Virgil The Aeneid and Dante The Inferno - Essay Example

The depth of these circles and zones reveals the weight of judgment placed on different sins, according to the moral beliefs in Dante’s society. In The Aeneid, Virgil presents several characters in better light, where they are treated as victims of their fates; on the contrary, in Inferno, Dante depicts the same characters as true sinners, who deserve their tragic experiences and endings. In The Aeneid, Virgil portrays several characters in the underworld, where they either deserve their fates or are better off in death.

Dido, for instance, is the hurt, bitter, scorned woman, who no longer pays attention to Aeneas. When Aeneas sees the Ghost of Dido, he feels guilty that she committed suicide because of him: “Unwilling I forsook your friendly state,/Commanded by the gods, and forc'd by fate-/Those gods, that fate, whose unresisted might/ Have sent me to these regions void of light” (Virgil Book 6). For him, he only follows what the gods tell him, without considering the consequences on other people. Dido, instead of seeing and speaking with Aeneas, prefers to follow her husband’s shade.

In The Aeneid, Virgil also describes evil characters for the wickedness that they possess, but without necessarily blaming their identities for their fates. In Book 8, Cacus is mentioned as an evil half-man and half-beast. Hercules beats Cacus, however, which means that the people, whom Cacus killed, get their justice too. Virgil does not stress that the people enjoyed this brutal killing, even if Cacus deserves his fate. It suggests that outside forces also interplay with individual factors to explain what happens to people and other creatures.

Another character of questionable virtues is King Diomedes. In The Aeneid, King Diomedes is shown as a king, who is tired of war. He resists joining King Latinus in fighting Aeneas. For Virgil in The Aeneid, these people are also products of their fates, fates that the gods shaped for them, whether they liked it or not. In The Aeneid, these characters are not always directly held responsible for their fates, but they are described as sinful beings that deserve Hell in Inferno. Dante depicts them as true sinners, who warrant their tragic experiences or endings.

He finds Ulysses and Diomedes in the eighth zone, where fraudulent people are housed. Ulysses shares the same tongue of flame with Diomedes. They experience joint punishment, because of numerous exploits that they pursued together. Ulysses narrates his errant story to Dante, which is quite far from the adventures of Odysseus, his Greek hero version. In Inferno, Ulysses admits that he wants to forsake his family and people, because he was not pleased to perform his duties to his family and country.

He wants adventure, so he gathers his crew and set sail again. He goes beyond the boundaries of human journeying until, in the gloom of the Mount of Purgatory, he and his crew die in a violent whirlpool. In Inferno, Virgil explains the three offenses that Ulysses and Diomedes committed: designing and implementing the ruse of the wooden horse, which is a superficial gift that contains hidden Greek soldiers and resulted to the destruction of Troy; enticing Achilles and engaging him to join the war, and because of this, Achilles abandons Deidamia and their son; and stealing the Palladium, which is a statue of Athena that protects the city of Troy.

Ulysses and Diome