Circle 2: Canto 5 Flashcards
Circle 2:
Lust
‘Minos stands there,…
‘Minos stands there, horrifyingly and growls’
‘Love brought us…
‘Love brought us to one death’
‘a Galehaut was…
‘a Galehaut was the book and he who wrote it: that day we read no more of it’
‘and i fell…
‘and i fell the way a dead body falls’
Circle 2: Lust
Tossed about by vicious winds, the spirits within this circle are guilty of lust, a sin that for many led to adultery and, for at least some of the most famous - Dido, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Achilles, Paris, and Tristan - to a violent death.
Minos
Dante’s Minos may be a combination of two figures of this name, one the grandfather of the other and both rulers of Crete; admired for his wisdom and the laws of his kingdom, the older Minos, son of Zeus and Europa, was know as the ‘favorite of the gods.’ This reputation earned him the office, following his death, of supreme judge of the underworld. The second Minos, grandson of the first imposed a harsh penalty on the Athenians (who had killed his son Androgeos), demanding an annual tribute of fourteen youths (seven boys and seven girls), who were sacrificed to the Minotaur, the hybrid monster lurking in the labrynth built by Daedalus.
Minos’s long tail, which he wraps around his body a number of times equal to the soul’s assigned circle of Hell is Dante’s invention.
Semiramis
wife of king Nimrod, a powerful Assyrian queen alleged (by the Christian historian Orosius) to have been so perverse that she made even incest a legal practice. She was said to have been killed by an illegitimate son.
Dido
queen of Carthage and widow of Sychaeus, committed suicide after her lover Aeneas abandoned her to continue his mission to establish a new civilization in Italy.
Cleopatra
the beautiful queen of Egypt, took her own life to avoid capture by Octavian (the future emperor of Augustus), who had defeated her lover Mark Antony (she had previously been the lover of Julius Caesar).
Helen
wife of Menalaus (king of Sparta), was said to have been the cause of the Trojan war: acclaimed as the most beautiful mortal woman, she was abducted by Paris and brought to Troy as his mistress. She betrayed the Trojans including her new husband (Deiphobus married Helen after Paris was killed in the war), by helping the Greeks carry out their attack.
Paris
Abducted Helen of Troy from her husband Menalaus causing the Trojan war.
Achilles
The ‘great Achilles’ was the most formidable Greek hero in the war against the Trojans. He was killed by Paris, according to medieval accounts, after being tricked into entering the temple of Apollo to meet the Trojan princess Polyxena.
Tristan
nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, and Iseult (Mark’s fiancee) became lovers after they mistakenly drank the magic potion intended for Mark and Iseult. Mark shot Tristan with a poisoned arrow and the wounded man then clenched his lover so tightly that they died in one another’s arms.
Francesca and Paolo
Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta are punished together in the second circle for their adultery. Informed of a liaison, Francesca’s husband and Paolo’s brother Gianciotto (‘Crippled John’), catches them together in her bedroom. Unaware that Paolo had become stuck as he tried to escape through a trapdoor, she let her husband enter the room. Gianciotto lunged at Paolo with a sword, but Francesca stepped between the two men and was killed instead, much to the dismay of her husband, who then promptly finished off Paolo. Gianciotto is said to be in Caina, a lower infernal realm named after Cain, who killed his brother Abel. Francesca and Paolo were reading Galehaut, which she attributes this temptation.
