n the one before it. The first of these is Limbo, where unbaptized children and virtuous pagans are placed. Virgil is one of these souls, who lived decent lives but died before Christ came (in Dante's mind, belief in Christ was necessary to enter Heaven). They are not tormented but must spend eternity without hope. Dante and Virgil tarry in Limbo to talk with other great poets of the ancient world. (Dante must have had tremendous pride in himself to have imagined walking with Homer and Ovid.)
             Entering the second circle, where the torments begin, the Poets are blocked by Minos, the beast who judges the damned and condemns each soul to its proper level of Hell, but Virgil convinces him to let them pass. (Dante fused pagan mythology and Christian beliefs together in his Hell quite often.) They then see the souls of the carnal, swept around by tempests much as they allowed their reason to be swept away by passion in life. Here they meet Paolo and Francesca, who were murdered by Francesca's husband before they could repent from their sin of adultery. After hearing their story, Dante faints again.
             Upon recovering, Dante and Virgil enter the third circle, where storms of stinking snow and freezing rain fall and form slush under their feet. Cerberus, a three-headed dog, guards the gluttonous souls and chews at them. One of the gluttons, Ciacco, a Florentine like Dante, prophesizes Dante's later exile. (It becomes apparent later that the damned can see far into the future but cannot see the events of the present. Thus on Judgement Day, the last day, their powers will become useless.)
             The fourth circle is guarded by the monster Plutus but Virgil again manages to talk his and Dante's way past him. (I assume that this means Human Reason can always outwit anything hellish.) The circle is filled with souls of hoarders and wasters, who are eternally at war with one another. They are in Hell because in thinking of nothing but money they de...