The Three Beasts

In Dante’s epic poem, Inferno, Dante describes hell in different layers. Each layer being a sin that is worse than the one above it. The first layer or in other words, the first circle of hell was limbo. Limbo is for the lost souls who were not baptized before they died. Following limbo are eight more circles of hell: The lustful, the gluttonous, the avaricious and prodigal, the wrathful, heretics, phlegethon, the fraudulent, and the traitors. Instead of Dante trying to take a direct path to get to heaven, he must travel through all the layers of hell. The poem starts out with Dante in a gloomy wilderness. “I found myself in a dark wilderness / for I had wandered from the straight and true / that wilderness so savage, dense, and harsh, / even to think of it renews my fear!” (1.2-6). As Dante is trying to encounter his way out of the forest, three beasts appear before him that are blocking his way to heaven. The beasts are allegories for different sin that Dante will encounter in his journey through hell; lust, pride, and avarice.

The first beast to show up is a leopard that has spots all over it.  “A leopard light of foot and quick to lunge, / all covered in a pelt of flecks and spots,” (1.32-33). This spotted beast is beautiful but yet very dangerous. “Who stood before my face and would not leave, / but did so check me in the path I trod,” (1.34-35). The leopard represents lust, which the second circle of hell is full of lustful people. The spots on the leopard show how it is seductive to lure people in, they really seem to show how beautiful the beast is, but also how dangerous it is. “to get free of that beast of flashy hide-” (1.42).

The second beast to appear is a lion. Dante doesn’t say much about this one, but the beast is a ‘great lion’. The lion represents pride, which is only fitting because naturally the lion is the ‘king’ that all the others listen to, so it would make sense as to why this lion is the same way. Dante explains that the lion was coming straight at him and held his head up high. “This one seemed to be coming straight for me, / his head held high, his hunger hot with wrath- / seemed to strike tremors in the very air!” (1.46-48). It is almost as the lion is acting arrogant with ‘his head held high’ and ‘hunger hot with wrath’ because he is making a point to intimidate Dante. Prideful people think they are never wrong and better than everyone else, so it makes sense that the lion represents pride. Pride falls under gluttony, which is the third circle. Gluttony is habitual greed, so it is only fitting that one’s pride would be apart of gluttony.  

The third and last beast is a wolf. She is a scrawny wolf, but she acted like she was masculine. “So heavily she weighed my spirit down, / pressing me by the terror of her glance,” (1.52-53). The she-wolf is ‘sluggish with desires’ and ‘stuffed with men’s cravings’, you can see how she might would symbolize avarice, or greed which is the fourth circle of hell that Dante has to travel through. She feels the need to be desired all the time and always wants more when she gets it. “Then a she-wolf, whose scrawniness seemed stuffed / with all men’s cravings, sluggish with desires, / who had made many live in wretchedness-” (1.49-51). This explains why the wolf symbolizes greed because she has nothing, hence why she is scrawny/skinny, but she wants everything.

In Jeremiah 5:6,“Therefore a lion from the forest shall strike them down; a wolf from the desert shall devastate them. A leopard is watching their cities; everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces, because their transgressions are many, their apostasies are great.” Dante uses these three animals mentioned in this scripture and puts a sinful twist on them. All three of the animals are predators, each with its own unique way to prey on its unsuspecting victims. In the same way Satan uses the sins of lust, pride, and greed to prey on us and block us from going to heaven. It is very evident that these three ‘beasts’ are apart of what seems like an even bigger allegory than what you would think by just reading that first page once.