Dante comes to realize that some of the individuals here, such as Cleopatra and Dido from Virgil’s The Aeneid, committed suicide, but are not residing in the deeper circle of hell reserved for suicides because the punishment served was based on the standards of the soul. When Dante and Virgil make it to the second circle of Hell, Lust, they find Minos who examines all souls entering. The strong focus on morality in Dante’s Inferno is questionable when considering the standards souls have to meet to attain paradise. A common theme throughout Dante’s Inferno is the emphasis placed on the importance of piety and morality, however, the very souls who lived righteous lives were robbed of their chance in the afterlife because of a variable they could not control. The only instance of this redemption is when Jesus comes to limbo after his crucifixion to bring his ancestors of the Old Testament with him to heaven. This system can cause discourse within readers who deem it unfair that certain individuals, who could have been granted paradise, were not allowed an honest assessment of their merit because of a nonexistent chance of redemption. The paradoxical regulations of the inferno condemn individuals, like the ones Dante encounters, to limbo regardless of their successes because of a choice they were unable to possibly make. Dante meets significant historical figures like Horace, Virgil, Socrates, and Plato who, despite their triumphs, are placed in limbo because they were alive before the time of Christ. In the narrator’s depiction, the souls who arrive are those who did not receive Christ or live a pious Christian life Individuals who were never granted the opportunity to become baptized or had lived absent of Christian principles were placed in this circle because, at the time, it was not seen as the right way of living. The first circle of hell in Dante’s account has certain rules in place for who is subjected to an afterlife in limbo.
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