Inferno: Canto VI

Well, number 6 took a while to get posted but I am happy with how it turned out.

Canto VI is about the sin of Gluttony - where all the souls of those greedy, selfish, and wasteful in life get to literally muck around in the dirt while stinging rain and hail pelts their naked bodies. It's not a particularly pivotal part of the story, but Dante and Virgil briefly meet up with Cerberus; the famed three-headed dog who torments the Gluttons with his insatiable appetite.

Given the overall idea that Hell is a dull, miserable place, I imagine that the demons tasked with the torment of souls do not in the course of their positions actually enjoy doing what they do. Rather, some demons, like Cerberus, torment souls because they themselves are forever tormented by the properties of themselves and of Hell itself. Cerberus has three heads and thus three mouths to feed. In a land where there is little more than corpses and mud to eat, it's little wonder that Virgil is able to placate the beast by feeding it a handful of dirt:

And my Conductor, with his spans extended,
  Took of the earth, and with his fists well filled,
  He threw it into those rapacious gullets.


Such as that dog is, who by barking craves,
  And quiet grows soon as his food he gnaws,
  For to devour it he but thinks and struggles,


The like became those muzzles filth-begrimed
  Of Cerberus the demon, who so thunders
  Over the souls that they would fain be deaf.

Like I did with King Minos, I took some creative liberties with the form of Cerberus. I kept it three-headed since that's its main feature, but instead of the traditional dog I thought I would go with a rotund-bellied beast with three heads reminiscent of Langoliers. Dante describes his encounter with Cerberus as, "Not a limb had he that was motionless." To me, this is more conducive to waving tentacles than clawed hands and feet, so that is where my artistic license took me. In the foreground we can see broken shapes and remnants of arms, faces, and bodies stuck buried in the mud as rain pelts the barren landscape.

Also, during a meeting today I sketched a little Cerberus for you all as a present for waiting so long:

Canto VII unleashes wrath on the river Styx.