead and the underground riches (metals, gemstones, etc…), to the point Plutus himself was sometimes seen as part of the chthonic gods. The fact Virgil’s world so easily break down Plutus/Pluto, as he falls on the ground “like a ship’s sail when the mast breaks”, “deflated, tangled in heap”, shows how this embodiment of wealth, while seemingly grand and frightening, is actually empty and quite weak when confronted with the true powers of good. And more importantly, Pluto/Plutus is given a line that has been a true mystery…
“Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe”. It is the mysterious sentence that this entity tells to the protagonist as he enters the Fourth Circle of Hell, in a rage-filled tone, to threaten Dante/the Wanderer – and this sentence isn’t written in any actual language or dialect known. Some words can be recognized, such as the name “Satan” repeated twice, but otherwise it is a cryptic mumbo-jumbo, a nonsensical sentence to decipher. Many people have interpreted this sentence without ever agreeing on what it could mean: the most common theory is that this sentence is supposed to be an invocation to Satan, where Plutus invokes the devil himself onto the Fourth Circle, or maybe alerts him of what is going on, possibly invoking him as the “pope”, “emperor” or “god” of Hell.
Unlike the previous circles, here the sinners of Greed are divided into two clear groups, the Prodigal and the Misers, who embody the two aspects of the sin of greed (at least according to Dante). Both groups are cursed into constantly rolling before them enormous, heavy weights, while circling around each other, constantly shouting insults and war-cries at the other group, before finally throwing their weights at each other in a big, thunderous clash. Then each group gains back their weight, rolls out again with more insults and screams, clashes their weights again, and it all repeats forever and ever… Dante throws in a LOT of Greco-Roman references, from the constant rolling of a big boulder/weight as a nod to the legend of Sisyphus, to the clashing of the boulders being described as Charybdis making the waves crash against each other – but here the punishment still fits the contrapasso, because each group is doomed to constantly exhaust themselves by pushing aimlessly a huge, heavy rock that represents the material wealth and the earthly riches they grew so fond and attached to in their life. Of course, there is also a morbid irony in the fact that these two groups are locked into an eternal hatred, each one accusing the other of being the sinner, the vicious, the criminal, while no one realizes they are both in the wrong, due to the embodying the two extremes of greed: the Misers hoarded their wealth for the sake of owning and being rich, selfishly keeping all for themselves in a pure act of avarice, while the Prodigal expressed the reverse excessive love for money and goods, by spending their existence wasting their riches and squandering their belongings instead of putting them to good use. But both are now in Hell two undistinguishable groups in both body and action – only the specifics of the insults they throw at each other can allow to differentiate them. Or little proverbial details – for example the Hoarders have tight fists (showing their inability to lend a hand and their tight hold over their money), while the Squanderers have no hair (because an old Italian proverb says that prodigal will “spend even the hairs on their heads”).
IX) The Fifth Circle: The Styx
It is quite interesting that the second of the rivers of Hell, the Styx (also taken from Greek mythology) actually overlaps with the Fifth Circle of Hell. Indeed the Styx/Fourth Circle here is a sort of swamp, a marsh created by a spring of dark waters “boiling and overflowing” into a ditch, and drowning gray slopes until they turned into the great “slimy pond” that is this circle.
The Fifth Circle is often called the Circle of Wrath, because the main group of sinners here are those that allowed their life to be dominated and burned up by anger – now they forever wander in the swamp of the Styx, naked and muddy, their faces distorted by rage. In a constant state of wrath, they constantly fight each other with their bare arms, heads, feet (and even teeth), into violent muddy and swampy battles where they end up tearing the limbs of each other, without ever resting.
But there is a second group of sinners in the Fifth Circle… Sinners that are not wandering through the marsh, but rather sitting at the bottom of the slimy water, waiting in the black muck at the bottom of the Styx, constantly sighing and making bubbles as they only way of proving they exist. Their crime is apparently to have been “sluggish” or “sad” even in the most joyful and happy of days, and to have let “dejected/gloomy/slothful” smokes smolder in their hearts… This second group of sinners, doomed to stay under the surface, in the dark muds forever, is the subject of one of the big debates of the Divine Comedy… Indeed, from the choice of words and the general behavior they show, many read them as being the sinners of Sloth. But not of Sloth as we know it – rather as Sloth was originally… the vice of Acedia. A quick history lesson: “Sloth” in the seven deadly sins is a very recent addition. Or rather Sloth as “not liking work and loving too much rest and comfort” is a modern reinterpretation of the original sin it corresponded to. Originally, the sin of “sloth”, the sin that led one to not put any effort into things, to neglect their duty, to waste their talent, to dislike hard work, was not “sloth” but a thing called “acedia”. Acedia has been described as many way: the vice of despondency, a spiritual sloth, or the precursor to today’s burn-out. Acedia was a spiritual evil, a mix of sadness and boredom that led one to lose any kind of interest and involvement into whatever project or cause one could be part of, a spiritual torpor and numbness that destroyed any kind of love, hope, joy or care people could pour into the world – and, more than just causing one general disgust and indifference towards anything, could ultimately lead to despair/depression. This was the original sin part of the “seven deadly” – which only came to be known as a material, work-related “sloth” later in history. Many people consider that the sinners at the bottom of Styx are sinners of acedia, and thus it would make the total of deadly sins treated in the Upper Hell five instead of four, by adding Acedia/Proto-Sloth to Lust, Gluttony, Greed and Wrath.
However, there is a group of people that do not agree with this theory because they point out that ALL of the Circles of Hell are focused on one specific vice or sin, and that no other Circle hosts two vices at once. For example Greed has two groups of sinners, but they are both aspects of the disorderly love for wealth that is Greed. So, they argue that the sinners at the bottom of the Styx must be, like those at the surface of the swamp, sinners of Wrath, instead of suffering from Acedia (which is a distinct and different vice). Their theory is that we have to interpret their sin as one of “slothful and apathic wrath”, that make them constantly sad and burning inside – in this viewpoint, the sinners here (often called the “Sullen”) are thought to represent an internalized, passive form of wrath (unlike the exterior, active, violent wrath of the sinners of the suffer), to be sinners guilty of grudge-holding, rancor, spite and bitterness.
The debate is still up – maybe it is one, maybe it is the other, or maybe it is both at the same time, who knows!
Passing by the marsh, our protagonists arrive at the foot of a high tower, with at the top two flames appearing – that another fire answers far-away in the distance. It is actually the signal to call another boatman of Hell, here to take the Pilgrim and Virgil across the Styx proper (as a river flowing away from the marsh), and the one riding those “filthy waves” across the “marsh vapors” and swamp mists is yet again another Greek mythological figure: Phlegyas.
Here to take our protagonists to the famed and dreaded City of Dis…
