Canto III. The two travellers, passing through a wood, reach a gate, above which Dante perceives this inscription: 

  “Through me you pass into the city of woe: 
  Through me you pass into eternal pain: 
  Through me among the people lost for aye. 
  Justice the founder of my fabric moved: 
  To rear me was the task of power divine,
  Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. 
  Before me things create were none, save things
  Eternal, and eternal I endure. 
  All hope abandon, ye who enter here."[16]

Unable to grasp its meaning, Dante begs Virgil to interpret, and learns they are about to descend into Hades.  Having visited this place before, Virgil boldly leads Dante through this portal into an ante-hell region, where sighs, lamentations, and groans pulse through the starless air.  Shuddering with horror, Dante inquires what it all means, only to be told that the souls “who lived without praise or blame,” as well as the angels who remained neutral during the war in heaven, are confined in this place, since Paradise, Purgatory, and Inferno equally refuse to harbor them and death never visits them.

While he is speaking, a long train of these unfortunate spirits, stung by gadflies, sweeps past them, and in their ranks Dante recognizes the shade of Pope Celestine V, who, “through cowardice made the grand renunciation,”—­i.e., abdicated his office at the end of five months, simply because he lacked courage to face the task intrusted to him.

Passing through these spirits with downcast eyes, Dante reaches Acheron,—­the river of death,—­where he sees, steering toward them, the ferry-man Charon, whose eyes are like fiery wheels and who marvels at beholding a living man among the shades.  When Charon grimly orders Dante back to earth, Virgil silences him with the brief statement:  “so ’tis will’d where will and power are one.”  So, without further objection, Charon allows them to enter his skiff and hurries the rest of his freight aboard, beating the laggards with the flat of his oar.  Because Dante wonders at such ill-treatment, Virgil explains that good souls are never forced to cross this stream, and that the present passengers have richly deserved their punishment.  Just then an earthquake shakes the whole region, and Dante swoons in terror.

Canto IV. When he recovers his senses, Dante finds himself no longer in Charon’s bark, but on the brink of a huge circular pit, whence arise, like emanations, moans and wails, but wherein, owing to the dense gloom, he can descry nothing.  Warning him they are about to descend into the “blind world,” and that his sorrowful expression—­which Dante ascribes to fear—­is caused by pity, Virgil conducts his disciple into the first circle of hell.  Instead of lamentations, only sighs are heard, while Virgil explains that this semi-dark limbo is reserved for unbaptized children, and for those who, having lived before Christ, must “live desiring without hope.”  Full of compassion for these sufferers, Dante inquires whether no one from above ever visited them, and is told that One, bearing trophies of victory, once arrived there to ransom the patriarchs Adam, Abel, Noah, and others, but that until then none had ever been saved.