secrets of eternal life, and how those “Souls for whom a second body is in store” drink from the waters of forgetfulness. In Virgil’s scheme, the virtuous dead are reborn through the device of cleansing their memories, through a vague process of purification at Elysium. Most important of all, however, is the knowledge that the living Aeneas will go on to found Rome and create a line of Caesars.In contrast to the broad landscape of Virgil’s underworld, Dante’s Hell is a more highly structured and directed place and Dante’s entry into the Inferno is the occasion of great fear and anxiety. Dante’s fear is calmed greatly when he learns that his companion is to be the great Latin poet who had himself described the underworld in his own epic:Art thou then that Virgil, that fountain which pours Forth so rich a stream of speech?… O glory and lightOf other poets, let the long study and great love thatHas made me search thy volume avail me. Thou are my Master and my author. (Sinclair, p. 27)After entering hell, Dante leads the reader downward through circles whose degree of damnation is based strictly on the sins committed in life. We learn that Virgil and in fact all the ancients whose lives were unstained by sin (the virtuous pagans) are confined to the first layer of hell, where they go unpunished and suffer only from the knowledge that they missed salvation by an accident of chronology.There are some other resemblance’s between the hell of Virgule and that of Dante, most of which can be attributed to the direct literary influence of the Roman author. The challenges that greet the living visitor to the world of the dead are similar in Dante, and we could draw a comparison to the photos of Dido and Sychaeus in the moving story of Paolo and Francesca, the two lovers whose infidelity condemns them to the eternal frustration. But Dante’s reaction to the scenes before him is much mo...
