Without a doubt, Canto XIII of INFERNO is one of the most astounding in the enter canticle of pain. It ranks up there with Canto V and the lustful, with X and the heretics, and with some of the ones we're headed for down the road. It's dense, opaque, elliptical, and ironic: a tour de force from our poet Dante.

But before we step into the second ring of the seventh circle of hell, the second section of the violent, I thought it'd be good to pause and get some background on what's about to happen.

In this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE, I'm going to introduce you to three passages you need to know to deepen your understanding of the strange brilliance of Canto XIII.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I work through one passage from Ovid's METAMORPHOSES and two passages from the Book III of Virgil's AENEID. Once you have these down, you'll be ready to step into one of the strangest landscapes in all of COMEDY.

Here are the segments of this podcast episode:

[00:33] Why is Canto XIII of INFERNO so mind-bending?

[03:05] Our first background passage, from Ovid's METAMORPHOSES, Book IX, the story of Dyope and her strange fate after picking a lotus flower.

[10:58] Our second background passage, from Virgil's AENEID, Book III: Aeneas's first stop in his journey away from Troy and the strange bleeding ground that warns him off from settling in this place.

[17:49] Our last background passage, from Virgil's AENEID, further on in BOOK III: the hideous Harpies and the prophecy Aeneas gets about his future woes.