The Siege of the City of Dis

The Siege of the City of Dis is the most dramatic and dangerous crisis of the Inferno, the moment when the poets' progress is violently halted and Virgil's authority proves insufficient. At the boundary between upper and lower Hell, the fallen angels of the city refuse entry to a living man, summoning the Furies and threatening Dante with the petrifying gaze of Medusa. Only a messenger from Heaven, walking dry-shod across the Styx, can open the iron gates, revealing that human reason, however noble, cannot overcome the deepest evil without divine intervention.

Causes and Background

The siege erupts at the culmination of the poets' crossing of the Styx. After the boatman Phlegyas ferries them across the marsh of the wrathful, they arrive at the foot of a high tower whose vermilion mosques signal the City of Dis, the capital of lower Hell. The walls appear to be made of iron. More than a thousand fallen angels, "rained down" from Heaven, stand guard at the gates. They angrily demand to know who this living man is who dares to enter the kingdom of the dead without death. Virgil attempts to negotiate alone, but the devils slam the gates in his face, leaving him outside, his forehead shorn of all boldness. He confesses to Dante that he has never before been denied entry, and that they must await a helper who is even now descending the steep without escort.

The Appearance of the Furies and the Threat of Medusa

While Virgil waits, Dante's attention is drawn to the high tower with its red-flaming summit. There, in a moment, he sees three infernal Furies rise up, stained with blood. They have the limbs and mien of women, are begirt with greenest hydras, and have small serpents and cerastes for tresses, entwining their horrid temples. Virgil identifies them: Megaera on the left, Alecto weeping on the right, and Tisiphone between them. Each rends her breast with her nails and beats herself with her palms, crying so loudly that Dante presses close to the Poet in dread. The Furies shout for Medusa, the Gorgon, to come and turn Dante to stone, crying out that they should have avenged themselves on Theseus for his assault on Hell. Virgil immediately commands Dante to turn around and keep his eyes shut, and he himself covers Dante's eyes with his own hands, trusting not to the pilgrim's own. The poet then inserts a direct address to the reader: "O ye who have undistempered intellects, / Observe the doctrine that conceals itself / Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses!" — a rare moment of meta-commentary that signals the allegorical weight of this confrontation.

The Arrival of the Heavenly Messenger

As the threat of Medusa hangs in the air, a tremendous sound crosses the turbid waves, a clangour of terror that makes both margins tremble. It is like an impetuous wind that smites a forest, rending branches and putting wild beasts and shepherds to flight. Virgil then looses Dante's eyes and directs his vision to where the smoke is most intense. The damned souls flee like frogs before a serpent, more than a thousand of them, from before one who walks across the Styx with soles unwet. He fans the unctuous air from his face with his left hand, seeming weary only with that anguish. Dante perceives at once that this is one sent from Heaven. The messenger reaches the gate and, with a little rod, opens it without resistance. He rebukes the fallen angels: "O banished out of Heaven, people despised! / Whence is this arrogance within you couched? / Wherefore recalcitrate against that will, / From which the end can never be cut off, / And which has many times increased your pain?" He reminds them of their Cerberus, who still bears his chin and gullet peeled from Hercules' chains. Then he returns along the miry road, speaking no word to the poets, his look preoccupied with other cares.

Consequences and Aftermath

With the gate opened, the poets enter the city without any contest. Inside, Dante sees an ample plain full of distress and torment. The landscape is covered with open sepulchres, scattered with flames that heat them so intensely that iron would not need more art. From these tombs issue dire laments. Virgil explains that these are the Heresiarchs and their disciples of all sects, buried with like together with like, the monuments heated more or less according to their guilt. The siege thus marks the transition from the sins of incontinence to the more deliberate sins of malice and fraud, and establishes that the lower circles of Hell are guarded by forces that human reason alone cannot overcome. The event also deepens the relationship between the two poets: Dante sees Virgil fail, then recover through faith in a higher power, and the pilgrim himself is protected from the ultimate threat of petrification by his guide's physical intervention.