Inferno characters

Appears from the start

A living Florentine who finds himself spiritually lost midway through life. Frightened away from a direct climb toward safety, he accepts a journey through the afterlife. He is both the pilgrim who reacts to each encounter and the poet who later arranges the experience into a moral and political vision.

Appears from the start

The ancient Roman poet whom Dante recognizes as his literary master. Sent to rescue him when the direct path is blocked, Virgil offers the guidance of reason and experience and proposes to lead Dante through Hell and onward as far as his own limitations permit.

First appears in chapter 2

A blessed woman from Dante's life who descends to Limbo to ask Virgil to aid him. Her concern overcomes Dante's fear at the start of the descent, and she represents the divine grace and personal love standing behind his journey.

First appears in chapter 3

The harsh boatman who carries dead souls across Acheron into Hell. He recognizes that Dante is alive and initially refuses him passage, but Virgil silences the objection by invoking a will higher than Charon's.

First appears in chapter 5

A judge stationed at the entrance to the circles of active sin. He listens as each soul confesses and signals its assigned depth by winding his tail around himself, turning judgment into a visible sentence.

First appears in chapter 5

A noblewoman of Ravenna swept forever in the storm of the lustful beside Paolo. She tells Dante how their shared reading encouraged the kiss that began their doomed affair, presenting her history in the language of a love that seems to act upon her rather than through her choices.

First appears in chapter 10

A formidable Florentine political leader found among the heretics. Rising from a burning tomb, he speaks to Dante with civic pride and immediately asks about the pilgrim's ancestry, treating their exchange as a continuation of Florence's factional struggle.

First appears in chapter 13

A former minister to Emperor Frederick II whose soul is enclosed in a thorn tree among those violent against themselves. He can speak only when his branches are broken, and he defends his loyalty while recounting how courtly envy destroyed his reputation.

First appears in chapter 15

A respected Florentine scholar encountered running beneath a rain of fire. Dante remembers him as an important teacher and addresses him with affection, while Brunetto remains intensely concerned with Dante's future reputation and the political hostility awaiting him.

First appears in chapter 17

A monster with an honest human face, a patterned reptilian body, hairy paws, and a scorpion-like tail. He embodies fraud's inviting appearance and concealed danger and serves as the terrifying means by which Dante and Virgil descend into the eighth circle.

Also known as Odysseus

First appears in chapter 26

The Greek hero concealed with Diomedes inside a divided flame among fraudulent counselors. Speaking through the fire, he recounts a final voyage driven by his refusal to accept the limits of home, age, and the world known to his companions.

First appears in chapter 27

A medieval Italian soldier and strategist enclosed in flame among the fraudulent counselors. Believing Dante to be another dead soul, he asks first about the political condition of Romagna before explaining how a promise of absolution shaped his damnation.

First appears in chapter 33

A Pisan count frozen in the circle of treachery, gnawing the head of Archbishop Ruggieri. When Dante asks about this terrible hatred, Ugolino pauses his punishment to identify them and prepare an account of the imprisonment that joined their names.

Also known as Dis, Lucifer

First appears in chapter 34

The gigantic fallen angel fixed at Hell's lowest point. He has three faces and six batlike wings whose beating freezes the lake around him; in his three mouths he chews the souls judged to represent the deepest forms of betrayal.