In the Sixth Circle of Hell, Dante and Virgil roamed through the fiery tombs of the Heretics. Virgil illustrated the particular heresy of one of the groups, the Epicureans, who pursued pleasure in life because they believed that the soul died with the body. A voice from one of the tombs interrupted them by addressing Dante as a Tuscan. This voice belonged to Farinata, a political leader of Dante’s era.

Canto X (10)

Suddenly, the soul of Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, the father of Dante’s intimate friend Guido, rises up and interrupts them and asks why his son wasn't with Dante there. Dante replies that perhaps Guido held Virgil in disdain. Distressed, the soul assumes that his son is dead and sinks back into his grave.

Farinata discusses the Florentine politics. Despite representing opposing parties, they treat each other politely. Based on Farinata’s words, Dante realizes that the shades in Hell can see future events but not present ones. Farinata can predict the future, he predicts Dante’s exile from Florence, but stays unaware of current events. Farinata then confirms that part of their punishment the Heretics can see only distant things. Virgil then calls Dante back so they can proceed through the rest of the Sixth Circle. Farinata’s words have made Dante concerned over his exile, but Virgil reassures him that he will hear a fuller explanation .

The Seventh Circle of Hell had a stench so overwhelming that Virgil and Dante sat down at Pope Anastasius's tomb to adjust to it. Virgil then explained the last three circles of Hell. The Seventh Circle of Hell, contained the violent and it's subdivided into three smaller circles. They punished the sins of violence against one’s neighbor, against oneself, and against God. Fraud would be the worst because it breaks the trust of a man and opposes love. The last two circles of Hell punish the Fraudulent. The Eighth Circle punishes “normal fraud” such as sins that violate the natural trust between people like hypocrisy. The Ninth Circle, punishes betrayal which are sins that violate a relationship of particularly special trust.

Canto XI (11)

Dante asked Virgil why the divisions of Hell exist and why some sinners don't receive this same degree of punishment. Virgil reminded Dante of the philosophy in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which posits the existence of three dispositions counter to Heaven’s will such as Incontinence, malice, insane brutality. The disposition of incontinence offends God least, receiving a more lenient punishment, outside of the city of Dis.

Dante then asks why is usury a sin. Virgil explains to Dante that usury goes against God’s will because a usurer makes his money not from industry or skill but rather from money itself. Usurers also go against God’s design for the world. The two poets now progress toward the First Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell.

Virgil and Dante through a ravine of broken rock. At the edge, the monstrous threatens them, and they must slip past him while he rages to distraction. As they descend, Virgil notes that this rock had not yet fallen at the time of his previous journey into the depths of Hell.

Canto 12

 Coming into the ring, they see a river of blood: here boil the sinners who were violent against their neighbors. A creatures that are half man, half horse. That stand on the bank of the river with bows and arrows. They shoot at any soul that tries to raise itself out of the river to a height too pleasant for his and her sin.

Dante moves the rocks that he walks on as only a living soul would. He draws an arrow, but Virgil commands him to stand back, and he obeys. Because the broken rocks make the ring to navigate.Virgil also asks that a Centaur be provided to guide them through the ring around the boiling blood. on whose back Dante climb.

Leading Virgil and Dante through the ring. Names some of the more notable souls punished here. That name are Alexander Dionysius, and Atilla the Hun. Those who lived in perpetrated violence on whole populations.That lie in the deepest parts of the river. leaves the travelers. Who continue on into the Second Ring.

In the Second Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, Virgil and Dante enter a strange wood filled with black and gnarled trees. Dante hears cries of suffering but can't see the souls. Virgil tells him to snap a twig off of one of the trees. He does and the tree cries out in pain. Blood begins to trickle down its bark. The souls in this ring are those who were violent to themselves and got converted into trees. Virgil tells the tree-soul to tell his story to Dante so that Dante may spread the story on Earth. The tree-soul informs them that in life he was Pier della Vigna, an adviser to Emperor Frederick, and that he was a moral and admirable man. But when an envious group of scheming courtiers blackened his name with lies, he felt such shame that he took his own life.

Canto 13

Dante then asks how the souls here came to be in their current state. The tree-soul explains that when Minos first casts souls here, they take root and grow as saplings. They then are wounded and pecked by Harpies—foul creatures that are half woman, half bird. When a tree-soul’s branch is broken, it causes the soul the same pain as dismemberment. When the time comes for all souls to retrieve their bodies, these souls will not reunite fully with theirs, because they discarded them willingly. Instead, the returned bodies will be hung on the soul-trees’ branches, forcing each soul to see and feel constantly the human form that it rejected in life.

At this point, two young men run crashing through the wood, interrupting Dante’s conversation with the tree-soul. One of the men, Jacomo da Sant’Andrea, falls behind and leaps into a bush; vicious dogs have been pursuing him, and now they rend him to pieces. Virgil and Dante then speak to the bush, which is also a soul: it speaks of the suffering that has plagued Florence ever since it decided to make St. John the Baptist its patron, replacing its old patron, Mars (a Roman god). The bush-soul adds that he was a Florentine man in life who hanged himself.

canto XIV(14)

Dante gathers the bush’s scattered leaves and gives them to the bush. He and Virgil then proceed through the forest of tree-souls to the edge of the Third Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell. Here they find a desert of red-hot sand, upon which flakes of fire drift down slowly but ceaselessly. As Virgil expounded in Canto XI, this ring, reserved for those who were violent against God, is divided into three zones. The rain of fire falls throughout all three