How long have we been standing with Dante-the-pilgrim and Virgil, his guide, in front of the walls of Dis? For ten episodes of this podcast!

And now comes salvation in the form of a messenger from heaven. This has been an epic sequence. Problem is, it all ends with a big anticlimax.

Guess what? Salvation was always on the way. So what was everyone so worried about?

Here are the segments of this episode:

[00:56] My English translation of this passage from INFERNO: Canto IX, lines 64 - 106.

[04:02] Two passages from the Aeneid get fused together right in front of the walls of Dis, offering us a sweep of Virgil's epid right before we pass out of Virgil's landscape.

[07:22] Then a simile from Ovid, that shows all the derring-do Dante-the-poet could ever muster as he renovates a strange allusion into a Christian context. Our poet is nothing if not brave!

[10:32] The messenger arrives. Is he Christ? Or Michael? Or Mercury? Or all of them together. Jesus is the word of God made flesh. Mercury brings the words of the gods. Maybe this figure is the coming of eloquence when you need it most, when you're about to step away from your master's imaginative landscape and into your own.

[16:58] And now proper disdain. We've had disdain from the demons, but here comes the real thing.