Canto VII

Line 1-12 “Pape Satan, Pape Satan Aleppe!” Began Plutus…the proud onslaught.”

Plutus is the god of wealth and is depicted as carrying a cornucopia, a horn shaped receptacle, of wheat. He was born on the island of Crete and is the son of Iason, a local hero, and Demeter, the goddess of harvest and fertility. He was originally only supposed to represent wealth in terms of crops and farming but turned into a god of wealth in the more general sense, hence why he is still shown carrying wheat. Plutus was blinded by Zeus so that he could not bestow wealth onto specific people but onto anyone who is deserving of it. By being blind he cannot have bias. When Dante and Virgil encounter Plutus in the fourth circle, he is said to be a “noble sage, who knew all things” relating to his abilities to bestow wealth onto others (line 2-3). (MB)

"We cut across the circle to the other shore, beside a spring that boils and spills into a ditch leading away from it. The water was much darker than purple; and we, beside the murky wave, entered a strange, descending path" (7.100-104, 117).

Dante paints a foreboding image of the river that will feed into the Styx. Rather than clean or purify, the waters muddy the sinners who were sullen in life. The imagery of this body of water stands in stark contrast to that of Lethe in Purgatorio and the river of light in Paradiso. (MC)