Setting in Dante's Inferno

In other words, the level of moat-blood is low enough for them to cross the river.

These sinners in the bloody river committed such egregious acts that, as a fitting punishment, they are allowed to emerge only to the level of their throats.

The violent sinners in the river of blood are allowed to emerge by a length equivalent to the gravity of their sins. If they stick their heads or bodies too far above the surface, one of Centaurs shoots an arrow at them to keep them at the proper height above the surface.

Centaurs are half-man, half-horse creatures known for their violence. In this circle of Hell, they patrol the moat, ready to shoot arrows at the sinners in the moat who try to climb out.

Dante and Virgil are entering Circle 7, in which the violent are punished.

The suicides, who are doomed to live as gnarled, stunted trees in the underworld, are constantly attacked and bitten by the Harpies. According to Pier, the bites, which allow blood to escape, offer some relief from their constant suffering.

In this gloomy grove, Dante learns that the trees are actually the embodied souls of those who have committed suicide.

Dante and Virgil enter the second ring of the Seventh Circle, reserved for those who have been violent against themselves, including suicides and those who carelessly destroy their own possessions, squanderers.

Virgil is explaining to Dante that, because the rivers they encounter are circular, every time they come across what appears to be a new river, they are just encountering another section of a river they have seen earlier in their journey.

Lethe, the "river of forgetfulness," is the river in which those souls who are to be reincarnated wash themselves in order to forget their past lives, the memory of which would disturb them once back among the living. 

Dante and Virgil enter the Third Ring of the Seventh Circle, reserved for those who are violent against God. The first group consists of blasphemers.

Still in the Third Ring of the Seventh Circle, Dante and Virgil are on firmer ground than sand, and here they encounter those guilty of sodomy.

The following passage is great example of Dante creating verisimilitude, or the semblance of reality. Dante depicts this area of the underworld in terms that readers who are familiar with Italian geography will be able to visualize.

Dante and Virgil remain in the Seventh Circle but have entered the second zone of the Third Ring, the realm of "other sodomites."

Dante and Virgil arrive in the Third Zone of the Third Ring of the Seventh Circle, an area reserved for sinners guilty of violence against nature and art. Dante identifies this sin with usurers, those who lend money at high interest rates to take advantage of borrowers' distress.

Dante and Virgil have reached the Inferno's eighth circle, which, instead of rings, has ten concentric "pouches," and is where different categories of "ordinary" fraud are punished.  Malebolge means "Evil pouches."

Peschiera—Italian for "fish pond"—is a fortress that stands against the Brescians and Bergamesques where the shore is most exposed by the lake.

Virgil and Dante have reached the Fourth "Pouch" of the Eighth Circle, in which those who claim to know God's intentions, as well as magicians and astrologers, are punished by having their heads turned backwards.

Dante and Virgil have entered the Fifth Pouch of the Eighth Circle, the area in which barrators—corrupt public officials—are tortured.

Pitch in this sentence refers to the "lay of the land," how the terrain looks.

Virgil and Dante are still in the Fifth Pouch of the Eighth Circle. Dante points out that he has seen a group of cavalry successfully moving camp.

Due to the great abyss at the heart of the terrain, each valley has one high bank and one low bank. Thus the overall sequence of valleys declines in elevation.

It is the "nonage," or early part, of the year. Dante and Virgil are still in the Sixth Pouch of the Eighth Circle, realm of the hypocrites.

Dante and Virgil are in the Seventh Pouch of the Eighth Circle, the ditch in which thieves are punished. The sinner in question is Vanni Fucci, who "point[s] in mockery," most likely a crude Italian hand signal in which the mocker places the thumb between the first and middle fingers. This signal, similar to the modern practice of displaying one's middle finger, is an indication of Vanni's lack of respect even as a sinner.

Virgil and Dante are still in the Seventh Pouch of the Eighth Circle, among the thieves. These opening lines are Dante's ironic congratulations to Florence for having sinners from Florence represented in every circle of the Inferno.

Dante and Virgil are still in the Eighth Circle, but now in the Eight Pouch where false counselors are punished, including Guido da Montefeltro.

Dante and Virgil are now in the Ninth Pouch of the Eighth Circle, in which scandal mongers and those who incite sedition are punished.

Dante sees so many sinners with such indescribable wounds that his eyes are nearly "drunk" with the sight. He and Virgil are still in the Ninth Pouch of Circle Eight, among the sowers of discord and scandal.

Dante and Virgil are in the Tenth Pouch of the Eighth Circle, still among the falsifiers.

Monteriggioni is a fortress near Siena whose walls are topped with a series of sixty-foot-tall sentry towers. In its design, it is a typical Tuscan fortified town of the 13th century. Dante uses Monteriggioni as a visual metaphor for the ring of turrets that gird the abyss at the heart of the Ninth Circle.

At first Dante thinks that the giants, who tower over the rim of the central pit, are actually towers. The giants are here because they betrayed their rightful ruler by raging against the gods. They are once-powerful beings who are now powerless to help themselves because God is the ultimate wielder of power. Thus the giants reveal one of the central themes of Dante's Divine Comedy: the importance of attaining to God's will.

Dante and Virgil, their time running short, finally arrive in the Ninth Circle, the central pit of hell. This is the home of the Giants—often known as "Titans"—who tried to overthrow the Greco-Roman gods.

The weight of the whole world's sins is concentrated down onto the dark center of the Ninth Circle.

This part of the Inferno is called Caina. This is where traitors against family are punished. It is named for the biblical Cain, son of Adam, who committed the first murder when he killed his brother Abel.

Dante and Virgil are in the First Ring of the Ninth Circle in which they find those who betrayed their families. The condemned are immersed in ice, their heads bent downward.

Dante laments that he does not have "rough rhymes[...] to suit/That hole of sorrow." By claiming not to possess the poetic power to describe the events at hand, Dante lends the events added reality and horror. This is a technique Dante uses throughout the Divine Comedy.

Cocytus is the last river in the underworld. It is entirely frozen over. In Greek, cocytus means "to lament."

Dante and Virgil are now in Ptolomea, the Third Ring of the Ninth Circle. The ring is named after either of two historically significant men named Ptolemy. The first Ptolemy, who appears in the Hebrew Bible, was a captain of Jericho who gave a feast for the high priest Simon Maccabee and two of his sons. He murdered them all, much like Alberigo did to Manfred and his son. The second Ptolemy is Ptolemy II, the brother of Cleopatra. In 48 BCE, when the Roman general Pompey sought refuge with the Egyptians after his defeat at Pharsalia, Ptolemy had him murdered.

Dante and Virgil have entered the Second Ring of the Ninth Circle and are still among traitors against their country. Next, they enter the Third Ring, home of traitors to their guests.

In Canto 8, Dante and Virgil encounter Dis, the walled city that contains the deepest circles of hell, the 6th through the 9th. In this line, when Virgil exclaims, "'Lo Dis! and lo the place,/Where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength,'" he is referring to Satan. In Roman mythology, Dis—often known as Dis Pater—was a subterranean god of agriculture and mineral wealth. Later, he was absorbed into Pluto and Hades, also subterranean gods. When Dante combined the Greco-Roman and Christian mythological traditions in the Inferno, he conflated Dis, Hades, Lucifer, and Satan into the same figure—the great devil at the bottom of the lowest ring of hell.

Virgil describes the fall of Lucifer from Heaven through the Southern Hemisphere. When Lucifer hit the earth, the displaced earth went to the Northern Hemisphere but left a mountain known as the Mount of Purgatory.

In this and the following lines, Virgil explains to Dante that they have passed through the middle point of the underworld, and now everything is reversed, including time. As a result, they are now twelve hours earlier than they had been before they reached Inferno's center. It is now early evening on the Saturday before Easter Sunday. It is significant that Dante exits Inferno on the eve of Easter. Just as Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday, so too does Dante rise from the Underworld and return to the land of the living.

Virgil's comment is an ironic reference to a 6th-century Christian hymn, “The Standards of the King Advance.” The hymn refers to the cross, an emblem adopted later by the Crusaders for their shields and tabards, the cloak they wore over their armor.

Dante and Virgil have entered the Fourth Ring of the Ninth Circle, also called Judecca, where traitors to their benefactors are punished. Among them is the most notorious traitor in Christian history, Lucifer.

The name Judecca reflects the unfortunate but prevalent anti-Semitism of 13th century. Christian Europeans viewed Jews as the assassins of Christ, a view that led most European countries to restrict Jews to living in specific areas away from the Christian majority.