How Dante’s Inferno Was a Fiery Act of Political Payback

In the fifth circle of hell, Alighieri and Virgil board a boat to cross the underworld’s River Styx, which is filled with the flailing bodies of the wrathful. Alighieri recognizes one of the souls as Filippo Argenti, a Florentine magnate and a prominent Guelph.

While Alighieri and Argenti were both Guelphs, they were political foes (it’s rumored that Argenti’s brother even stole Alighieri’s land after his exile). This is because after the Guelphs vanquished the Ghibellines in Florence, the group splintered into the Black Guelphs, who still supported the pope, and the White Guelphs, who were wary of the papacy’s governing power.

Alighieri was a White Guelph, Argenti a Black Guelph. The divide between them persisted into the afterlife. In “Inferno,” the hot-tempered Argenti accosts his fellow Florentine and tries to board the boat. The other wrathful souls drag Argenti back into the river as he begins to tear at himself with his own teeth. Alighieri leaves his ranting rival behind: “We left him there; I tell no more of him.”

Alighieri had not seen the last Black Guelph of his journey. As the poet descends deeper into the eighth circle of hell, he reaches a lake of boiling tar filled with fraudulent officials accused of taking bribes for political favors. Keeping the sinners in the piping hot pitch are demons armed with grappling hooks.

According to Cornish, this enclave of hell was particularly important to Alighieri: After the poet was banished from Florence, his adversaries accused him of corruption. “He’s very bitter about that,” Cornish says. “He’s ready to admit a lot of sins, but he really refuted that he was a corrupt politician.” She thinks it’s no coincidence that the demons preventing the Black Guelphs from escaping are often depicted as little black devils.