Inferno by Dante

Dante's Eighth Circle

Ulysses in Dante's Eighth Circle of the Inferno

In the Eighth Circle of the Inferno, Dante places all those souls whose vice was falsehood. It is a sensible dwelling place for them since it is the last Circle before the final Ninth Circle wherein dwells the Father of Lies, Satan or Dis. In the Eighth Circle, one finds flatterers, panderers, fortune tellers, hypocrites, thieves, evil counselors and more. What all of them have in common is their practice of distorting the true nature of things. For that reason does Dante find Ulysses in the ditch of the evil counselors in Canto XXVI. This paper will examine a passage from this Canto and examine its context, significance, and my reaction to it.

In the eighth ditch of the Eighth Circle, Dante meets the evil counselors whose sin was to abuse their position and gift from God (which was to lead by example), choosing instead to lead by way of deception and trickery. Their punishment is to forever burn in a single flame, their persons hidden from view just as their true intentions were hidden from men's eyes in life. In one such flame resides the soul of Ulysses, also known by his Greek name Odysseus. Dante asks about a particular two-headed flame and is told by Virgil that it is actually two flames united in one -- belonging, of course, to Ulysses (his Roman name) and Diomede: "Forever round this path / Ulysses and Diomede move in such dress, / united in pain as once they were in wrath; / there they lament the ambush of the Horse / which was the door through which the noble seed of the Romans issued from its holy source; / there they mourn that for Achilles slain / sweet Deidamia weeps even in death; / there they recall the Palladium in their pain" (Inferno 26.55-63). Dante asks to tarry a moment so that the flame might draw near and he may hear the words of Ulysses. Virgil grants the request and the two hear a portrait of Ulysses that other poets have not described.

Indeed, Dante's portrayal of Ulysses is quite different from Homer's, who depicts Odysseus as the hero of the epic poem The Odyssey. It is quite different from classical historians who popular view Ulysses as a clever and wily general, whose strategies ranged from finding Achilles and getting him to join the war against Troy to the Trojan Horse, which brought about the fall of Troy. In other words, I had always thought of Ulysses as a wise counselor and a man of virtue and strength -- which is why it is surprising to find him in the Inferno!

Dante's explanation of his misdeeds gives, however, some understanding. Dante himself had no taste for political chicanery and, being a Roman, sympathized with the Trojans (from whose line the Romans are said to have descended). Thus, Dante does not view the Trojan Horse as a genius tactic but rather as a malicious and deceitful stratagem. Neither does he view favorably Ulysses' tactic of beguiling Achilles away from his female disguise and life on the island of Scyros, where "sweet Deidamia weeps even in death" (26.62). Deidamia had had a child by Ulysses and when he left her to join the crusade against Troy, she died of grief. Dante obviously views Ulysses as responsible for her death, since he tricked Achilles out of his disguise by disguising himself as a vendor. Finally, he disapproves of Ulysses' theft of the statue of Pallas Athena from the Palladium. The statue of the goddess was said to protect the city, so Ulysses decided to steal it in hopes that Athena would no longer protect Troy. Once the theft was committed, the Trojans fell for Ulysses' next trick -- the Trojan Horse.