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Punishments
* '''Geryon''', depicted as a strange beast with a handsome face and scaled body, carries Dante and Virgil down into the circle of fraud.
* '''Geryon''', depicted as a strange beast with a handsome face and scaled body, carries Dante and Virgil down into the circle of fraud.
* Many giants, including [[Nimrod]] and the [[Titans]], stand around the edge of the lowest circle. The [[Titans]] committed treason by waging war against the gods, while Nimrod committed treason against God by building the [[Tower of Babel]] (he now speaks a language that none can understand).
* Many giants, including [[Nimrod]] and the [[Titans]], stand around the edge of the lowest circle. The [[Titans]] committed treason by waging war against the gods, while Nimrod committed treason against God by building the [[Tower of Babel]] (he now speaks a language that none can understand).
== Punishments ==
The most famous feature of the Inferno is its wide and imaginative variety of punishments, many of which have an obvious connection with the sin in question. This connection is mentioned directly in canto XXVIII, where those who caused divisions and schisms are themselves split apart by a sword-wielding demon. The [[Italian]] word ''contrapasso'' is used to describe this idea.
The degree of ''contrapasso'' varies from one punishment to the next. In some cases, such as the schismatics already mentioned, or the [[hypocrit]]s who are crushed under lead cloaks with a thin layer of gold on the outside, the association is very direct. In others, it is more oblique; for example, the souls of the lustful are blown about by a wind, which some commentators see as representing how, in life, they were buffeted by the caprice of their own emotions. In still other cases, it is hard to see any correspondence at all - for example, [[barratry|barraters]] are boiled in tar, which is obviously painful but has little to do with political corruption.
This variation could be seen as a good example of the inconsistency of style that characterises the Divine Comedy as a whole (see the discussion on [[The Divine Comedy#Style(s)|styles]] in the main article).
== In Popular Culture ==
== In Popular Culture ==