And then he arrives at the end of it, and Virgil says, ‘Well, I can go no further.’ And Dante, the writer, knows on some level that Virgil is not a man who deserves to be in hell.” ...

Once they entered Hell proper, Dante and Virgil encountered the souls trapped in Purgatory, the First Circle. Over the Garden Wall 's version of Purgatory is Pottsfield.

Dante’s struggle is clear in the movement of his body, in his back-and-forth steps: He wants to join Virgil so that they can climb out of hell “to see again the stars,” as “Inferno” ends ...

T.S. Eliot said: “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.” Hamlet speaks of the afterlife as “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns ...

Hell, as part of Earth, would have to be cone-shaped. Dante even gives an exact value of Earth's radius of 3,250 miles (it's actually 3,959 miles).

William Blake, “Antaeus Setting Down Dante and Virgil in the Last Circle of Hell” (between 1824 and 1827), pen, ink, and watercolor, 20.7 x 14.72 inches; The National Gallery of Victoria ...

From here, Virgil leads Dante to the lowest part of Hell, where they behold “the emperor of the kingdom dolorous”—Lucifer himself, who is trapped in ice from the waist down (canto XXXIV).

When Virgil and Dante enter the Elysian home of the poets (Inferno IV.) the former hails the mightier master’s shade : — “Questo è Omero, poeta sovrano.” ...