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The poem begins on Holy Thursday of the year 1300, a significant holiday, "In the middle of our life's journey" (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita), and so opens in medias res. Dante is thirty-five years old, half of the biblically alloted age of 70 (Psalm 90:10), lost in a dark wood, assailed by beasts (a lion, leopard, and a she-wolf; allegorical depictions of temptations towards sin) he cannot evade, and unable to find the "straight way" (diritta via) to salvation (symbolized by a mountain with the sun - representing God's light - shining behind it). Conscious that he is ruining himself, that he is falling into a "deep place" (basso loco) where the sun is silent ('l sol tace), Dante is at last rescued by Virgil after his love Beatrice intercedes on his behalf (Canto 2), and he and Virgil begin their journey to the underworld.

Before entering Hell, Dante and his guide see the Opportunists, souls of those who in life did nothing, neither for good or evil. Mixed with them are the outcasts, who took no side in the Rebellion of Angels. These souls are neither in Hell nor out of it, but reside on the shores of the Acheron.

Here they reach the ferry that will take them across the Acheron and to the Gate of Hell. The ferry is driven by Charon, who does not want to let Dante enter, for he is a living being. Their passage across is unknown since Virgil forces him to let them across, but Dante faints and does not awake until he is on the other side and approaches the Gate of Hell, on which is inscribed the famous phrase, "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" or "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" (Dante and Virgil enter.)

Virgil guides Dante through the nine circles of Hell. The circles are concentric, each new one representing further and further evil, culminating in the center of the earth, where Satan is held, bound. Each circle's sin is punished in an appropriately revengeful way to fit the crime. The nine circles are:

* Circle 1. Limbo - the unbaptized and virtuous pagans, who, though not sinful, did not accept Christ. They are not punished in an active sense, but are merely unable to reach Heaven and denied God's presence for eternity (Canto 4).

All of the condemned sinners are judged by Minos, who sentences each soul to one of the lower eight circles. These are structured according to the classical (Aristotelian) conception of virtue and vice, so that they are grouped into the sins of incontinence, violence, and fraud (which for many commentators are represented by the leopard, lion, and she-wolf respectively). The sins of incontinence - weakness in controlling one's desires and natural urges - are the mildest among them, and, correspondingly, appear first:

* Circle 2. Those overcome by lust, trapped in a violent storm, never to touch each other again, featuring Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo (Canto 5).

* Circle 3. Gluttons, forced by Cerberus to lie in the mud under continual cold rain and hail (Canto 6).

* Circle 4. The greedy, who hoarded possessions, and the indulgent, who squandered them, forced to push giant rocks in opposite directions (Canto 7).

* Circle 5. The wrathful, fighting each other in the swamp-like water of the river Styx, and the slothful, trapped beneath the water (Canto 7).

The lower parts of hell are contained within the walls of the city of Dis, which is itself surrounded by the river Styx (Canto 8-9). These are the active (rather than passive) sins; first are the sins of violence:

* Circle 6. Heretics, trapped in flaming tombs (Cantos 10 and 11).

* Circle 7. The violent (Cantos 12 through 17). These are divided into three rings:

o Outer ring: The violent against people and property, in a river of boiling blood (Canto 12).

o Middle ring: The violent against themselves - suicides - turned into thorny black trees. Uniquely amongst the dead, they will not be bodily reincarnated after the final judgment. Where others will continue to occupy Hell (and Heaven) in corporeal (rather than merely spiritual) form, suicides - because they alienated themselves from their own bodies - spend eternity in the body of a tree, their own corpses hanging from the limbs. Also punished in this circle are profligates, chased perpetually through the trees by ferocious dogs (Canto 13). They are held here with the suicides because, during Dante's time, one's property is seen as an extension of one's physical body. Hence, doing violence to one's property is kin to suicide.

o Inner ring: The violent against God, art, and nature - blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers - in a desert of flaming sand where fire rains from the sky (Cantos 14 through 17).

The last two circles of Hell punish sins of malice, or sins of the intellect; that is, sins involving conscious fraud or treachery, and can only be reached by descending a vast cliff into the "pit" of Hell:

Dante climbs the flinty steps in Canto 26 Enlarge

Dante climbs the flinty steps in Canto 26

Dante's guide rebuffs Malacoda and his fiends between ditches five and six in the eight circle of Inferno,

Dante's guide rebuffs Malacoda and his fiends between ditches five and six in the eight circle of Inferno,

* Circle 8 The fraudulent - those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil - are located in a circle named Malebolge (Cantos 18 through 30). This is divided into ten ditches:

o Ditch 1: Panderers and seducers, running forever in opposite directions, whipped by demons (Canto 18).

o Ditch 2: Flatterers, steeped in human excrement (Canto 18).

o Ditch 3: Those who committed simony, placed head-first in holes, flames burning on the soles of their feet (Canto 19).

o Ditch 4: Sorcerers and false prophets, their heads put on their bodies backward, so they can only see what is behind them (Canto 20).

o Ditch 5: Corrupt politicians (barrators), trapped in a lake of burning pitch (Cantos 21 and 22).

o Ditch 6: Hypocrites, made to wear brightly painted lead cloaks (Canto 23).

o Ditch 7: Thieves, chased by venomous snakes and who, after being bitten by the venomous snakes, turn into snakes themselves and chase the other thieves in turn (Cantos 24 and 25).

o Ditch 8: Fraudulent advisors, trapped in flames (Cantos 26 and 27).

o Ditch 9: Sowers of discord, whose bodies are ripped apart, then healed, only to be attacked again (Cantos 28 and 29).

o Ditch 10: Falsifiers, i.e. alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, and impersonators. Each group is punished by being afflicted with a different type of disease (Cantos 29 and 30).

The passage to the ninth circle contains classical and Biblical giants (Canto 31). Dante and Virgil are lowered into the pit by Antaeus.

* Circle 9. Traitors, distinguished from the "merely" fraudulent, in that their acts involve knowingly and deliberately betraying others, are frozen in a lake of ice known as Cocytus (Cantos 32 through 34).

Each group of traitors is encased in ice to a different height, ranging from only the waist down to complete immersion. This is divided into four concentric zones:

o Outer zone 1 (Caďna): Traitors to their kindred (Canto 32). Named for Cain.

o Zone 2 (Antenora): Traitors to political entities, such as party, city, or country (Cantos 32 and 33), such as Count Ugolino. Named for Antenor of Troy, who, according to medieval tradition, betrayed his city to the Greeks.

o Zone 3 (Ptolomća): Traitors to their guests (Canto 33). Named (probably) for Ptolemy, captain of Jericho, who invited Simon the High Priest and his sons to a banquet and there killed them. One of its inhabitants, Friar Alberigo, explains that sometimes a soul falls here before the time that Atropos (the Fate who cuts the thread of life) should send it. Their bodies on Earth are immediately possessed by a fiend.

o Central zone 4 (Judecca): Traitors to their lords and benefactors (Canto 34). This is the harshest section of Hell, containing Satan, waist deep in ice, who is eternally consuming the bodies of Brutus and Cassius for assassinating Julius Caesar, and the head of Judas Iscariot (the namesake of this zone) for betraying Jesus.

Satan is depicted with three heads, each chewing one of the former. His six wings beat as if he is trying to escape, but the icy wind that emanates only further ensures his imprisonment as well as all the others in the ring.

The two poets escape by climbing the ragged fur of Lucifer, passing through the center of the earth, emerging in the southern hemisphere just before dawn on Easter Sunday beneath a sky, studded with stars.

Canto One.

The Dark Forest. The Hill of Difficulty. The Panther, the Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil.

Canto Two.

The Descent. Dante's Protest and Virgil's Appeal. The Intercession of the Three Ladies Benedight.

Canto Three.

The Gate of Hell. The Inefficient or Indifferent. Pope Celestine V. The Shores of Acheron. Charon. The Earthquake and the Swoon.

Canto Four.

The First Circle, Limbo: Virtuous Pagans and the Unbaptized. The Four Poets, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. The Noble Castle of Philosophy.

Canto Five.

The Second Circle: The Wanton. Minos. The Infernal Hurricane. Francesca da Rimini.

Canto Six.

The Third Circle: The Gluttonous. Cerberus. The Eternal Rain. Ciacco. Florence.

Canto Seven.

The Fourth Circle: The Avaricious and the Prodigal. Plutus. Fortune and her Wheel. The Fifth Circle: The Irascible and the Sullen. Styx.

Canto Eight.

Phlegyas. Philippo Argenti. The Gate of the City of Dis.

Canto Nine.

The Furies and Medusa. The Angel. The City of Dis. The Sixth Circle: Heresiarchs.

Canto Ten.

Farinata and Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti. Discourse on the Knowledge of the Damned.

Canto Eleven. The Broken Rocks. Pope Anastasius. General Description of the Inferno and its Divisions.

Canto Twelve.

The Minotaur. The Seventh Circle: The Violent. The River Phlegethon. The Violent against their Neighbours. The Centaurs. Tyrants.

Canto Thirteen.

The Wood of Thorns. The Harpies. The Violent against themselves. Suicides. Pier della Vigna. Lano and Jacopo da Sant' Andrea.

Canto Fourteen.

The Sand Waste and the Rain of Fire. The Violent against God. Capaneus. The Statue of Time, and the Four Infernal Rivers.

Canto Fifteen.

The Violent against Nature. Brunetto Latini.

Canto Sixteen.

Guidoguerra, Aldobrandi, and Rusticucci. Cataract of the River of Blood.

Canto Seventeen.

Geryon. The Violent against Art. Usurers. Descent into the Abyss of Malebolge.

Canto Eighteen.

The Eighth Circle, Malebolge: The Fraudulent and the Malicious. The First Bolgia: Seducers and Panders. Venedico Caccianimico. Jason. The Second Bolgia: Flatterers. Allessio Interminelli. Thais.

Canto Nineteen.

The Third Bolgia: Simoniacs. Pope Nicholas the Third. Dante's Reproof of corrupt Prelates.

Canto Twenty.

The Fourth Bolgia: Soothsayers. Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, Manto, Eryphylus, Michael Scott, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente. Virgil reproaches Dante's Pity. Mantua's Foundation.

Canto Twenty One.

The Fifth Bolgia: Peculators. The Elder of Santa Zita. Malacoda and other Devils.

Canto Twenty Two.

Ciampolo, Friar Gomita, and Michael Zanche. The Malabranche quarrel.

Canto Twenty Three.

Escape from the Malabranche. The Sixth Bolgia: Hypocrites. Catalano and Loderingo. Caiaphas.

Canto Twenty Four.

The Seventh Bolgia: Thieves. Vanni Fucci. Serpents.

Canto Twenty Five.

Vanni Fucci's Punishment. Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, Cianfa de' Donati, and Guercio Cavalcanti.

Canto Twenty Six.

The Eighth Bolgia: Evil Counsellors. Ulysses and Diomed. Ulysses' Last Voyage.

Canto Twenty Seven.

Guido da Montefeltro. His deception by Pope Boniface the Eighth.

Canto Twenty Eight.

The Ninth Bolgia: Schismatics. Mahomet and Ali. Pier da Medicina, Curio, Mosca, and Bertrand de Born.

Canto Twenty Nine.

Geri del Bello. The Tenth Bolgia: Alchemists. Griffolino d' Arezzo and Capocchino.

Canto Thirty.

Other Falsifiers or Forgers. Gianni Schicchi, Myrrha, Adam of Brescia, Potiphar's Wife, and Sinon of Troy.

Canto Thirty One.

The Giants, Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antaeus. Descent to Cocytus.

Canto Thirty Two.

The Ninth Circle: Traitors. The Frozen Lake of Cocytus. First Division, Caina: Traitors to their Kindred. Camicion de' Pazzi. Second Division, Antenora: Traitors to their Country. Dante questions Bocca degli Abati. Buoso da Duera.

Canto Thirty Three.

Count Ugolino and the Archbishop Ruggieri. The Death of Count Ugolino's Sons. Third Division of the Ninth Circle, Ptolomaea: Traitors to their Friends. Friar Alberigo, Branco d' Oria.

Canto Thirty Four.

Fourth Division of the Ninth Circle, the Judecca: Traitors to their Lords and Benefactors. Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. The Chasm of Lethe. The Ascent.

Dante was born in 1265 and he tells us he was born under the sign of Gemini, placing his birthday in June, or late May. As an infant, Dante may have been originally christened 'Durante' in Florence's Baptistery, and the name Dante could be a shortened version of that name.

He was born into the prominent Alighieri family of Florence, with loyalties to the Guelfs, a political alliance that supported the Papacy. His father, Alighiero de Bellincione, was involved in a very complex opposition to the Ghibellines, who were backed by the Holy Roman Emperor. Dante's mother was Donna Bella degli Abati, died when Dante was 5 or 6 years old.

After the defeat of the Ghibellines by the Guelfs in 1289, the Guelfs themselves were divided into White Guelfs, who were wary of Papal influence, and Black Guelfs who continued to support the Papacy. Dante (a White Guelf) pretended that his family descended from the ancient Romans (Inferno, XV, 76), but the earliest relative he can mention by name is Cacciaguida degli Elisei (Paradiso, XV, 135), of no earlier than about 1100.

Not much is known about Dante's education, and it is presumed he studied at home. We know he studied Tuscan poetry, at a time when the Sicilian School (Scuola poetica siciliana).

When he was nine years old he met Beatrice Portinari, the daughter of Folco Portinari, with whom he fell in love "at first sight", and apparently without even having spoken to her. He saw her frequently after age 18, often exchanging greetings in the street, but he never knew her well.

When Dante was 12, in 1277, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, the daughter of Messer Manetto Donati. Dante had several sons with Gemma.

When 18, he met Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia, and soon after Brunetto Latini; together they became the leaders of Dolce Stil Nuovo (The Sweet New Style).

After Beatrice died in 1290, Dante tried to find a refuge in Latin literature. for a time, until he decided to dedicate himself fully, to philosophical studies. He took part in the disputes that the two principal monastic orders (Franciscan and Dominican) publicly or indirectly held in Florence, the former explaining the doctrine of the mystics and of San Bonaventura, the latter presenting Saint Thomas Aquinas' theories. His "excessive" passion for philosophy would later be criticized by Beatrice, in Purgatory.

Dante, like many Florentines of his day, became embroiled in the Guelf-Ghibelline conflict. He fought in the battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289), with Florentine Guelf knights against Arezzo Ghibellines, then in 1294 he was among those knights who escorted Carlo Martello d'Anjou (son of Charles of Anjou) while he was in Florence. After the defeat of the Ghibellines, the Guelfs divided into two factions: the White Guelfs (Guelfi Bianchi), Dante's party, led by Vieri dei Cerchi, and the Black Guelfs (Guelfi Neri), led by Corso Donati.

A new government was installed of Black Guelfs, and Messer Cante dei Gabrielli di Gubbio was named Podestŕ (mayor). Dante was condemned to exile for two years, and to pay a huge amount of money. The poet was still in Rome, where the Pope had "suggested" he stay, and was therefore considered an absconder. He could not pay his fine and was finally condemned to perpetual exile. If he were ever caught by Florentine soldiers, he would have been summarily executed.

The poet took part in several attempts by the White Guelfs to regain the power they had lost, but these failed due to treachery. In 1310 Henry VII of Luxembourg, King of the Romans (Germany), was invading Italy; Dante saw in him the chance of revenge, so he wrote to him, violently inciting them to destroy the Black Guelfs.

In Florence Baldo d'Aguglione pardoned most of the White Guelfs in exile and allowed them to come back; however, Dante had gone beyond the pale in his violent letters to Arrigo (Henry VII), which was held against him. Dante was not recalled.

In 1312, Arrigo assaulted Florence and defeated the Black Guelfs. In 1313 Arrigo died, and with him any residual hope for Dante to see Florence again. He returned to Verona, where Cangrande I della Scala allowed him to live in a certain security and, presumably, in a fair amount of prosperity.

In 1315, Florence was forced by Uguccione della Faggiuola (the military officer controlling the town) to grant an amnesty to people in exile. Dante too was in the list of citizens to be pardoned. But Florence required that, apart from paying a sum of money, these citizens must also agree to be treated as public offenders, and to participate in a religious ceremony. Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile.

When Uguccione finally defeated Florence, Dante's death sentence was converted into confinement, at the sole condition that he go to Florence to swear that he would never enter the town again. When Dante didn't go, his condemnation to death was confirmed and extended to his sons.

Eventually, Florence came to regret Dante's exile. In 1829, a tomb was built for him in Florence in the basilica of Santa Croce. That tomb has been empty ever since, with Dante's body still remaining in its tomb in Ravenna.