Inferno 14

Study Guide Questions for Canto 14

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Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find them in the Text)

Justice, Arrogance, Revenge

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. What was the scenery like as Dante and Virigil entered “the third round?”

2. What were the three different “rules” which guided the punishment of souls in this region?

3. To what did Dante compare the fire falling upon the souls in the third round?

4. How was Capaneus behaving when Dante and Virgil met him there?

5. What was “remarkable” about the river Dante and Virgil came across in Hell?

6. What was Mount Ida used for by Rhea according to Dante?

7. How is the “Old Man” described by Dante?

8. What is said to come from the Old Man?

9. What did Virgil tell Dante concerning the river Lethe?

Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)

1. Why might there have been “different rules” that the various “naked souls” were subject to in this place?

2. Why is someone like Caperneus in this section of Hell where the punishment is for those who did violence against God?

3. Why is the “huge Old Man” staring at “Rome as at his looking glass?”

4. What is the significance of the “Old Man” being made of different materials?

5. What should we make of the fact that the rivers in Hell are from the tears of the “Old Man?” What is Dante trying to say by this?

6. Given that Lethe is the river of forgetting, why might it not be in Hell but “where the spirits go to bathe when their repented sins are wiped away?”

Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)

1. Dante refers to the scene of things in the third round as a “fearful work of justice.” What is the relationship between fear and justice? Can justice exist apart from fear? Why or why not?

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. Read Daniel 2:31-45. What connection is there between Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and the Old Man in Canto 14? How does this affect your thinking about what Dante is doing here?