Thunder breaks the sleep in Dante's brain. He stands on the brink of a lamentable vale, dark, deep, and thick with clouds, and cannot see the bottom. Virgil, pale of look, says they must descend into the blind world: he first, Dante next. Dante reads the colour as dread. Virgil says the anguish of the race below stains his cheek with pity, which Dante mistook for fear. They enter the first circle. No plaint, only sighs that tremble the air. Men, women, and infants. These were blameless of sin, Virgil says, yet baptism was not theirs, or they lived before the Gospel and served not God aright. Among such is Virgil himself. They are lost for those defects only, living desiring without hope.
Dante asks if anyone ever left. Virgil was new to that estate when a puissant one arrived, crowned, and drew out the first parent, Abel, Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, Israel, Rachel, and many more. Before these, no spirit of human kind was saved. They walk a wood of spirits. A flame shines. Four mighty shades greet Virgil: Homer with a falchion, Horace, Ovid, Lucan. They make Dante a sixth amid so learned a band. At a castle seven times walled, with a stream and seven gates, they enter a fresh meadow. Electra, Hector, Aeneas, Caesar, Camilla, Latinus, Lavinia, Brutus, Lucretia, Marcia, Julia, Cornelia, and the Soldan apart. Then the master of the sapient throng with Socrates and Plato nearest, and a long train of thinkers down to Averroes.
Of all to speak at full were vain. The six associates part. Virgil leads him from that air serene into a climate ever vexed with storms, to a part where no light shines.
