Dante's Inferno, seventh circle.

It's the circle of violence.

The circle of violence has three sub-circles or rings, which punish three different types of violence.

Violence against others.

Violence against self.

Violence against nature.

Each ring has its own dismal landscape.

Those who in life were violent against others are immersed to varying degrees in a river of seething blood.

Those who committed violence against self by suicide

have become twigs, shrubs, and trees

in the second ring somber thicket.

Those who offended nature, and therefore God himself,

find themselves in an open pit of combustible sand

exposed to flakes of fire that rain down on them from above.

Ain't too cool.

This third ring, in turn, divides into three different types of violence against God and nature, blasphemy, sodomy, and usury.

Hmm, I wonder who's down there in that scorching pit.

Stay tuned, friends, part four of our series on Dante's characters coming up.

I'll remember. series on Dante's characters coming up. The character at the center of today's show was a historical person and well-known citizen of Florence.

He's located in the second zone of the third ring of the seventh circle among the sodomites.

Before we turn to him, some historical and biographical background will help us make sense of Dante's willingness to place in hell some of the most respected Florentines of his time. It has a lot to do with Dante's

involvement in the turbulent factionalism of late 13th century Florence. The politics of medieval Italy was dominated by two main parties,

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