I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE,
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL PAIN,
I AM THE WAY TO GO AMONG THE LOST.

JUSTICE CAUSED MY HIGH ARCHITECT TO MOVE;
DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME,
THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.

BEFORE ME THERE WERE NO CREATED THINGS
BUT THOSE THAT LAST FOREVER -- AS DO I.
ABANDON ALL HOPE YOU WHO ENTER HERE.
.

So begins Canto 3, with the inscription that confronts Dante over the Gates to Hell. Virgil tells him to steel himself for what is to come.

But before they even enter Hell, and encounter any of the devils and damned that await them there, Dante is first assaulted by the pitiful, angry, and pained wails of souls who suffer a different destiny. He describes the sounds as being like the grains of sand in a sandstorm that whip and blast at a person incessantly. Who are these souls who suffer so, not even in Hell? Virgil explains:

... "This state of misery
   is clutched by those sad souls whose works in life
   merited neither praise nor infamy.
Here they're thrown in among that petty choir
   of angels who were for themselves alone,
   not rebels, and not faithful to the Lord.
Heaven drives them out -- its beauty would be marred;
   nor will the deep abyss receive their souls,
   lest they bring glory to the wicked there."
.

When Dante finally sees them, they are led about running behind a banner. He recognizes their leaders immediately. (We are not told who it is by name, but scholars apparently think it is likely to be Celestine V, a virtuous monk who had been made Pope but then convinced that he was unsuited to such a worldly post and abdicated it. Dante had considered his successor, Boniface VIII, to have been a evil man. And so Celestine was figured a coward in Dante’s mind for abandoning the Papacy to him and returning to being a hermit.) The number of them was so great that Dante did not think so many had ever been taking by death. They ran to and fro, constantly stung by flies and wasps about their faces, so much so that blood ran down their faces and mixed with their tears. Rejected by Heaven for turning away from it and by Hell for their virtues, they have no place and the world had forgotten them.

We can see, here, what little Dante thought of people who lived safe lives of virtue but who shied away from confronting evil in the world.

Dante then notices in the distance souls gathered on the shore of the river Acheron, where they are to be ferried over by Charon. When the two arrive there, Charon has also arrived for another boatload and is hurling verbal abuse on the souls who await him. Charon notices Dante and tells him to go back to where living souls enter Purgatory. Virgil makes it known they are there on the bidding of heavenly powers and Charon falls silent. They board Charon’s skiff and Dante falls unconscious on the way to the far shore.

We already can see the dark imagery of suffering, terror, and resignation Dante’s journey through Hell is going to entail, as he is already describing experiences that are quite horrifying and we have not even entered into the Pit yet. The entire journey is one of ever increasing images of punishment as they descend lower and lower to the very bottom of the place, which is where the secret entrance into Purgatory is found — right at Lucifer’s feet. The image I see as a metaphor is that of an Autumn nightfall, when first the light of day dims and goes out, to be replaced by slim replacements — the moon or stars, and perhaps nothing at all if it is a cloudy night. And then after the light is gone, the night cools, getting colder and colder until just before daybreak, when it is the darkest and coldest. But this moment, which to someone who had no idea what might happen next would think the very least hopeful, is the sign that the night is about to end and the new day to begin. The entire book, Inferno, is like this. The next book, Purgatory, is like the other side of the next morning.