and I think we're live, boys. Hello. Hello and welcome to classical stuff you should know podcast. The podcast about classical stuff you should know from us, your hosts who know classical stuff you should know.
My name is Graham Donaldson and I am a teacher of English literature at Rhetoric at Veritas Academy in Austin, Texas. And I'm joined today with AJ Hanenburg and Thomas Megbee. Hello. Also teachers and workers at Veritas Academy in Austin, Texas.
And boys, this is our spring break podcast. This is spring break. We celebrate spring break. The number one spring break is sitting together for a few hours to record some podcasts.
Spring break podcast. And I get a grade later. That's my whole program. So that explains why AJ is not wearing a shirt.
What is this? Because the spring break podcast nom is getting. And this podcast is not coming to you live from any sort of party beach. Although, you know, maybe on the second spring break, next year spring break, we will come to you live from Daytona Beach.
I don't know if I get the older I get the less. I want to go to a party beach. Like I'm just a drink break, right? Like earlier, we'll be like, let's go party on the beach.
And I'll be like, yeah, now I'm just like, you know what kind of timing? There is nothing about a crowded hot beach with people. With a lot of drunk folks. With a lot of drunk folks.
Did that ever appeal to you? I don't think it ever feels like. Yeah, it was never really my program. Maybe if there was a good band playing, I might go for a little while.
Anyway, that's a holder podcast we can delve into. Delve into why it is. Yeah, I was also going to say, I like how whenever you start the podcast or start with a hello, like you're walking into a Canadian bank. Like, hello.
This is how we greet each other. It's that specific Canadian bank that feels like. I'm just imagining a gram walking in with a furry hat. Hello.
They're like, oh, hey, welcome. You have all your money. And today, so our podcast is being, has been prepared meticulously and lovingly by our host for today, Ajay Hanenburg. He is going to be like a Virgil.
And we, but young fledgling Dante, so he will take us by the hand as he takes us through this hell and purgatory that is about to be stretched out in front of us. And hopefully our audience will understand all of those references by the podcast. If you don't know yet by the end, you'll have more. Let's do the entire episode then come back to the beginning to understand this.
It's meta. Yeah. Okay, today we've spent a while talking about random concepts and having some conversations. And I wanted to kind of take it back towards just like, here are some facts, here's an introduction to a book that you can dive into.
And we've referenced Dante quite a few times on this podcast. And I don't think we've ever given you the full rundown of who he is or what he did or the whole picture that he painted in his comedy. So Dante was a fellow that lived in Italy, specifically in Florence. And they think it was, he lived from 1265 to 1321 because of some weird dating of his books, right?
He talks about being midway through his life. When, and the fictional year for that is 1300. And so like midway through his life was clearly 35. So they think he was 35 at 1300.
And that's how they date his birth. I'm not kidding. It was only one way to know if you're midway through your life. When you're dead.
Yeah, yeah. Well, they think because the average life span of years that he just hit it right in the middle there. And that seems like an awfully spurious way to date. Like surely he was born this year because he would have been 35 in the year 1300.
It seems goofy to me. But we don't actually know. We don't actually know when he was born. I mean, I could look but I don't know my research.
That's what I got to is that they are extrapolating back to 1265 from the year 1300 being him 35 years old. And is that his intro or when he's talking about himself at the beginning of Inferno that he says after my life? He says, and so even then I could be a fiction. Like I could just be a really big conceit.
Yeah, I could be a fictional thing. And even like, maybe he didn't have a specific year in mind, right? If I talk about midway through my life, I'm thinking like 36 through like 48. It's like a range, right?
48 seems high. Yeah, 55 is my mid. My mid. You're going to go 110.
Yeah. Well, good luck. All right. You know that if I lived to like 100 years old and like the news came to my house and they were like, hey, how did you live so long?
I'm going to troll people so hard. I'm going to make an I8 and an eight corn, no pine cones. Every day. Yeah.
Whole. I swallowed a whole pine cone. You can tell it's all public. Exactly.
And he'll be like, oh man, this sucks. Pine cones. You know there's going to be some Canadians up there. They're like, I knew it.
I knew it for years. All right. How does he keep his youth? All right.
So he was born and he lived in Florence for a good job of his life. His dad was associated with one of the political parties there, the Guelphs, and they fought against the Ghibolines. And his dad was not important enough. These names, sorry.
Guelphs and Ghibolines. I think the Ghibolines was named after Castle and Guelphs was something else. Maybe they come from Germany. And they're weirdly associated to like Kings and Popes.
We'll get there. So his dad wasn't important enough to have been exiled in the Coos. And maybe we all be that unimportant to not be that. So when they throw a big government coup, they're going to toss all the dudes out that disagree with them.
And his dad was not not one of those. Not an important person enough to be tossed out. Because right before or like the year after he was born, that's when they had this really big war. And all of the Ghibolines were kicked out of Florence.
So the Guelphs won. And so he grew up in a Florence that was really feeling itself. They had just sort of solidified. Everybody was unified.
They wanted to sort of flex their economic muscles. And he grew up in sort of the heyday of Florence. And unfortunately, as politics will do, they split eventually into the white Guelphs and the black Guelphs. And the difference between the original parties was that the Ghibolines were in support of the Roman Emperor, like having a king.
And the Guelphs were in support of the papacy. They wanted the pope to be in charge. And so the Guelphs won, got the pope in charge. And eventually, the blacks and whites split.
And the blacks continued to support the pope. And then Dante actually went with the whites and thought that the pope's desire for power and for land and for money was not becoming of a pope and someone in power. And so he actually didn't like the pope very much. So who did the white Guelphs want in charge?
I think they were hoping for Roman Emperor. In fact, Dante talks about he wants the return of Rome, because partially because that's the conditions under which Christ came. And he thought that if we could recreate that, Christ would come again. But the Ghibolines wanted the Holy Roman Emperor.
He said they wanted the Emperor from Germany. Or the one with the King? I think they wanted a king. They resisted the pope.
Right? They were wealthy artisans and saw the empires away to further their own interests. Gotcha. So around 1283, when he was 18 or so, he married a lady named Gemma Donati.
And he had been betrothed for a long time to her. His own necessary choice. And it was shortly after that that, or sorry, before that, when he was nine, that he met a girl named Beatrice. I think that's the Americanization of it, because I think the original name in Latin is B.I.C.E.
And he. That's an unfortunate name to the guy. That really is. I'm trying to avoid his jokes.
Congratulations. Yeah, so we're going to stick with Beatrice. And he was really into this lady. He loved her at first sight.
And whenever she talked to him, he'd freeze up. And he'd feel really bad if she didn't say hi. That's when you know you got it. Yeah.
And this love affair with her will continue on. He writes about it a bunch of poems. He writes about her even in the inferno, which we'll get to in a minute. But he has this sort of transcendental courtly love for her.
He idolizes this woman. And she died when she was young. And so he didn't really have the chance to go anywhere with it. And I don't think he really intended to.
And a lot of people point out that he doesn't talk about his wife in his poetry. That's what I'm asking. So he talks about Beatrice a lot that doesn't talk about his wife. Yeah, doesn't talk about his wife.
He has some kids. He doesn't really talk about those. Even if he refers to his sister, he talks about her to whom I am close-listed related by blood. It's really vague and kind of obscure.
And they pointed that as maybe a way of saying he didn't like his wife very much. And I think that's hogwash. Someone you don't like, you're going to write about. And you're going to make him look bad in fiction.
And I think probably what happened is his wife just said, hey, keep me out of it. Don't write about me. I don't want to be hearing about our relationship in your poetry. Because that's if I was going to write.
That's personal. If I was going to keep someone out of my writing, that would be out of respect and love, more than it would be out of hatred. And his love of Beatrice is not like a burning romantic love. He ends up kind of turning her into this pillar of all that is good and beautiful and gods agent of beauty on Earth and that kind of thing.
He attaches to her a lot of extra meaning. And even to reduce it to the level of lust, I think would have been to dirty his love for her. It wouldn't be the right kind of thing. So she was married to be put his wife in that position, of all that extra weight that she would have to live up to.
And so she didn't have to and they had kids. And it seems to me like they had a decent home life. So when she died, he kind of turned to philosophy. And weirdly, as a consolation, he actually turned literally to the consolation of philosophy by Boethius.
We have talked about it a couple times. And I still intend to read and haven't just haven't done yet. And he started going to the public discourses and just got super in a philosophy for a while. He joined public life in his 30s.
He joined a guild. He was in a apothecary. Or he wanted to be a pharmacist kind of. Oh, cool.
And really, they sold books in pharmacies. And so that was one of the things they sold. So I think part of it was just wanting to be around and to work with and sell books. He started doing a lot of poetry.
He'd been doing poetry for a long time. And so he was a member of the White Guelfs, right? Did not like the pope. And eventually, he went to the pope on an envoy.
The pope invited him to come talk about their situation because the pope had proposed that a king that he was allied with entered Florence. And Dante opposed this. And the pope said, hey, come chat about it. Well, if he stays, he's refusing the pope.
And if he goes, he's leaving Florence open. And at this point, he was one of the highest offices in Florence. And so he actually went. The pope was like, got you nerd and detained him.
And they entered Florence, ran a coup. And the Black Guelfs ravaged the city for a couple of days and kicked out all the whites. And in his absence, declared that Dante had done all of these crazy insane crimes that he hadn't done. And said he has to stand for them.
And he was afraid that if he showed up, bad things would happen. And he might be condemned for the crimes he never committed, right? Not kind of political atmosphere. So which one is this?
Pope Boniface. I think Boniface the seventh? Eighth. OK.
So it's Pope Boniface. And he, because he doesn't show up, they then declare that he will be burned to death. And effectively, exile him from Florence. And for us, that's not a big deal, right?
We leave a city. We still got Facebook. We still got phone calls. We can talk to the people we left.
We can probably still have the same career somewhere. Drum that thing. Exactly. Yeah.
Our cities are big enough that you can probably visit and get away with it. And no one's really good. He cares, right? That's not the case in Florence.
The communities are small. When he left Florence, he left everything. He knew and loved. He left his legacy.
He left his home. He left the public life to which he'd become accustomed. This was like tearing his baby out of his arms. He was rendered inside.
And from then on, he had to depend on the generosity of patrons. He went to Ravenna. And the people who were nice to him, he actually immortalizes in his poetry. And it's like these people are great.
I think he talks to one in purgatory, who's really a nice fella. And so he really digs these guys. But he writes eventually the Divine Comedy. And the Divine Comedy is the story of an exile coming to his true home.
And it's very base. That's what it is. That's a question. Yeah.
This might go up later. Why is it called a comedy? Because it ends happily. There you go.
Thank you. That's the difference between comedy and tragedy. Comedy and tragedy goes sad. Comedy doesn't mean Haha funny the entire time.
Correct. It usually starts off kind of a bummer. And ends real happy. And then the tragedy starts off somewhat contented and happy.
It ends up kind of super bummer. OK. So it makes sense why the order is hell, purgatory, heavens, and heavens. And often comedies will highlight sort of the goofiness of man and their positive characters.
And they might be a little silly, but they come out looking pretty good. In tragedies, usually you have one character who is so noble that one of his traits becomes a flaw. Like in Julius Caesar, it's Brutus. No, no, no.
It's Brutus. And he is so trusting in honor and in the spirit of Rome that he doesn't see that other men are angling for power. Right? He doesn't know that that's what Cassius wants.
He thinks everyone will act nobly after the tyrant is removed. And that's not what happens. Right? So he's not.
Cassius has a lean and hungry look. Yeah. That's the only line of Joyce's rocker. Remember?
He doesn't get it. Yeah. So that's the difference between tragedy and comedy. So he's in exile.
Right? And the end of which is like an A, B, A rhyme scheme. So cat, bag, bat. And then the next one would be BCB.
So tag, box and drag. Right? And then the next one would continue that rhyme scheme. So you take this center line and then you make it the first and third of the next one.
And it goes on, and you can have as many as you want in any poem. And then it ends with either an E, like an E, so the middle line of the last one, or that one in a rhyming couple. And he invented this, and it's partially to reflect some cool mathematical things that are going on in the Inferno. So he invented terzarema.
Really? Oh man, oh yeah, okay, so we're jumping into the inferno now Which he meant to be kind of his magnum opus and I'll explain the structure and then talk about the story Did he write them in this order also inferno the purgatory then pretty so or I don't know I don't know like I was looking at said they didn't know whether it was released in like cantos or sort of all at once I do know that he worked on it for a very long time for releasing it And it wasn't his first work right he did one called the vida nova that was about his relationship with Beatrice That was just sort of like taking a bunch of poetry from across the years and sticking narrative around it and then kind of you know Stick them all together Thomas he lived this sorry He went on the 35 years old exactly and then he was just writing this down as he went yeah, I'm sorry Okay, so there are 33 cantos in each book or in each section of the Divine Comedy Which is corresponds literally to hell and purgatory and in heaven right he's it is the story of Dante the pilgrim who is a little bit different than Dante the poet right the two personalities become kind of melted But I mean like me making myself the main character of a book. He's not me But he's pretty close. Yeah, there's a there's some but you make him like a little more jacked and a little more clever and I don't want to be Overshout of my own character I make him kind of derpy and given my worst for squall Like the Dante faint all the time yeah, yeah, all right So he takes a tour all the way through what for them was the known universe if you remember back to our previous episode the spheres We talked about how the world was put together and so for a modern-day reader It seems like he's just going through this weird hell in the weird mountain and then he's in some weird crystal spheres in the sky with flower With what there's like a flower up there right and and for them that was the universe right he went from From the earth through the earth up a mountain and then into the stars and then eventually traveled all the way to sort of you know The end of what was known at the time so this was a tour around everything for us It would be like traveling so far we get to where we see I don't know the edge of space If you're someone who leaves in the big bang you get to watch the big bang right when you hit the edge of light That's what he interstellar.
Yes, we go black hole Your bookshelf wait spoiler wait, you don't talk it you will book All right, so there are 33 books or cantos in each of the three sections and with an addition of one as an introduction So book one of the inferno is an introduction to the entire comedy not just the inferno the hundred so it's a hundred cantos Yeah, but it's divided into three sections of 33 and each of them is written with three lines and all of this is to reflect the Trinity Right he was kind of in numbers numbers. We're cool But he didn't want to end with 99 that's a weird number and so we popped on a can to be beginning But each one is 33 books has 33 lines It's all just the repetition of the Trinity right and we even have three grand sections in the translations that you could you teach the inferno A your class and then grammar to each purgatory next year. It has been proposed sorry You might think about doing that one day in the English translations do they match that same rhyming scheme? Yeah, so it's not like it's a lot easier in Italian to do that rhyming scheme than it is in English I don't think the translation I use maintains the rhyme scheme and I think that's probably a good thing I find that when English translations try to maintain also the rhyme scheme.
They sort of mess it up hard I'm pretty sure there's a famous English translation. I could be very wrong on this But by Pope that tries to maintain oh wow the rhyme scheme and it for a long time was English translation I think that's correct. I'm just going on top of my head, but yeah I remember reading it and it's it's hard It's janky because you're needing to get those endings right that rhyme that aren't necessarily like The most important word in the sentence. Yeah, and yeah, so it gets a little weird.
What translation do you read Mark Musa? Okay, it's good. Yeah, it's easy for ninth grade readers and that means everyone essentially Yeah, there's lots of great translations So the mark me so one has a fantastic end notes at the end of every can so to help you understand what's going on Dorothy Sayers so we've talked about the podcast before on the second trivia podcast as she has a very famous law school to learn She's got a very famous translation of Dante that has sort of been used a lot in classical schools And there's a brand new one by his name escapes me, but he's a professor He was at Providence and now he left Providence College and now he works at some I think St. Thomas Moore College and Anthony Esselin Is that his name?
I'm trying to look for it, but that's a As a Lin Esselin I'm pretty sure that's him and apparently his review his translation is getting very good traction of being like Maybe the new standard, and so I picked up the copy of it, but I haven't read it yet Yeah, well, I read I read the mark me subversion and it's pretty good alright So let's get to the story right I told you essentially the structure and what he narrates is himself right midway on the journey through his life But when he says his his life he actually says our life midway through the journey of our life I found myself in a wood and so you are supposed to understand as the reader that this Dante the pilgrim represents everyone right? He is us he is you he's me and and so we are supposed to understand ourselves going through this journey what year was this book written I think he published it right before his death in Like roughly 2021 so he worked on between 1308 and 1321 so the world is ending in 2642 Lives you guys oh come so this is we know that the front of the head and published by 1317. Oh my goodness So we got a lot of time. Yeah, okay?
Okay, anyway, so he shows up in this wood and he's not quite sure how he gets there That's not the important bit doesn't really matter But all he sees is he sees this mountain in front of him at the top There's the Sun's the stars guy and he wants to get up it, but he can't he's blocked by three animals The she wolf the lion and the leopard and he's kind of dragging a foot right like he injured her something But it's just heavier and it wants to remain below and we're supposed to sort of understand that is our sin right? So our sin is holding us keeping us from ascending the mountain into the stars And there's also three animals and so I don't know where it comes as dude Virgil and if you know anything about the classics But if you don't he wrote the aniid for Rome and so he is a both representative of the Roman heritage that the Italians had and he was all about The Empire and not the papacy right he actually wrote in support of the Roman Empire sort of and and he's also a representation of human reason So he comes and he's like hey buddy I see you're having a lot of trouble those animals Beatrice sent me to come and guide you through what I can guide you through because I've made this journey before right So you're probably gonna start going through levels, but like there's a place where the pagans go right? So it's our season air's on alert hang out in the place limbo So then does that were Virgil that's where Virgil lives, but it doesn't yeah It's always days for this he's come out and give it to her and then he has to go back All right, so he guides him and what we find out is that there are three primary divisions to hell that correspond to the three animals the she-wolf or sins of incontinence like loss of self-control and then the sins of the lion or sins of violence and sins of the Leopard or sins of deception right lies and those are the three levels and going from the top or the least bad in hell all the way to the Bottom so loss of self-control sins of violence and then sins of Deceit I've often found that about leopards Liars yeah, there's duplicities. Yep.
I mean it makes sense to me most cats are No, I love actually both. Oh, I don't think cats are duplicists at all. I think they just vaguely hey, I'll have a More like an apathy of like yeah, no, I think the lever just has spots right yeah It's something it's not it's not it's just be here all right So they start and they first hit the vestibule which is where the Luke warm Christians go right if you didn't take a side because you never stood for anything and on earth You never stand for anything in death and their punishment is they have to chase this flag around while being stung by bees Oh, right nothing pricked them to move when they were alive and they there's a there's a flag right? They have to chase something to stand for and so they get a chase and everything and then the rest of everybody kind of goes to the Shore and is compelled by divine justice to try to want to get into hell for some reason and they cross with the vestibule count as Hell sorry is that it's outside hell okay?
Hell kicks them out heaven doesn't want them. They're not a part They're not in pretty they don't have any chance of redemption I know they just know they don't so they just sort of stick outside and everything is horrible There's a lot of people in there there's a lot of people in there There's a lot of people everywhere, but there's a great multitude there And I think they're don't take passes out don't they passes out a lot in this book He gets scared and he'll pass out where he'll get tired and pass out or you know whatever He's a lot of time passing out So they come to the shore and they go across with the help of Carl on the boatman or I think it's pronounced Karen But Karen is not here. Yeah, and he's one of the people yeah He's got wild hair and fiery eyes and he's like I'm gonna get you you sinner and then when Virgil's like actually he's a living man And you have to get taken across and you can't hit anybody with your paddle He gets all sour and grumpy because he doesn't like fairing good, you know alive people just like Karen Yeah, it's just like Karen right so they got across I thought about this but he's not in danger as he goes in Oh, he's absolutely in danger. He could be He could be hurt.
He could be there a few spots where he gets into some serious danger But this isn't an adventure story like if you've ever there's a video game that came out a few years ago about him delving into hell to rescue Beatrice. Oh wow, it's not I was wrong. I was moving about that what dream what dream they come yeah kind of the same thing yeah, right? This is why we do a podcast so that we can put proper classic education into the war on sex Yeah, so we have the video games we deserve You know 3 or 4 cantos yeah, there's no monster bosses.
It's just your own sin that you must master this is old Roman talking to you Anyway, we do he and ninth-grading So Dante fanboys on Virgil really hard he's really big Virgil fans So after the cost they the first place they stop is limo and that's where the virtuous pagans go They didn't believe in God they have no chance of ever getting there and but you know they're not so bad And so this is where all the big poets are Homer Ovid Horace I think there's a few of them and don't like the flossers like Socrates Yeah, there's that's where they go and there's so he sees Homer and Homer's buddies and it's Homer Ovid Luke and in Horace and Homer like waves him over and he's like hey buddy and he's like and I was counted fifth among their numbers So in his own book he puts himself on the same level of a Homer and Ovid and Virgil tried the book he can do whatever he wants Yeah, exactly so he's like they welcomed me in like a brother and it's just the cheesiest thing in the world Yeah, take a shot But the thing is it's true though. I mean he is he is and it like actually so is it actually it sounds sort of like he's being Pryful, but is it pride to recognize like true talent? True talent and part of it was writing. It's not a weird console fifth in that list.
Sorry six I want to say like for him to say this is this thing. I put a lot of time into it. It's pretty good That's okay. Yeah, we've ever heard of Luke and I mean like I'm just saying we know I think they're big then it's like putting out a rap album and be like a Jay-Z and And why am I blank it on Kanye welcome me and they say I'm one of their own I feel like I'm gonna be like really about it you think yeah anyway So they go past the virtuous pegs and they actually delve into hell proper where people are punished So hit the circle of the lustful where we find Achilles because there's a couple different versions of how Achilles died One of them was that he lusted after a Trojan princess and was assassinated at their wedding So he's he should not real different.
He should definitely be in the circle of the raffle It's just that's what that's the story is already daunting. So we're daunting not have read Homer I actually don't think it was likely that he had he read a good translation for me. Oh interesting even though So but Homer's is BFF. I mean they still do that one word.
Okay, so he yeah, and then they talk to Some people Francesca and Paulo and I'm trying to hit the highlights here I swear I'm not gonna do every ring by ring, but I love that story Francesca and Paulo She like they were sitting and she was reading together and she was married in life in actual like these were real people Yeah, this is a story Dante for the most part he put some literary characters in there and he put a lot of real actual people in there The rules you knew yeah The rule was that you had to have been dead by the year 1300 when the book takes place I thought there was a life person in there There's there's like one and he actually says what you have done is so bad that your soul dropped into hell and your body has Been possessed by a demon and it is still walking around And so I wonder if that got copy of the book and it's like oh no Oh, this is not good for PR But yeah, there's for the most part like sometimes if he knew someone would die in like 1306 He'd have the people in hell predict their death Oh if it came out this year We put in people that have died in the last yeah in the last so many years and they could even predict the coming of like when Kanye Dies dies He will he will be here in the circle of the prideful or whatever right so they were sitting and they were reading together And they were reading about Lancelot and Gwenivir And they were like they'd read a little bit and look each other in the eyes and blush and start breathing heavily and then read a little more And this is a little racy book It was not okay for a woman and a man that wasn't her husband to be reading this alone But she paints the picture like it's not her fault It was the book and then he kissed me and then my husband jumped out from behind the drapes and killed us both Which is actually what happened well and this has been the reason I say this is because this scene has been repeated again and again And again and again in art right it's been painted so many times and Dante falls for this right? He's like oh, it's so sad that you both have to die But really they're not having a good time she refers to Paulo as this one She never says his name He just kind of stands there in cries and part of their punishment is that they have to be together forever because of one moment of lust They didn't actually like each other well They were just lusting and their punishment is they have to get blown around a whirlwind just as we are swept up by lust Is Virgil correct Dante or does Dante realize he's wrong? We see a progression of Dante from the beginning to the end of having different Progressively react different reactions to the sin right these people deserve to be here This is divine justice God has put them here for a reason He is never wrong they are receiving just punishment for their deeds and at first Dante sympathetic and Virgil yells at him a few times And he says dude you gotta get it together if you stand here and listen to this anymore I'm gonna freak out and there's actually a Sort of a string of scholars that say Dante himself Participates in the sin in every ring he will do something that sort of implicates himself to say that you know because he represents all of us Like none of us are innocent of these things right so he talks to Paulo and then they move on they go to gluttons Which we've talked about in a previous episode right it's consuming so much that you other people go without and they're because they had so much comfort in life They sort of lay down and get rained on a dog barks Adam It's just uncomfortable generally and that's where we meet Kerberis the three-headed dog Yeah, and they sort of throw some slime down his mouth and he jumps on it And then we meet the hoarders and the spend thrifts so people that hoard their money and people that spend their money And they spend most of the time yelling at each other and rolling big rocks about it around a big circle And this is where he talks a little bit about philosophy and fortune and how fortune doesn't really care if you're a good man or a bad man It's true money moves around that's where the wheel of fortune comes from He's getting that from with you. Yeah, or who's getting it from like just we should do pocket Unfortunately who's getting it from you know antiquity where fortune was this thing that it's just yeah Fortune's really interesting fortune was this arbitrary force Her job was basically to stir the water so that they don't get stale so you're in the Sun today Well, you're not gonna be in the Sun tomorrow.
You could lose all your fortune and and fortune doesn't care fortune Just doing her job. She's just stirring the water so that like right she's whimsical She don't care about you and she's always depicted with a wheel which is where we get the wheel of fortune Her name her name translates to van white Okay, and then we get to the raffle in this lawful the raffle was a demi urge The raffle in this lawful sort of tackle each other in a giant River of poop and bite each other and tear each other and don't take see the guy dunked here It's really funny. Hey, I knew you and don't think I want to dunk that guy. I was like go ahead.
This is punishment It's not cool. This is what this guy deserves So he dunks him good It's kind of awesome and this lawful just lay underneath the muck and just sort of let bubbles come up They don't really do anything and then they go to the city of dis which is the heretics and they are all burned in tombs with everyone who believed in their Hersey and this is sort of outside of our divisions right of incontinence the she wolf violence and fraud It's between incontinence and violence the city yes the city of this wall and try to keep them out They're like you all go past and then an angel comes down and he's like for reals and like blows the door open And he's like you don't do it again And he like walks off trying to keep the poop out smell out of it But don't they when they see the city don't they see that there's a giant breach in the walls of the city of dis and then they talk About when Christ came down to hell and save everybody so not necessarily a breach in the walls the walls are still standing But you can see that there is a big like gash where the angel came down and he's the only one that can move rocks Everybody else just walks around doesn't change anything They're just shapes but the angel comes down and he's like let them through We've been through this before and you guys paid for it last time remember Wow, and we meet some furies and some harpies that are a mirror of the three heavenly ladies Which is I think state Lucia Beatrice and Mary Okay, so moving up so The three divisions right we've just finished with incontinence which is loss of self-control and all the monsters We've met are primarily animals right Kerberis that sort of thing and my freshman always have a really hard time with this Because he's making some statements about what sins are bad and what sins are okay And in this version being a liar is worse than being a tyrant or a murderer right? So long as you didn't betray them before you murdered them and my freshman always have a really hard time about that time with that But I think because their liars more than they are tired I don't think that's it I think it's just what we punish most severely in justice systems were right but that's not in God's eyes That's not necessarily the worst right you can fly into a passion and kill somebody when really what caused that was your love for your Wife and you found her cheating or something or maybe you just lose control every now and again The state of the person's soul is not necessarily bad right sins of incontinence of being swept away by your own animal lusts It's just natural right we all lust no no Fall in natural phone at you right but this is our nature currently and we are we are swept We are all swept away by them and I can be swept away by lust and not have an evil intent in my soul at all Okay, but maybe this is a question for after we've gone through all the things but what makes a sin of Lust for example something that is hell worthy versus those in purgatory So the difference between those and hell and those in purgatory is that those in purgatory were believers Mm-hmm, right and then they still have sin and they have to be purged of that sin before going to heaven But in Palo Alto in Francesca presumably were baptized Catholics apparently not apparently there were believers one or the other Right, it just makes me think the auto-quatio episode of that there's consciousness what animals have and so each of us on the podcast also teach a Leadership class for the high school and we're reading through my Christianity Oh, yeah, but I'm following the lesson plans of everybody else Everybody who is listening to this podcast who are my boss But but so having these he talks about this more law But like that we have reactions that we have emotions is not a wrong thing in and of itself like there's something right that has an Emotion but then we as he's own animal just act on that immediately and these early sense are making ourselves animal like they're Punished by animals as well. It's that they're not human So whereas an animal will have a reaction humans can look at that and say I want to do one thing But I choose to do another thing and those people on first levels just chose not to so we're headed of soul You have these emotional things that bubble up from the sort of animal side of the human person and you don't censor them You just try them I was actually gonna say I think these sins correspond to the three divisions of the human soul You know did the sort of the three layers correspond to I think so well number one is Abitize their sins of your appetites You are taken and you can't keep yourself from doing it and the same things animals do and the intent of your soul is not necessarily evil Right, you and can know a lot of really good people who are totally lustful or really good people who are gluttons And they just can't they can't kick it and they might try their best right and then after that through the city of diss or hair Sees which are a set of intellectual pride, which is which is typically understood to be outside of the three divisions We get into the sins of violence the river fledgethan or the river of blood the wood of suicides Which is where if you commit suicide you go and it was understood by the church that that was a that was a sin that would instantly Continue to help and then the burning sand which is for sins of man.
I'm forgetting the word for it sodomy sins of sodomy right so very unnatural sins and you would just lie on this burning sand and fire would come and You right and these are sins of violence right where we are not just maybe harming ourselves by eating too much or being swept By lusts, but we are actively harming others and it seems to me that this corresponds to the will's right the spirit I'm too spirited and so I hurt people or I don't have enough spirit and perhaps that's what put me in the wood of suicides The wood of suicides is awfully tragic If you commit that sin you are thrown there and you sprout like a tree and your body hangs in your branches because something that you cast Off in life is not given back to you in death and I think today we would understand suicide with a little more grace and sympathy But but back then right it was seen as refusing a gift that God had given you and ultimately despair despairing of God's grace And the sufficiency of his love in order to save you right saying God is not enough for me He cannot get me through this hard thing that I'm going through and the trees can talk right when he's there Doesn't he like take a leaf off and the tree screams out of the way that you talk to a tree is by snapping a branch off And it feels to the tree like you are snapping off a limb And so part of their punishment is that there's some dogs that run around and break all the branches and chase some dudes and there's Harpies that you know eat parts of the trees and it's Because they're half birds to this injury yeah, so that's kind of terrible But again, I think it corresponds to the spirit right you are maybe overly spirited and then or under-spirited Yeah, I've enough or under-spirited right and then so these are sins against others sins against the self And then sodomy would be sins against nature right the way that we are supposed to be right then we move down And we go into the sins of fraud and the monster that's the symbol of this is Gary on and he's got an honest man's face He looks very honest and good his fur is all curly cues. He's got these big lions I'm with on his face with her He's like weird conglomeration and from the front he looks like kind of like a lion He's got lion paws and this fur and it's all in curly shoes and arabesque and it's beautiful And he compares it to like nice rugs and then he's got his on his face and then on the back He's got a scorpion stale like a scorpion stinger on a snake tail. So you look so honest And he's they're all real good until you know he gets you it's like the worst mascot There's there's the times when I'm like we should have a little mascot from old things every time we've tried to pull a mascot It ends up being horrible terrible terrible thing. Can we tell you about the questing beast we're here for that?
No, so in ancient Arthurian literature There's this beast that is he's like half big snake half leopard What they think is that they saw giraffe and didn't know how to describe it It's got like barking dogs and it's tummy and it's really weird and this guy like I will find the questing beast for this much Questing Beast because you got a quest to find them. Yeah, so you wanted we wanted that your mascot with a fair toss Yeah, yeah, which we thought was awesome And then we found out that the questing beast had to do with like incest The horrible things are like all the incest in the families in the murder and the betrayal is all represented in this question We probably didn't want to wrap the schools in a branding In the questing beast or else we'd have to go and do some serious editing on that We compete in the future I know that they're cool with it. Although he's great If you can think of a great classical beast that can be the veritas mascot Let us know because right now we are just the defenders. We're just cool But you know how like so for example like a hockey team or has maybe you guys don't know this No, no, no, but for exactly the Toronto Maple Leafs like they are the Maple Leafs But their mascot is a polar bear that just wears a maple leaf jersey So I mean like you know what the mascot doesn't have to be the name of the team So we could be the very toss defenders and our mascot could be like it shouldn't just be like an anthropomorphized sword or something But the way right now it can be depicted so many ways a nice fence.
Oh, yeah, defense But we're just like rubber gloves they do defend or like just clear ox wipes are the beast only in hell or do they are there also be some purgatory or I don't remember any beast in purgatory. I would have met a little bit of an emerald purgatory Yeah, that'd be the other problem picking up classical animals that are all from hell according to Dante Yeah, so anyway, they hit the bottom yeah, and then go over all these little ditches or bulgea They're like it looks like a big tiddly wing sport You guys ever play tiddly winged trick? Yeah, so it's just like concentric circle No, you're talking about they're little they're little ditches And they kind of have to go over all these bridges and the monsters here Sorry the monsters in the violence are like half-man half animal This is where we see centaurs and then once we hit fraud they actually become very human little devils Right and this is where we have panderers and salutators flatter, simonists, sorcerers hypocrites thieves deceivers source of discord falsifiers, which are guys who minted fake money? Yeah, usurers Yeah, so this is where all those guys all kind of reside and each one has a different punishment I'm gonna go through all of them But the idea here is that even though one man may have murdered it is a greater sin to be a liar and someone who continuously deceives other men Because it takes forethought it reaches the highest parts of your soul.
It reaches your reason you need to intend to do it I bring you in I fake something and I I read you know put Bad things on you to make good things happen to me So if that resulted in you also murdering me you would get put into the lower circle of hell for your deception or for your lying For your murder. I think it's I mean I assume that Achilles had a lot of sin but you are put somewhere because of the sin that most defines The primary one is what puts you in your level. This is the thing that sort of centrally you cannot shake Yeah, yeah, right and then they finally get to the bottom and by the way, it's it's not all fired down here It's mostly just a cave yeah, and then they hit the bottom all of the rivers of hell have been There's a part where it describes that they came down a statue and it's that the tears of sin flowing down through the year the different ages of man Make the different rivers there's the acaron which is the vestibule and then there's the river of poop or the sticks There's a river of blood the fledgethan and they all sticks as a river of poop. Yes.
I will that changes the way I will listen to that band every time I realized great. Thank you. No problem My go to So we hit the bottom and they some giants take them and they put them down on what is at the very bottom a sea of ice and it's really windy And it's really cold and the idea is that we know yeah It already happened boys and it's because they are the furthest one can possibly get from God's light and warmth This is where God is not and this is where the the biggest deceivers are the betrayers the betrayers of kindred or family the betrayers of country The betrayers of guests which we see as kind of a theme in ancient literature right Pophotality was really important and then betrayers of your lords So even betraying my family was not as bad as betraying a lord subject relationship And so we finally meet Satan I've been I've heard a seven hard time with that one too. They do Uh, we finally meet Satan.
He's got three faces and he is chomping on three sinners Brutus Cassius and Judas Right so people who were famous for betraying their lords Uh, and and then they he's not malignant to them He doesn't like want to hurt them He's just sort of flapping to try to get out of where he is and they said they climbed down his legs And then they got they've kind of passed through the center of the earth because that's where Satan is lodged right in the middle of the earth Like a worm in an apple that is sending rottenness out from the core right? That's kind of what he's doing when they climb out and they find themselves at the bottom of purgatory How does that sorry? He goes down and then passes through is he on the center of the earth at this point the Satan is lodged right in the center of the earth And so from center of earth to is he passing a rest of the earth on the bottom of the mouth? They well they've been in hell and hell is this big crater all the way down there and then they suddenly go And then they climb on they get like grab onto Satan's hunches And then climb down a little ways and then right when they hit the center He sort of like rotates and then climbs back up and Dante's really confused He's like man I I was looking at his face and I'm looking at his legs, but everything is still like right side up So he's really confused about what happened and virtual has to explain it Haven't you seen Looney Tunes where they like go down and then the screen flips over then they come up in there and Exactly like these were like Yeah, so they went into hell on good Friday and they come out of hell the same day jesus did which would be Easter Yeah, and then they journey up purgatory and purgatory is for those who have hope of redemption But need to have their sins tortured out of them sort of and you go up level by level until everything is gone They hit the top of that he has a chat with Beatrice who takes over and Virgil who represents human reason is not allowed to come into heaven He can't he's barred Yeah, and that's to say that human reason can only get us so far right and it can't take us into heaven Right that takes to faith So he has to stay behind and then Beatrice takes in the rest of the way The inferno is what I'm most familiar with and could walk you through the cool thing about purgatory is that You can see it even as like a manual for how to deal with the specific sins because I see if I remember this when they're in purgatory they are given a Rod and a yoke we sort of a way to think about it So their punishment they are punished and that punishment there's a rod so they get sort of punished in proportion to the sin that they've done But they're also given a yoke They're given like a burden that they have to do that will train them in the virtue that they have lacked So the only one I can remember is the one of lust which is right at the top of purgatory And so the rod is that they are in burning fire Because in life they burned and so in purgatory they burn and they also have to burn away their desires But the yoke that they're given the thing that they're supposed to do to train them in the proper virtue Is that they have to listen to proper stories of actual good redemptive holy love So stories of men who love women in righteous ways stories of like proper friendships stories of charity that are that are pure and good And they have to listen to those stories and learn those stories And then at a certain point the lust is burned away And they've been trained in love and then they can go into heaven And I'm pretty sure that every single step has that rod yoke relationship And you can even go into it and you can like some people have even Credited it as like a field manual for how to deal with specific sins if you are someone who loves money Well go to the money purgatory place and see how they deal with it Yeah, Dante's intention in writing the comedy was to help everyone come to a greater faith Right.
We are like he was exiles from our true home Which is heaven and he's exiled from florence and so he also gets to throw a bunch of Italian politics in there And when you read it, you can skip over a lot of the Italian dudes You don't need to worry about that as much it's kind of interesting when you look up some of their stories and who they were and what they did That's all really you ever go to florence. I've never been to florence. Hey, you've been to florence But if you go to florence, I think they've done a pretty good job of like pointing out Like here's this dude's house who is the guy that talked that don't they talk about in purgatory? There's actually a big statue of Dante and don't always looks just so pissed He looks sick.
Oh man. It's because he's been exiled and he's not happy and again and again florence have tried to get his body I think his body's in vervena and they've tried again and again and again and again and vervena's like you didn't want him in life We're not getting him back in death, which is so good So he's trying to bring us as exiles back to our home and he would know he was an exile And so he brings this story You know home to you in your heart as much as he can then he writes in the four levels Just like scripture that we talked about the literal the allegorical the moral and the anagogical So he has all these levels of symbolism going on in his head as he writes and one last comment about the structure of things Satan is at the center of the earth because of how hard he fell from heaven Right he fell like a meteor and when he hit it dug all of hell out like a big crater It's actually this big v-shaped crater and it hasn't really changed since Satan fell And then he got stuck in the middle of the earth and that's where he's been ever since right just sitting right in the middle of earth Making everything rotten from the center and then so I go through hell and then they go up purgatory and purgatory is the mountain that came out the other side When he felt so hard. So it's just like a big boof and just drew drove all the I hit my microphone my hands drove it all the way out the other side And so he gets to go through and then climb up to the mountain and then head into this Paradise have three concentric rings other like people who are who are in paradise who did really great at acts of charity But they're lower in paradise and people who've done acts of bravery or it doesn't have that Other levels but I'm not as positive structure. I know hell away more than I know the other ones just like most everyone does You're a hard-living guy guys.
It's the fun one and it's the funny one. Have you read the purgatory? I've read purgatory I've read most of paradise was born. I read paradise I think last time was an undergrad and I remember being like he's like it was the best thing ever and then I got to the next level It was even better and that happens every ring.
He's like if I thought I knew bliss before it was nothing compared to this new bliss It's now this could be out of squashy over that word was coming back Right it could be a problem with us not loving paradise because our mind has not informed the object I don't know but oh man, it's so boring If you are feeling compelled to read it's okay to just read the inferno and stop right? I don't think so I think purgatory purgatory is great. It really is but I'd say most of the educated world has read the inferno, right? That's that's the one that's really popular.
I feel like we got to get to the place where we want heaven I was thinking about that like is it that it's more exciting to read about hell Yeah, and I don't know I think I was like something else of well, I was gonna say I think it does right when see us Lewis wrote the screetape letters It was ideally going to have a companion book written from an elder angel to a younger angel And he's like but I couldn't do it every sentence would have to drip with perfection and honey And I just can't write that and I think for us to just hear about only happiness Doesn't connect as well with our souls because that's not what we are at least not yet Yeah, no, it just kind of makes me sad that I don't want to read the parity so as much as I want to read the inferno I don't know like I'm not as excited about reading about that Attempt to perfection as I am about the inferno or even the purgatory purgatorial. I don't know I think it means something. Yeah, no, it's like you want to watch the bad guy movie Right what we talked about this with superheroes that I don't watch those movies Sorry, I know you don't but like a level of grit makes the superhero movie more relatable. Oh, sorry.
I mean yeah Angry sad Superman is better than like I think better but like more people watch it. Maybe is one thing yeah We identify with a Superman who's having difficulties more than we identify with just a perfect a Superman who's like and that has worked out perfectly I have prevented another crime his name is super me Yeah, but that doesn't make him always happy Graham There's also a line of comics where instead of Superman landing in us he lands in the usr Have you seen this? No? Yeah, he's like defending communism is another yeah, it's one of the alternate universes of Superman That's awesome.
See because you want to read that one and not like the he's a super he's a great guy for I don't know see he can be a squirt is super convenient for For the party. Yeah, definitely all right, so to wrap it all up don't say yeah, um, I don't know You're getting out of this audience. No, you're not. Don't think this is like actually how it is like This is how hell is oh, I don't think that he was actually putting down theology There he was claiming where everyone would go because of their besetting sin I think his intention was to show us what sins are actually bad in the human soul because I think we misunderstand them Yeah, we think that the violent ones are the ones that hurt the most other people But that's the thing is God's not concerned with how many other people we hurt He's concerned with where your soul is when it makes the decision to sin and violence is sometimes a lot easier of a decision to make than Fraud and deceiving someone else and deciding to hurt them and then carrying that out right so I don't know I I think he was trying to make a statement more about who we are in our journey to faith rather than he was saying like I am Because he included all kinds of pagan things too, right?
We got car on the boat master Who by the way is even present in the oldest book we have Gilgamesh? Oh, he's he's in all everything car on the boat master is wow and like he shows up all the time That's why I should read the classics. I understand those references in Gilgamesh He actually has to explain to Gilgamesh why the boat won't work after Gilgamesh tears apart Gilgamesh is like why would you why can't you sail me over? He's like listen Gilgamesh the thing you broke is the thing that lets my boat sail and he's like I still don't get it.
He's like why are you mad at me boatman? He's like you wreck my boat. It's great So he shows up all the time and so I don't think he was making any statements about About like the actual structure of hell But he definitely like the the cosmos yes was the medieval belief of how the cosmos worked So maybe not the actual nitty-gritty Hell components of the you know the say of the nine layers or whatever But definitely the idea of the spheres and the premium mobile and all those sort of things they would believe yeah What's the unmoved mover God? It's the where you get all the way outside the spheres and you sort of get into the realm of pure thought and that's where God lives So it's it's it is not moving just like how the center of a wheel is not moving and everything revolves around it And the farther away you get from it the faster motion there is Okay And so in that sense like Satan is the farthest away from God and so he should be the one that's whipped around the most but I don't think I'll talk about that He throws in place but he throws it in place but in relation to being far from God.
He's at the edge of the wheel So presumably he's spinning around the quickest But I think I mean I don't know if that's I don't think they understood how the wheels move the things that were closest to God would have moved quite a bit because they were Moving so many thousands of miles no we could but they're They're closer to the center so as they get closer to the center they move sort of more slowly and harmoniously I don't know earth is not the center earth is not the center earth is not the center No, but it wasn't yeah earth is the center. It's just it's it that they think of it more like being at the bottom of the garbage can It's the worst bits that didn't get used in the creation of everything else and it falls to the bus So that's earth Yeah, so Satan is the ultimate trash he's the thing that was tossed out of the good stuff which is the heavens Okay, uh stuff we got wrong we had one we can Can you talk about the microphone? Oh, I was gonna talk about the microphone. I mean we do everything professionally That's what I meant to start.
Sorry I was pointing to the reaction. Yeah, I'll do mine another time. What's your thing? You can't I was gonna say we pronounced Yeah, I had a few people contact me on this one so thank you Uh the the uh the town in florida is augustine and I hear it's lovely the saint from christian tradition is augustine So I'm totally still gonna mix the two but well This the problem is is that veritas we have houses and one of the houses is house augustine But it's not and everybody's house of augustine.
Oh, well, I'm going I'm calling my guston then because that's what I always did And then everyone's like augustine and I get a lot of flak for pronouncing it's different because I'm a different country We're gonna we're gonna take this one head on excellent. Yeah, let's do this thing That's what we got wrong. I guess if you enjoyed the podcast you can always contact us at classical stuff at veritasacademy.net We also have a website classical stuff dot net and that'll be updated with episodes You can check everything out there if we ever have shirts. That's where we'll sell them We have a twitter we tweet every twitter before we have quoted at um, I can't remember what our at is It's something like classical stuff, but with vowels removed because classical stuff's already taken But not all the vowels not all the vowels just some of the vowels.
I'm trying to pull it up. Um Anyways, that's uh, we are at clsscal stuff Cool, let's go cool stuff. Let's go stuff. And so uh tweet at us We will we will tweet back and then that will be what we do on the twitter's because what else is it for maybe we can make some fun Some fun classical jokes.
We tried to get a flame war started with some of the modern philosophers It didn't work. It didn't yeah, so our very first tweet so you know there's like twitter accounts where it's just Immanuel Kant quotes over and over again So I we tweeted at ammanuel Kant we're coming for you My favorite twitter account is immanuel Kant yay west where they take immanuel Kant quotes and mix them with konnye tweets And there's also a one kim jirikar dashiin is really good That's another one and another one is justin buber which is the flossamer buber and justin bieberk man. That's pretty awesome You guys they are so good. You gotta check them out So that is classical stuff you should know we thank you for listening to our spring break podcast And we're heading to the beach so we're going to beach where um You know this isn't gonna get oh this isn't gonna get published during spring break again.
It's coming out tomorrow Yeah, happy spring break everybody for our seniors that are on their europe trip We hope that you are enjoying listening to this on one of your bus rides. Yep. Yep. And we this we will sign off.
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