First Circle of Hell

      In the book, Inferno, we first find out about the First Circle of Hell in Canto IV. The idea of the word Limbo, also known as the First Circle of Hell, means a region on the edge of Hell.
      Dante’s First Circle of Hell includes many non-Christian people, un-baptized children and heroes, philosophers, and creative minds of ancient Greece and Rome. Once Virgil and Dante enter Limbo, they are presented with an area full of light. While entering Limbo, Dante says, “No tortured wailing/but sounds of sighing,” showing that the people are not being tortured in Limbo (Line 25-26). While in Limbo Virgil tells the story of a Mighty One descending down and choosing some souls to win salvation, which is like the medieval belief that when Christ descended into Hell and turned over Hell and freed all those who believed in Christ before his time. In Limbo, Dante was honored by a group of four classical poets, who were Homer (8th century B.C.), Horace (December 8, 65-November 27, 8 B.C.), Ovid (March 20, 43 B.C. - 17 A.D.), and Lucan (November 3, 39-April 30, 65 A.D.). They all walked on to a noble castle, inside of which is a fresh green meadow, and there Dante sees many women and men of Greece and Rome. All the souls in Limbo were free of sins, but they were not in Heaven because they were never brought into the Christian Church through baptism, or because they lived before Christianity, like Virgil, or because the teachings of Christianity never reached them.  Once hearing their free sins and their punishments, Dante says, “A weight closed on my heart for what the noblest suffer,” illustrating Dante’s emotions to spare the people from suffering in hell and to grieve for them (Line 44-45). The contrapasso of Limbo was that since you did not get to know God while you were alive, you did not get to go to Heaven and meet God.
      Virgil says “Without hope we live on in desire” (Line 42). The symbolic meaning of that line and of Limbo was that to live a good and honorable life without knowledge of reality with love and happiness, was to live without joy, desiring something more but having no hope of getting it.