Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Satan, whether or not he's trapped in hell. First, we're going to see how Satan, where he currently resides, is portrayed in fiction, looking at Dante's Inferno and then at Paradise Lost. Second, we're going to see what scripture has to say about where Satan is. And third, we're going to delve into various interpretations of scripture, here meaning the eschatological perspectives used to understand the bible, these different perspectives yielding different answers: Roaming the earth, locked away in the hearts of sinners, or imprisoned forever in hell.

Alright, let's get into it.

In Dante Alighieri's "Inferno," the Ninth Circle of Hell, the deepest, most desolate, and most despair-filled circle, is reserved for traitors, treachery deemed the most egregious of sins and those who perpetrate it the most wicked of sinners, the sanctity of special relationships defiled by the betrayals of these transgressors. The ninth circle is a vast, frozen lake named Cocytus, and it is divided into four concentric rings. The ice becomes progressively thicker and more torturous as one moves inward to the circle's center. The rings house different types of traitors: those who betrayed their kin, those who betrayed their countries, those who betrayed their guests, and those who betrayed their benefactors. At the very center of Cocytus, Satan is imprisoned in ice up to his waist, continuously chewing on Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius, the three greatest traitors in Dante's view. Judas betrayed Jesus, and Brutus and Cassius betrayed Julius Caesar. Satan is described as a monstrous giant with three heads and a great pair of bat's wings. Judas is perpetually devoured by the center head, Brutus and Cassius by the two outside ones. Though Satan participates in the punishment of, per the reckoning of Dante, the three most evil sinners in all of history, he himself is also condemned, torturously trapped in a state of physical and spiritual agony. One of the details that communicates this are the tears that incessantly stream from his six weeping eyes.

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