The Rain of Fire — Divine Comedy

Pride burns hotter than the falling fire. Dante gathers the last scattered leaves for the suicide he just spoke with, then steps with Virgil to the edge of the third ring: a plain of arid sand. Three postures of suffering fill it: lying flat, crouching, pacing without end. Fire drifts down like Alpine snow and every pair of hands beats it off. One figure sprawls in the centre, unmoved. He answers before Dante can ask: same defiant man in life and death, daring Jove to exhaust his blacksmiths and still not break him. Virgil raises his voice: your unquenched rage is the torment; the fire is just the backdrop. Capaneus says nothing that suggests he heard. They reach a crimson brook where the fire dies above it. Virgil calls it the most worthy sight since Hell's gate, then explains the source: a giant statue on Crete, gold head to clay foot, cracked through every metal but the crown. Tears from those fissures have been forming Hell's rivers all along: Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus at the bottom. Dante asks which river stands before them. Virgil: the red seething brook is Phlegethon itself. Lethe is not here; it is above, where penitent souls go to wash. Quit the wood. Walk the margin. The fire cannot reach you there.