![]() “For I had lost the path that does not stray. At the start of Canto I, Virgil is sent by God to escort him through the halls of Hells, so that he may find his way again. Unlike Aeneas, Dante enters the pathway to Hell at the midpoint of his life, lost in personal crisis, and unsure of the spiritual road to follow. In Book VI of The Aeneid, Virgil uses the Underworld to trace Rome’s history back to the heroes of the Trojan War. Venus, his goddess mother, and the Sibyl, a prophetess of Apollo, guides Aeneas in his journey. Aeneas learns in a dream that he must travel to the Underworld and visit his father before a homeland for his people can be established in Italy. The poems differ in intention with The Inferno focusing on Dante’s voyage of self discovery, search for a Christian concept of the Underworld, while The Aeneid’s intent was to glorify and celebrate the history of Rome, and the importance of fate.Īlthough there are countless parallels in Dante and Aeneas’ journeys to the Underworld, they follow divergent trajectories that set the tone for the Underworlds created. Both poems are populated by figures from ancient Greek and Roman mythology and share similar structure and imagery for the exploration of the Underworld by living protagonists. Although Dante derives his account from Virgil’s writings of the Underworld, it is only a base to which he adapts and develops. ![]() Dante shapes his perception of Hell from Aeneas’ journey to Dis in Book VI of Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid. Dante filled this vacuum by creating a detailed and gruesome depiction of Hell where sinners are punished for the crimes they commit against the Christian God. Before Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, the residence of the soul’s afterlife was speculative and enigmatic. While physical life is transient, the notion of the immortality of the soul is central to Christianity.
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