Inferno · Canto VIII ·
Inferno VIII — Phlegyas Skiff
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 8 of 100 · Inferno, Canto VIII
Before reading
This is the crossing of the Styx and the arrival at the walls of the city of Dis. The architecture of Hell is about to change. Up to now, Virgil has been able to talk every gatekeeper into letting them pass. Here, for the first time, that authority fails. The pilgrim and his guide are stopped at a wall — and the canto closes with them stranded on the wrong side of it.
Where the canto sits
The canto belongs structurally with the next. Cantos VIII and IX form a single dramatic unit, the crisis at the walls of Dis, which marks the division between upper and lower Hell. Upper Hell (circles 1–5) was the realm of incontinence — sins of appetite. Lower Hell, behind the walls of the city of Dis, is the realm of malice — sins of deliberate harm done to others. Two different kinds of evil, two different architectures, two different relationships to the divine order. The walls are not just the next obstacle; they are the boundary line between the lesser and the greater damnation. The canto reads, accordingly, more like a siege than a circle-survey.
What it helps to know
The ferryman of the Styx is Phlegyas, a figure from Greek myth — a king of the Lapiths who, in revenge for Apollo's rape of his daughter, burned down the temple at Delphi and was struck dead and consigned to the underworld. Virgil mentions him in Aeneid VI as a warning shade. Dante installs him here as the ferryman of the wrathful — the right kind of figure to row across the Styx, since wrath is the sin he died for.
The single named soul of the canto is Filippo Argenti — a Florentine of the Adimari family, a man Dante seems to have hated personally. The Adimari were Black Guelphs; they took possession of Dante's confiscated property after his exile; the personal animus is well-grounded. He is one of the very few souls in Hell on whom the pilgrim gloats, and the gloating is set into the canto so plainly that the reader is meant to notice it.
The city of Dis is named after one of the Latin titles of Pluto, god of the underworld. Inside the walls, Dante locates the lower circles of Hell — the heretics in canto X, the violent in cantos XII–XVII, the fraudulent in cantos XVIII–XXX, the treacherous in cantos XXXI–XXXIV. The walls are guarded by the fallen angels — those who rebelled with Lucifer at the beginning of time. They are theologically the most senior demons in Hell, and the only ones whose rebellion against God was witting and complete. The canto is being careful: Virgil's authority works on the pagan officials he himself helped invent, but it does not work on Christian rebels. The poem is announcing its limits.
The mosques the pilgrim sees inside the city walls is a striking image. To call Dis a city of mosques was, in 1300, to call it a Saracen city — to mark its inhabitants as religiously other. The medieval Christian reader would have read it as a layered indictment: the deepest Hell is built like the cities of the infidels, and is more dangerous than they are.
What to read for
Notice the change of register. Up to canto VII, Virgil has been calmly authoritative. Here he is furious, and at the close of the canto he is frightened. The colour of his speech is being given to us deliberately. Listen for it.
Notice Dante's behaviour with Filippo Argenti. The pilgrim is, briefly, ugly. He insults the soul; he enjoys the soul's torment; Virgil praises him for it. The exchange is one of the Commedia's most morally exposed moments. The reader is being asked: do you also praise it?
The canto ends with a withholding. The walls do not open. Virgil does not return triumphant. A figure is announced who has not yet arrived but is coming. The poem is doing what it did at the end of canto III — closing on a threshold yet to be crossed, with the reader stranded between cantos.
From here on: illustrations and analysis. The three images below are scenes from the canto, and after them comes the close reading — famous lines quoted in full, paradoxes explained, political and theological freight unpacked. If you have not yet read the canto, stop here — read it, then come back.
After reading
What the canto did
The canto stages the first failure of Virgil's authority. The pilgrim crosses the Styx in Phlegyas's skiff, meets and humiliates Filippo Argenti in the swamp, sees the city of Dis rising over the dark water with its mosques vermilion as if issuing from the fire, lands at the threshold of the city walls — and is refused entry. The fallen angels close the gates in Virgil's face. The canto ends with the guide stranded on the wrong side of his own authority, the pilgrim terrified, and the resolution of the crisis deferred to canto IX. Up to this point the Inferno has been a guided descent. From the walls of Dis onward it will be a descent that has to be earned at each level. The structural change is announced not by an explanation but by the slam of a door.
Phlegyas and the wrathful ferry
The ferryman of the Styx is Phlegyas, a figure from Aeneid VI where Virgil placed him as a warning shade for those who would scorn the gods. Phlegyas in the myth burned the temple at Delphi in revenge for Apollo's violation of his daughter. He died wrathful and Dante's Hell rewards him with the right office — ferryman of the circle of wrath. Notice that Virgil silences him not with the formula of Acheron and Minos, not with the mud of Cerberus, not with the theological imperative used on Plutus, but with a sharp courtroom rebuke: Phlegyas, Phlegyas, thou criest out in vain for this once. The escalation of voice is the canto's first sign that the upper-Hell methods are running out.
Dante's hatred of Filippo Argenti
The single named soul of the canto is the only figure in Hell on whom the pilgrim openly gloats. Filippo Argenti — a Florentine of the Adimari family, a Black Guelph, the man whose family seized Dante's confiscated house and goods after his exile — rises full of mud from the swamp and demands to know who the pilgrim is, that comest ere the hour. Dante's answer is contemptuous; the soul recognises him; the soul reaches for the boat; the soul is repelled, and the pilgrim says — to Virgil — much should I be pleased, if I could see him soused into this broth, before we issue forth out of the lake. Virgil's response is the morally most dangerous line in the canto: blessed be she who bore thee in her bosom. The teacher praises the student for the cruelty. A moment later, when the other wrathful tear Argenti apart in the water, the narrator records: still I praise and thank my God for it.
Two readings of the scene have circulated for seven hundred years. The straightforward one: righteous indignation against arrogance is itself a virtue, and the pilgrim's hatred of Argenti is a healthy form of justice. The more searching one: the canto is showing the pilgrim — and through him the reader — in the act of being seduced by Hell's own logic. The wrathful are punished for wrath; the pilgrim watches them, and joins them in wrath, and is praised for it. The canto names what the praise is doing without explaining it. The episode is set immediately before the failure at the gates of Dis. The juxtaposition is the argument: the moment the pilgrim begins to enjoy damnation is the moment the architecture of damnation begins to refuse him.
The mosques of Dis
The city the pilgrim sees from the swamp is described in one of the Inferno's most striking small images: its mosques already, Master, clearly within there in the valley I discern, vermilion, as if issuing from the fire. To call the buildings of the lower city mosques is to mark it, for a medieval Christian reader, as the city of the religious other — the urban architecture of the Saracen world. The vermilion glow is the eternal fire of lower Hell heating the metal of the buildings from within. The image fuses three layers of fear at once: classical (the city of Dis), Christian (the place of the eternally damned), and contemporary (the cities of Islam). The medieval reader would have read all three at the same time. The deepest Hell is built like the cities the medieval Christian most feared — and is more dangerous than they are.
The fallen angels and the second great refusal
The gatekeepers at the wall are more than a thousand at the gates… out of the Heavens rained down. These are the angels who rebelled with Lucifer at the beginning of time, the most senior demons of Hell and the only ones whose disobedience was witting and complete. Virgil's authority does not work on them. He goes forward to parley; they make him a private offer; he comes back to Dante with footsteps far between, his colour gone, and says — almost to himself — think, Reader, if I was discomforted at utterance of the accursed words; for never to return here I believed. The aside to the reader is unusual. Virgil is afraid. The canto wants the reader to register that the guide is afraid.
Virgil's recovery is to remember the precedent: for once they used it at less secret gate, which finds itself without a fastening still. He is referring to the Harrowing of Hell — Christ's descent between Crucifixion and Resurrection, when the outer gate of Hell (the one whose inscription opened canto III) was burst open and finds itself without a fastening still. The fallen angels tried then to refuse Christ and failed. They will fail this time too — but not by Virgil's hand. One by whose means the city shall be opened is already descending. The canto closes on this announced but not yet arrived figure. The resolution is in the next canto.
Famous and meaningful passages
The unusual opening.
I say, continuing, that long before We to the foot of that high tower had come, Our eyes went upward to the summit of it, (Inf. VIII.1–3)
Io dico, seguitando — I say, continuing. The only canto in the Inferno that opens by reaching back to the previous canto's last image. A textual hinge between cantos VII and VIII, possibly the seam where Dante resumed composition after the exile interrupted him.
Phlegyas arrives.
Come o'er the water tow'rds us at that moment, Under the guidance of a single pilot, Who shouted, Now art thou arrived, fell soul? (Inf. VIII.16–18)
The ferryman of the wrathful greets every approaching soul as a damned one. He is mistaken about the pilgrim; the mistake will become Virgil's third method of override.
The escalation.
Phlegyas, Phlegyas, thou criest out in vain For this once, said my Lord; thou shalt not have us Longer than in the passing of the slough. (Inf. VIII.19–21)
The courtroom voice. Virgil names the gatekeeper twice and confines him to a single transit. The authority is sharper than it was at Acheron; it is also more strained.
The hatred.
With weeping and with wailing, Thou spirit maledict, do thou remain; For thee I know, though thou art all defiled. (Inf. VIII.37–39)
The pilgrim's first explicit insult to a damned soul. The note is the recognition — for thee I know — that the personal history is being acted out in Hell.
The praise.
He kissed my face, and said: Disdainful soul, Blessed be she who bore thee in her bosom. That was an arrogant person in the world; (Inf. VIII.43–45)
Virgil blesses the pilgrim for his contempt. The moment the Commedia most invites the reader to enjoy a damnation, and the moment most exposed to later moral scrutiny.
The pleasure.
My Master, much should I be pleased, If I could see him soused into this broth, Before we issue forth out of the lake. (Inf. VIII.52–54)
The pilgrim asking for an extra. The grammar is unmistakable: he wants to enjoy this.
The reward.
A little after that, I saw such havoc Made of him by the people of the mire, That still I praise and thank my God for it. (Inf. VIII.58–60)
The narrator, years after the fact, recording that he still praises God for it. The reader is being shown a permanent state, not a moment.
The city revealed.
Its mosques already, Master, clearly Within there in the valley I discern Vermilion, as if issuing from the fire (Inf. VIII.70–72)
The lower Hell as a Saracen city heated from within. One of the Inferno's most layered single images.
The rebels.
More than a thousand at the gates I saw Out of the Heavens rained down, who angrily Were saying, Who is this that without death (Inf. VIII.82–84)
The fallen angels named as the only gatekeepers Virgil cannot speak past.
The closed door.
They closed the portals, those our adversaries, On my Lord's breast, who had remained without And turned to me with footsteps far between. (Inf. VIII.115–117)
The door on his chest. Footsteps far between — Virgil's slow, defeated return. One of the most quietly devastating small images in the Commedia.
The remembered harrowing.
For once they used it at less secret gate, Which finds itself without a fastening still. O'er it didst thou behold the dead inscription; (Inf. VIII.125–127)
The gate of canto III named again, by way of the Harrowing. Virgil's reassurance is built on Christ's precedent.
The unnamed messenger.
And now this side of it descends the steep, Passing across the circles without escort, One by whose means the city shall be opened. (Inf. VIII.128–130)
The figure who will arrive in canto IX, announced here without name and without face. Hell will be opened by an authority Virgil does not possess.
What to watch for
Watch the pilgrim's complicity. Canto VIII is the first time he openly enjoys a damnation. Watch how often, in later cantos, his sympathy for a soul is followed by his sliding into the soul's own mode of error. The Commedia is teaching the reader to read his responses as a moral instrument.
Watch the figure announced at the close. The Heavenly Messenger of canto IX is the second great externally-sent figure to intervene in the journey, after the chain of Beatrice → Lucia → Mary in canto II. Hell, like Heaven, has its delegated authorities.
Watch the change of architecture. From canto IX onward the geography of Hell is increasingly built — walls, towers, bridges, ditches, fortifications. Upper Hell was weather; lower Hell is engineering. The shift is doctrinal: malice is a built sin in a way appetite is not.
This post is part of Reading Divine Comedy, a slow daily companion to Dante's Commedia in the Longfellow translation — read one canto at a time, with a short orientation before and a close reading after. From Inferno I to Paradiso XXXIII.