![]() ![]() Image by Karl Hahn, via Wikimedia Commons. ![]() Gustave Doré (1832–1883), Virgil shows Dante the Shade of Thaïs (c 1857), engraving, dimensions and location not known. She is now covered in filth and utterly crabby. They find a contemporary figure from Lucca, and see Thaïs, a Greek courtesan who notoriously flattered her partners. Gustave Doré (1832–1883), Inferno Canto 18 verses 116-117 (c 1857), engraving, dimensions and location not known. ![]() Jan van der Straet, alias Giovanni Stradano (1523-1605), Canto 18 (1587), further details not known. They then enter the second rottenpocket, for flatterers, who are wallowing in excrement. The pair move on past other sinners being scourged, where they see Jason, who seduced then abandoned the young Hypsipyle, queen of Lemnos, and later did likewise with Medea. These are pimps and seducers, among whom is a Bolognese man, a Guelph, who pimped his sister, the beautiful Ghisolabella, for political gain. Virgil leads Dante into the first of these rottenpockets, where souls are being lashed by demons to keep them moving constantly. ![]() Dante compares these to the defensive earthworks which surrounded the outer walls of castles of the day. This consists of what Dante refers to as malebolge, best translated as rottenpockets, a series of ten deep trenches each of which caters for a different type of fraud. In their descent into the depths of Hell, Virgil and Dante have just entered circle eight, which is for those who committed fraud in its broadest sense. ![]()
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