Inferno 4

Study Guide Questions for Canto Four

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

Beauty

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. What did Dante see in his guide which he mistook for fear?

2. What did Dante hear as they entered the “first belt circling the abyss?”

3. According to Virgil, what accounted for the kind of people whom they found there?

4. What questions did Dante ask concerning those who dwelt in Limbo?

5. What was Virgil’s reply to Dante?

6. Into what “academy” and whose company was Dante inducted?

7. How are the castle and its grounds described?

8. Who was described as “sitting by himself?”

9. Who stood nearest to “the master of all those who know?”

10. What did Dante say as to why he gave “no reckoning of” all the people he met there?

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

1. Should we make anything, interpretively, out of the fact that Dante seems to have slept through the ferry ride across the Acheron?

2. Why are there “no wails, but only sighs” in Limbo?

3. Why would the Old Testament followers of God have been in Limbo until “One of power and might” came for them?

4. Why might Dante depict Virgil as “the highest prince of poetry” even over Homer and the other great poets mentioned?

5. Why would the shade of Homer be wielding a sword in his right hand?

6. What should we infer from the fact that Dante is made a “sixth in that academy” of poets?

7. Dante “saw souls whose eyes were grave and slow, whose looks were marked with great authority. Seldom they spoke, and held their voices low.” What might be the significance of their speaking only seldom?

8. How might we classify the two main kinds of people mentioned by Dante among those from before the time of Christ?

9. What should be inferred from the proximity of Socrates and Plato to “the master of all those who know?”

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

1. The list of people in Limbo are what are typically referred to as “virtuous pagans.” People before Christ and who did not know the God of the Bible but who were essentially “good people.” Do you believe it is possible to be a virtuous person while not knowing the one true God? Why or why not?

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. In Inferno, Limbo is described as being full “of men and women and of infants too” who have died since the time of Christ. Of these Virgil says, “They did not sin. If they had merits, these were not enough – baptism they did not have, the one gate to the faith which you believe.” Compare and contrast these words with the following passages of Scripture. Does Scripture affirm or reject the teachings presented here?

   1. Psalm 51:5

   2. Ephesians 2:8-10

   3. Matthew 23:39-43

   4. John 10:1-10

2. Virgil also says of some others who dwell in Limbo, “if they lived before the Christian faith, they did not give God homage as they ought, and of these people I myself am one. For such a falling short, and for no crime, we all are lost, and suffer only this: hopeless, we live forever in desire.” In light of the following passages of Scripture, can anyone really be in the position of those described here? Why or why not?

   1. Romans 1:18-32

   2. Romans 2:12-16