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Hell Unearthed
A modern adaptation of Dante’s Inferno
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Dante Society Talk on Hell Unearthed.
#dante#books & libraries#modern adaptation#inferno#modern classics#mythology#book club#italian culture#access for all#sociology#philosophy#religion#politics#humanity#life's choices
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Celebrating Dante 700 years
Starting with Inferno. Are you a Good Soul?
I am sharing stories about people from classical mythology, Dante’s medieval Italy and people you will recognise from the modern world. What do they have in common? They are being tormented in Hell for wrongdoings they have committed in life.
And they are not all bad people. Some of them are well known heroes who have done amazing things in life but nobody is perfect. and for imperfections that involve harming other people and offending God, they have to pay a price in the afterlife.
You are going to meet monsters from classical mythology, Popes and political leaders from Dante’s contemporary Italy and also criminals from our modern world which include gangsters, pop stars, sports stars, princes and princesses.
Read on!
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Celebrating Dante 700 years
1. Let’s start at the very beginning
2. The book cover
3. Surprise! Find out what’s in me!
4. Are bad guys all bad and are our heroes all good?
5. A modern-day not-so-good hero
6. Greedy people
7. Ciacco and William Makepeace Thackeray
8. Paolo and Francesca
9. Christianity and Hell
10. Filippo Argenti and the angry souls
11. Money-grubbers and wasteful
12. Honour based violence and FGM
Warning: some sexually graphic details
13. Layout of Hell
14. Comparing ethics of violence from 1300 to today
15. Modern day murderers
16. The rapists in Hell Unearthed
Warning: some sexually graphic details
17. The picture of fraud - Geryon
18. Ulysses (Odysseus) punished for lying to the Trojans
19. Ulysses’ last voyage
20. Cheats in Hell Unearthed
21. Stories of squanderers
22. Fortune tellers or diviners
23. Manto and the origin of Mantua
24. Farinata
25. Beasts in Hell
26. Thieves
27. Impersonators
28. The story behind the world’s languages
29. Corrupt Popes
30. Pimps and sex groomers
31. Humour in Hell
32. Counterfeiters
33. Women in Hell
34. Guelphs and Ghibellines
35. Hypocrites
36. Story of Cacus
37. Attila the Hun
38. Betraying your team
39. Hosts who betray their guests
40. Money launderers
41. Evil dictators
42. Thieves in literature
43. Female rapists
44. Friendship in Hell
45. Kidnappers
Warning: contains unsettling content
46. Evil dictators
47. Serial infidelity
48. Artists who have faked it
49. Stories of Pimps
50. Wasteful characters
51. King John family traitor
52. The Beaumont children kidnap
Warning: contains some unsettling content
53. Medusa and the Furies
54. Neptune, a rapist
55. Emperor Tiberius, a paedophile
56. Tybalt Capulet, angry soul
57. Tyler Durden is punished for GBH
58. William and Maud de Braose - how the innocent suffer
59. Count Ugolino, political traitor
60. The failure to rebuild Haiti
61. In the mouth of Lucifer: Brutus, Cassius and Judas
62. Guido da Montefeltro - punished for conspiring with an evil Pope
63. Archbishop Ruggieri - punished for political treachery
64. Suicides
65. Kidnap of John Paul Getty III
Warning: contains some unsettling content
66. The importance of unity
67. Staircase to Heaven
68. Surprise! Find out what’s inside.
69. Geryon the Back Cover of Hell Unearthed
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Geryon
Geryon is the picture of fraud and he features on the back cover of Hell Unearthed. Credit to Rob Page
https://www.robpageillustration.com/
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Surprise! Find out what’s inside
Scan me and Follow!
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Day 66 - the importance of Unity
Dante lived in a time when families and political factions were at each other’s throats. Fighting, aggression and power plays were a fact of life and the church was just as bad as the state.
A key feature of the Divine Comedy for Dante is the desire for unity born out of a single faith for all men and a single system of governance. He believed that these two things could ensure that society was bonded and peace and happiness in life could be possible.
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Day 65 - kidnap of John Paul Getty III
The kidnappers find themselves sliced apart by demons in the circle of fraud in Hell Unearthed.
John Paul Getty III gets his revenge since his own kidnapping involved his kidnappers slicing off his ear.
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John Paul Getty III was the grandson of the oil tycoon, J. Paul Getty. The grandfather was once the richest person in the world but he was also renowned for being a cheapskate.
Following his parents’ divorce in 1964, John Paul Getty III moved to Rome as a young teenager with his father. His stepmother died of a heroin overdose in 1971 and, although his father returned to England, he remained in the city by himself.
In 1973, aged 16, John Paul Getty III was kidnapped by the ‘Ndrangheta, a mafia organisation based in Calabria. A ransom note was sent to his mother demanding $17 million.
The family doubted the verity of the kidnapping as not only was John Paul errant and rebellious, but he had previously joked that he would fake his own kidnapping in order to extract money from his rich grandfather.
His rich and penny-pinching grandfather refused to pay the ransom and the child’s kidnappers cut off an ear and a lock of hair, sending them in the post to a newspaper in Rome as proof of the demands. They also sent pictures of John Paul with his ear cut off. After five months, he was eventually released.
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Day 64 - Suicides
In Dante’s day, suicide was seen as a sin of violence against the self and therefore sinners are collected in the 7th circle of Hell alongside the murderers and blasphemers (who have committed violence against God).
The suicides are transformed into thorny bushes with brittle branches and evil. Harpies nest in them and break off their branches inflicting pain on the souls.
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The story of Pier della Vigna is told with poignancy by Dante as he was wrongfully charged with treason and was thrown into prison where he committed suicide.
Pier della Vigna was elected chief counsellor to Emperor Frederick II. and was accused of treachery in 1249. Dante felt that the accusations were inspired by envy at his rapid ascent to favour by the other courtesans and were therefore unfounded.
Dante can’t believe that the thorn bushes are actually souls so Virgil tells him to break off a branch of one of the bushes and the broken off twig starts to speak. Here is an extract from my own translation of Inferno:
The twig said, ‘Your words charm and bait me and I wouldn’t mind talking if you are ok to stay for a bit. I am the one who held both keys to Frederick’s heart, turning them to close and then open so softly that I could keep anyone from knowing his secrets. I was so loyal in my duties that I lost peace and then my life. The whore, envy, who never took her seductive eyes from the imperial court, a common cause of death and vice in courts, stoked everyone up against me to the extent that the flames engulfed Frederick himself and what was honest honour turned to veritable vilification. In a fit of private scorn, thinking I could flee public scorn through death, against my just self I made myself unjust and took my own life. By the strange new roots of my bush, I promise that I have never broken faith with my lord who was so worthy of honour. And if either of you do make it back to the world, please speak to defend my reputation which still lies low from the blow that envy dealt it.’
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Day 63 - Archbishop Ruggieri punished for political treachery
Dante condemns Archbishop Ruggieri to Antenora in the 9th circle of Hell for his role in betraying his own party member, Count Ugolino, by inviting him back to Pisa only to have him ambushed and then imprisoned.
Gustav Doré has illustrated the scene Dante and Virgil witness among the frozen souls with Count Ugolino feasting on the head of the Archbishop Ruggieri. The betrayer is betrayed in death.
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Archbishop Ruggieri led the Pisan Ghibellines and for a time was aligned with the Pisan mayor, Count Ugolino. However, Ugolino began to lose support of the Pisan citizens when he ceded a number of Pisan castles to Guelph enemy cities in a pact of peace with them. The Archbishop turned against him when Ugolino managed to kill his nephew in the Pisan riots in 1288.
The Archbishop used the treachery of the castles to incite a Pisan rebellion against Ugolino and in a counter act of betrayal, he had Ugolino arrested and imprisoned in a tower together with two sons and two grandsons. They were held for 8 months and then left to starve.
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Day 62 - Guido da Montefeltro, punished for conspiring with an evil Pope
Dante places Guido da Montefeltro in the 8th circle with the souls who have given fraudulent advice.
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He was a great Ghibelline leader who fought successfully against the Guelphs and the French who were loyal to the Pope to secure many Italian towns as Ghibelline strongholds. He was regarded as one of the finest Italian soldiers of his time and was noble, wise, gracious and openhearted. He later reconciled himself with the church and became a Franciscan monk.
He is condemned to Hell for having given Pope Boniface VIII, Dante’s most scorned Pope, advice on how to subdue the Pope’s rebel opponents. Guido was at first unwilling to oblige the Pope but was persuaded by the Pope’s promise to forgive him for his treachery.
Guido basically told Pope Boniface that he should promise much to his opponents but deliver little on his promise. The Pope agreed to an amnesty with his adversaries, the Colonna family, and when they retired to their stronghold in surrender, he proceeded to raze their properties to the ground.
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Day 61 - in the mouth of Lucifer: Brutus, Cassius and Judas
These guys have got it the worst in all of Dante’s Hell. Lucifer has 3 mouths and each one devours a sinner while his rasping claws repeatedly strip the skin from their backs. They are the worst traitors of all: traitors to the church and to the founder of the Roman Empire.
Dante barely spares them any time at all. The shocking sight is described and he moves quickly on.
Let’s remember for a moment the nature of their sin.
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Firstly, let’s remember Lucifer. He was the most beautiful of God’s angels, but he led the rebellion against God and was sent to Hell where he reigns King of Hell. He is transformed from the most beautiful to the most ugly of God’s creations.
So Judas is the central sinner as he is the disciple who betrayed Christ to the Romans in exchange for 30 pieces of silver, leading to his Christ’s arrest and crucifixion. He is the fall guy for the church.
The other two sinners are joint fall guys for government, which is the second important strand for human happiness and wellbeing in Dante’s philosophy. The government which Dante aspired to was encapsulated in the Roman Empire and he harks back to this regime as a utopia for Italy and the world.
Brutus was a devoted supporter of the Roman Republic which was governed by elected officials. Brutus sided with Pompey in the civil war, even though Pompey had killed his father. When Pompey was later defeated, the anti-republican Roman dictator, Julius Caesar, pardoned him and gave him favours and positions of influence. However, he was persuaded by. Cassius to murder Caesar for the good of the Republic.
Cassius was complicit in the murder of Julius Caesar. Like Brutus, he supported the Republic but after Pompey’s defeat, Cassius surrendered to Caesar. Cassius was pardoned and was promised positions of influence. However, he always saw Caesar as his enemy and convinced Brutus to join him in the murder of the dictator.
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Day 60 - The failure to rebuild Haiti
The earthquake that ravaged Haiti in 2010 was bad enough but the mismanagement and fraudulent use of donations when the humans started to get involved is unforgivable.
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Funds were donated to rebuild houses, provide sanitation, electricity and drinking water but many charitable organisations failed to apply the funds as intended and large sums were lost to fraud. A number of charities appointed foreign 3rd party contractors who had no local knowledge, and projects suffered bureaucratic delays and embezzlement.
In Hell Unearthed, Dante meets Yéle, a traitor to a charity. He is a fictionalised charity leader who accepted millions of dollars of donations to repair the damage caused by the Haitian earthquake but that public generosity simply never turned into bricks and mortar or sanitation and the Haitians were deeply let down.
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Day 59 - Count Ugolino - political traitor
Count Ugolino’s story has been popularised almost as much as the story of Paolo and Francesca in Dante’s Inferno.
Auguste Rodin’s sculpture allows us to visualise the humanity behind the sinner.
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His name was Count Ugolino della Gherardesca. He is placed in the 9th circle of Hell for political treachery as he switched sides between the Guelphs and Ghibellines depending on which side was in the ascendancy. He ultimately is accused of betraying the Guelph party which entrusted him to rule Pisa.
Born in 1220, he belonged to a noble and traditionally Ghibelline family controlling swathes of the Pisan Maremma and Sardinia. As Ghibelline influence in the region began to ebb, Ugolino wanted to preserve his power in Pisa’s surrounding Guelph states such as Florence and Genoa. He conspired with the Guelph leaders in Pisa, the Visconti, but he was accused of attempting to undermine the Pisan government and was banished.
He later returned to Pisa and gained power and prestige and in 1284 he became mayor alongside his nephew, Nino Visconti.
During this time, Ugolino changed his allegiance back to the Ghibellines whose fortunes were rising again, and he plotted with the Ghibelline Archbishop of Pisa, Ruggieri, to drive out Nino.
Pisa was unsettled during this period and battles against neighbouring cities continued to threaten the city’s peace. Ugolino was criticised for giving away castles to enemy territories in order to preserve peace.
Then economic misfortune befell Pisa in 1288, leading to riots and Ugolino (whether intentionally or unintentionally, it is not known) killed a nephew of the Archbishop. This offence led to a revenge attack by Archbishop Ruggieri who incited the citizens of Pisa to burn down the town hall and he gave himself up.
In the attack, his bastard son and grandson were killed. He was imprisoned for treachery along with two further sons and three grandsons. He died of starvation in 1289.
#dante#political traitor#great stories#hell#sin#punishment#innocent people#italy#books#culture#ugolino
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Day 58 - William and Maude de Braose - how the innocent suffer
William de Braose was a favourite at the court of King John. A favourite that is, until he fell out of favour with the king. Then things turned bad for his family.
The story of the imprisonment of Maud and her son, William until they starved to death is a poignant moment in Hell Unearthed. For all the sin and crime which is driven by selfish motives, let’s pause a moment to think of the innocent people who suffer along the way.
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William married Maud in 1166 when she was just 11 and they lived under the rules of the English kings Henry, Richard and John.
William earned the wrath of the Welsh when he committed the Abergavenny murders in 1175, tricking various Welsh princes and leaders to come to a conciliatory dinner and having them murdered by his men.
In 1199, William fought alongside Richard I at Châlus in France when the king was mortally wounded. He supported King John’s claim to the throne and became a court favourite. John gifted him with land and castles, and it is thought that he may have tasked William with the murder of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany.
However, he soon fell out of favour with the king who claimed he owed money from his estates to the Crown and he seized William’s estates across England and Wales.
Maud made no secret of the fact that she believed John had given instructions to murder Arthur and the pair of them were hunted down. William fled to Ireland and then to France disguised as a beggar to evade King John’s capture.
Maud, however, was not so lucky. She was imprisoned with their eldest son, William, in the dungeons at Corfe Castle in Dorset where they starved to death.
The speed of the de Braoses’s fall alarmed the barons, who considered it a sign of the king’s volatile temperament. Clause 39 of the Magna Carta, considered to be a precedent for trial by jury, was included in part due to the desire for protection against arbitrary decision-making like the punishments surrounding the de Braose family.
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Day 57 - Tyler Durden is punished for GBH
Tyler Durden is tormented by raining fire on burning desert sand and he engages in a conversation about social constructs with Dante in Hell Unearthed.
Tyler is the fictionalised protagonist in Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel Fight Club, which was adapted for film in 1999. Tyler is the Narrator’s split personality and is born out of the Narrator’s insomnia-induced insanity and disillusionment at the humdrum of society’s norms.
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Tyler Durden wants to bring the Narrator to rock bottom so that he can resurrect himself, free from society’s chains. The Narrator starts to go to Fight Club which encourages men to beat each other up in bare-fisted fights. He starts to believe that violence is the vehicle for his powerless self to reassert himself against the corporate world he inhabits.
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Day 56 - Tybalt Capulet, angry soul
In Hell Unearthed, as Dante and Virgil cross the river Styx in Phlegyas’s boat, they meet the angry souls who are submerged in the murky waters.
Many of these souls are still brawling with each other and some lurk under the water with brooding bubbles rising to the surface. One of the souls is more angry than most and tries to capsize the boat. His name is Tybalt Capulet.
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Tybalt Capulet is Juliet’s cousin in William Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet. He plays to the rivalry between his family, the Capulets, and the Montagues. He is loyal to his family, but he is fiery, impetuous and strong-willed.
When Romeo gate-crashes Lord Capulet’s party in Verona, Tybalt’s blood boils with anger and he longs to get back at Romeo for daring to mix with his family. Tybalt kills Romeo’s friend, Mercutio, in what began as a pretend duel, and Romeo avenges that death by killing Tybalt.
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Day 55 - Emperor Tiberius, a paedophile
Emperor Tiberius finds himself punished in Hell Unearthed for his inappropriate relations with young boys and girls and he is submerged in human shit for eternity.
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Emperor Tiberius was the 2nd Roman Emperor ruling from 14-37AD. He succeeded his stepfather, Augustus, and was a highly regarded military commander, receiving honours for his successes.
He had been obliged to divorce the love of his life, Vipsania Agrippina, when Augustus’s daughter, Julia, became widowed. Augustus wanted Julia to be quickly and suitably married and he demanded that Tiberius fulfil that role. However, she was not faithful, and her acts of adultery pushed Tiberius away until he chose to exile himself on the island of Rhodes. There he indulged his sexual fantasies and became angry and resentful with nothing to do.
Augustus did not let him return for almost 10 years but when Tiberius’s mother and Augustus’s second wife, Livia, showed Augustus evidence of Julia’s infidelity, he exiled her, and soon afterwards, he called Tiberius back to Rome.
Augustus would have preferred to see one of Julia’s sons become his heir, but one fell out of favour and the other two died in battle, leaving Tiberius as the only remaining choice to succeed him. Tiberius managed the imperial treasury well and his laws and policies were sensible. However, with the death of his son, he took less interest in the running of the Empire and delegated his authority to Sejanus as chief administrator.
He went to the island of Capri and never returned to Rome. He spent the last decade of his life a tyrannical recluse, inflicting terror on his subjects and killing anyone who was reported to him as having committed a crime even if the claim was unfounded, He indulged in perverted behaviour with young girls and boys encouraging fondling of his penis, group sex and anal sex, and was nicknamed “the old goat”.
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