The Inferno characters

Appears from the start

A living Florentine who finds himself morally and spiritually lost midway through life. Frightened out of a dark wood by three beasts, he accepts a journey through the realm of the damned as the first stage of a path back toward God.

Appears from the start

The ancient Roman poet whom Dante reveres. Sent to rescue him from the dark wood, Virgil becomes his guide, teacher, and protector through Hell, explaining its order while acknowledging the limits placed on him as a virtuous pagan.

First appears in chapter 2

A blessed woman who cared for Dante in life and now acts for his salvation. From Heaven she asks Virgil to aid him, overcoming the pilgrim's fear with evidence that his journey is divinely supported.

First appears in chapter 3

The grim ferryman who carries dead souls across Acheron into Hell. He objects to finding a living traveler among his passengers, but Virgil tells him that the journey has higher authorization.

First appears in chapter 5

The infernal judge stationed at the entrance to the circle of lust. He hears each soul's confession and signals the depth to which it must descend by coiling his tail around himself.

First appears in chapter 5

A noblewoman from Ravenna swept forever through the storm of the lustful beside Paolo. She tells Dante how their adulterous love began while they read about another pair of lovers, presenting their downfall in the language of courtly romance.

First appears in chapter 10

A proud Florentine political leader confined among the heretics in burning tombs. Even in punishment he remains absorbed in factional rivalry and speaks to Dante with the bearing of an undefeated opponent.

First appears in chapter 13

A former imperial minister transformed into a thorn tree among those who destroyed themselves. He maintains that envy at court ruined his reputation and drove him to suicide, and he asks Dante to restore his good name among the living.

First appears in chapter 15

Dante's respected former teacher, encountered running beneath a rain of fire. Their affectionate conversation mixes personal gratitude with a prediction of the civic hostility and exile that await Dante.

First appears in chapter 17

A monstrous guardian whose human-looking face conceals a reptilian body and a venomous tail. As an image of fraud, he transports Dante and Virgil down the sheer boundary into the eighth circle.

Also known as Ulysses

First appears in chapter 26

The Greek hero found inside a divided flame among the fraudulent counselors. He recounts a final voyage driven by an overpowering hunger for experience and knowledge, undertaken beyond the limits imposed on human beings.

First appears in chapter 27

A military strategist who became a Franciscan friar late in life. He explains how he was lured back into giving dishonest counsel by a pope who promised absolution in advance, only to find that repentance cannot coexist with an intended sin.

First appears in chapter 33

A Pisan count imprisoned in the ice of treachery while gnawing the head of Archbishop Ruggieri. He recounts his confinement in a tower with his sons and grandsons and their deaths by starvation, turning private horror into an accusation against Pisa.

Also known as Dis

First appears in chapter 34

The fallen angel fixed at the lowest point of Hell. Enormous, silent, and trapped in ice produced by the beating of his own wings, he has three faces and chews the three traitors judged most infamous in sacred and classical history.