The Architecture of Evil — Divine Comedy

They come to the utmost verge of a high bank, craggy rocks around, woes more cruel still stowed beneath. To shun the fetid breath from the abyss, they stand retired behind the lid of a great monument. The scroll names Pope Anastasius, whom Photinus drew from the right path. Virgil says they must delay the descent until the sense is accustomed. Dante asks some compensation, that the time past not be wholly lost. Virgil's thoughts already tend that way.

Within these rocks are three close circles, each full of accursed spirits. Of all malicious act abhorred in heaven, the end is injury, by force or fraud. Fraud, man's peculiar evil, displeases God more, so the fraudulent endure the severer pang. The violent occupy the first circle, in three rounds: against neighbour, against self, against God. Slayers and robbers take the first. Whoever deprives himself of life and light, or wastes his talent, takes the second. The inmost round seals blasphemy, contempt of nature, Sodom and Cahors. Fraud against those who withhold strict confidence breaks Nature's bond: flatterers, thieves, simoniacs, seducers. Fraud that also breaks special faith consumes the traitor at the dread seat of Dis.

Dante asks why the incontinent suffer outside the fire-illumined city. The ethic page names incontinence, malice, and mad brutishness: incontinence least offends, so less vengeance falls outside these walls. Then the knot of usury. Art follows Nature as a learner in the instructor's step, second in descent from God. The usurer sets both at nought, placing elsewhere his hope. Follow now. Pisces play along the horizon. The Wain lies over the north-west. Ahead is their steep passage down the rocky height.