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The As Dante travels with the poet Virgil in the early contos of the inferno, readers doubtless begin to sense how deep the divine comedy

promises to be, a journey from the lowliest and coldest pits of hell to the farthest and warmest

reaches of heaven, written by perhaps the greatest medieval mind to ever exist. The comedy proves

to be nothing short of indescribable in its brilliance, beauty, and, since the medieval mind is marked by intricacy, complexity.

Not one word is haphazardly chosen.

Not one image invoked by the author is invoked on accident.

And not one character is placed into his role arbitrarily.

Everything has its place, and everything plays the part assigned him by Dante.

Everything therefore means something.

And the reader who wishes to plumb the full depths of Dante's genius would do well to try

and find all of those different meanings.

For example, let us ask what it means for Virgil to take Dante into the second circle of hell,

past the limbo of the virtuous pagans and children dead in infancy, and show him that the judge of the dead,

who proclaims sentence on those who must suffer torment,

is the old king of Crete, Minos.

Why Minos?

Why is it fitting for Dante to place him as the one who pronounces the circle assigned to each soul

and then cast him into that circle himself?

In answer, it will be best to remember Minos' story.

Minos was said to be one of the first men to ever live. His throne was in Nosis on the island of Crete,

where he reigned over many of the islands in the Aegean Sea. According to the myth, he was a wise man

...