Here, they run into the hypocrites who are forced to stand clothed in robes of lead. Afraid of the demons, Dante and Virgil escape by crossing into the sixth pouch, where the demons cannot follow. When the sinister demons see that he is sent by God, the head demon, Malacoda, tells Virgil that the nearest bridge has been broken and so assigns ten demons to escort him to the next bridge.

As Dante and Virgil traverse the fifth pouch, in which barrators (or corrupt politicians) are forked by demons and plunged into a river of boiling pitch, Virgil bravely approaches the ruthless demons and demands safe passage across the river. The soul of Pope Nicholas III mistakes Dante (understandably, because he canвЂ™t see him) for his successor and DanteвЂ™s hated enemy, Pope Boniface VIII, come to replace him in punishment. When Dante and Virgil reach the third pouch where simonists (people who use money to get high positions in the Church) are buried headfirst in the ground while their feet roast in flames, Dante works up the courage to speak to one of the sinners. The eighth circle contains ten pouches, each containing different types of sinners. When Dante comes back, they mount Geryon and ride the beast during the descent into the eighth circle. Virgil stays to talk with the beast while urging Dante to look at the last of the Violent sinners. Dante, at VirgilвЂ™s command, summons the beast Geryon from the depths with a cord wrapped around his waist. Finally, Dante and Virgil ready themselves to cross to the eighth circle. Then the final two circles will include all the sinners of ordinary fraud and treacherous fraud. The seventh circle will show all the violent sinners. Everything Dante has witnessed so far has fallen under the first category. We soon learn that all human sins are divided into three big categories: incontinence (or lacking self-control), violence, and fraud. As they cross from the sixth to the seventh circle, where the Violent are punished, Virgil finally begins explaining the layout of Hell. Dante talks to Farinata degli Uberti, who predicts that Dante will have difficulty returning to Florence from exile.

After passing the city of Dis, our dynamic duo enters the sixth circle, where the Heretics lay in fiery tombs. This means that instead of continuing on with the journey, Dante and Virgil must wait for an angel to come down and force open the gates for them. Now at the gates of a city called Dis, Virgil takes it upon himself to persuade the demon guards to let them pass. While they are crossing the Styx, a sinner named Filippo Argenti reaches out to Dante (presumably for help), but Dante angrily rejects him. The next stop on the tour is the fifth circle, where the Wrathful and Sullen are immersed in the muddy river Styx. Virgil leads Dante on to the fourth circle, where the Avaricious (greedy people) and Prodigal (reckless spenders) roll heavy weights in endless circles. Dante talks to the glutton Ciacco, a famous Florentine, who prophesies disaster for Florence. Dante then awakes in the third circle, where the Gluttonous sinners suffer under a cold and filthy rain. Dante speaks to the soul of Francesca da Rimini, a woman who was stuck in a loveless, arranged marriage and committed adultery when she fell in love with a dashing youth named Paolo. In the second circle, lustful sinners are tossed around by endless storms. Virgil resides here, along with a bunch of other Greek and Roman poets. The first circle of Hell (Limbo), considered pre-Hell, just contains all of the unbaptized and good people born and before the coming of Christ, who obviously couldnвЂ™t be saved by him. For the rest of the Inferno, Virgil takes Dante on a guided tour of Hell, through all its nine circles and back up into the air of the mortal world. And voila! Virgil to the rescue! HeвЂ™s an appropriate guide because heвЂ™s very much like Dante, a fellow writer and famous poet. When asked why in hell (pun intended) he came, Virgil answers that the head honchos of Heaven-the Virgin Mary and Santa Lucia-felt sorry for Dante and asked the deceased love-of-DanteвЂ™s-life, Beatrice, to send someone down to help him. Just as three wild animals threaten to attack him, Dante is rescued by the ghost of Virgil, a celebrated Roman poet and also DanteвЂ™s idol. The Inferno follows the wanderings of the poet Dante as he strays off the rightful and straight path of moral truth and gets lost in a dark wood.

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