Dante Alighieri’s Inferno is an orderly vision of cosmic justice. Inferno, details the poet’s well reasoned and designed punishment of the worst types of sinners. Cantos five, seven and eighteen each offer a description of punishment that has been designed to fit the former person’s sin. Canto V describes the punishment of the lustful. Next, those who misused their wealth are damned in Canto VII. Finally, Canto XVIII deals with the torture of panders (pimps) and seducers. In Dante’s version of hell the punishment always suits the crime.
In Canto V, the poet describes the prison of those souls who were unable to master their own desires. Specifically, these people were guilty of, “subjecting reason to the rule of lust” (1316). As punishment, each is tossed about at random by a powerful wind. From this, we can grasp the reasoning behind their punishment. Instead of being grounded in their devotion to God during their lives, this group was swept up by their impulses. For this, their doom is to be constantly blown about by a torturous wind. Constant motion seems to be a fate common to all crimes of a sexual nature in Dante’s hell. Allegorically, this seems to represent the poet’s conviction that physical, as opposed to spiritual love, leaves one unsettled.
Canto VII describes the avaricious and the prodigal who let money control them. This group is guiltily of having misused the products of their work either by hoarding or by squandering. For their crimes this group is forced to forever labor in vain by moving great weights around a semicircle to no purpose at all. This sentence is just for both groups. The greedy must work hard for eternity just as in life but, cannot enjoy the fruits of their labor. The wasteful must also work hard but receive nothing to waste. Dante invents a very suitable punishment for these people by making them labor with nothing to show for it.
In canto XVIII Dante and his guide Virgil descend into the eighth circle of hell. This area is referred to as the Malebolge and in it are those guilty sexual crimes. Here Dante views several groups each confined to separate ditches. The first contains two rows of naked sinners each running in opposite directions while being whipped by demons. These sinners are the panderers and the seducers. From this group the poet focuses in on one man in particular, Venedico Caccianemico. Venedico describes his own fault to Dante as having sold his own sister, “to do as the Marquis would have her do” (1356). Dante makes use of his contemporaries often in this work to show that no one is above judgment for their sins. Dante also recognizes Jason among those in the pit. He suffers punishment for having seduced Medea (big mistake!). For these two types of sinners the poet delivers divine retribution. Both groups in effect place their personal needs and interests above others and are now justly placed under the whip and oppressive command of indifferent demons.
This work presents a very just view of relationship between sin and punishment. In all cases the wrong-doing on earth is met with a punishment designed to suit the person’s vice in hell. Everyone that fails to avoid sin is dealt a fate that will remind them of their crime for all eternity. What is most clever about the punishments is the allegorical meaning each has. The sexual crimes were driven by restless desire and now the fate of those sinners is to never find rest. This model of justice delivers an eternal reminder of the crime and leaves no guilty party unpunished.

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