Aruns

Aruns is a soothsayer from the hills of Luni in Etruria, condemned to the Fourth Bolgia of Malebolge in Dante's Inferno for the sin of attempting to foresee the future. His punishment is a grotesque physical distortion: his head is twisted completely around to face his back, forcing him to walk eternally backward, a contrapasso that mocks his presumptuous desire to see what lay ahead in time.

Identity and Background

Aruns is identified by Virgil as a soothsayer who dwelt in a cavern among the white marbles of Luni, a region in the hills above the modern-day Carrara. From this cave, he could observe the stars and the sea, a vantage point he used for his divinatory arts. Virgil describes him as "he who backs the other's belly," a reference to his position in the line of penitents, and notes that his cavern was located "among the marbles white." The text specifies that his abode was in the hills of Luni, "there where grubs the Carrarese who houses underneath," indicating the area's marble quarries.

Punishment and Contrapasso

In the Fourth Bolgia, the soothsayers are punished by having their heads twisted backward on their bodies, so that they must walk forever facing the direction from which they came. Virgil explains that this is because they "wished to see too far before him" — a direct inversion of their earthly sin of attempting to foresee the future. The contrapasso is described in vivid detail: "From chin to the beginning of the chest" each shade is distorted, and "tow'rds the reins the countenance was turned, and backward it behoved them to advance, as to look forward had been taken from them." The weeping of their eyes bathes their hinder parts, a detail that underscores the unnaturalness of their posture.

Narrative Role and Significance

Aruns is one of several soothsayers named by Virgil in Canto XX, including Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Manto, Eryphylus, Michael Scott, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente. His inclusion serves to illustrate the broader category of those who, in life, sought to pierce the veil of divine knowledge through forbidden arts. Virgil's reproach to Dante for weeping at their plight — "Here pity lives when it is wholly dead" — reinforces the poem's moral framework: divine justice is not to be questioned or mourned. Aruns's punishment, like that of his fellow soothsayers, is a permanent, physical emblem of the folly of attempting to know what God has reserved for himself.