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Sincere Flattery By Virgil And Dante Alighieri In The Divine Comedy

876 Words4 Pages

Jeanne McDonald
LIT 4330
8 October 2015
Sincere Flattery It has been said that flattery will get you everywhere. According to Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy everywhere includes the pits of Hell. In Canto XVIII of Inferno, Virgil and Dante make their way through the second pouch of the eighth circle of Hell. It is here that Virgil introduces those who have been damned for the sin of flattery. This includes the Greek hetaira Thaïs who is punished for flattering her lover. While there are many unique characters seen along Dante and Virgil’s descent into the depths of Hell, none might be more deserving of a reprieve from its horrors than Thaïs. To make The Divine Comedy a piece of fiction that appeared as non-fiction, Dante had to cast …show more content…

This is seen in Canto VI, lines 58 and 59, “I answered him: “Ciacco, your suffering / so weighs on me that I am forced to weep”, however, there is no indication from the text that Dante actually cries over Ciacco. He’s stroking the shades ego to obtain the information he pleases. Him complimenting a sinner, someone who is in the pits of Hell, in order to gain their trust and thus their story is no different than the historical manifestation of Thaïs complimenting her lover to gain his favor in the political realm. More, where is the proof that she did not, in fact, mean what she said? Focusing on the historical version of Thaïs, her being a courtesan in no way makes her a gold digger or a seeker of fame, which is exactly the type of people Dante flattered. It is her independence that made her viable to not only Alexander the Great but also to her eventual husband, Ptolemy the king of …show more content…

If anything, her crime was lust, not flattery. Even Virgil calls her a harlot. If that were the case, why was she put in the lower level of Hell? Her only
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sin would be of appetite not malice, and even still that is not a proven fact. While history records that Alexander the Great enjoyed Thaïs’ company, there is no verifiable proof that any kind of sexual relationship took place between the two of them. Once again, this leads to the belief that she did not deserve to be placed in Hell. Now, this is not to say she is blameless of any or all sin, but her sins did not warrant her punishment. The contrapasso bestowed on her is invalid. Forced to into the furthest depths of Hell and encrusted in human excrement seems like a vicious punishment for someone who allegedly did nothing more than Dante did himself. If judging her only on the basis of Dante’s actions, her release from Hell into Purgatory seems reasonable. After all, she was only doing her job. McDonald

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