Dante leaves the usurers and rejoins Virgil where he is instructed to mount the back of the monster Geryon. Dante and Virgil take a terrifying, slow, spiraling trip down to the next level of Hell. This level has ten ravines like concentric circles attached by bridges, similar to spokes on a wheel. After getting off the monster, Dante and Virgil encounter two lines of souls walking in opposite directions.

One group is the panderers (pimps), the other is the seducers. Each line of these naked souls are constantly getting painfully whipped by devils as they eternally walk. Dante recognizes one of the panderers as the head of a political party in Italy who pimped his own sister for political gain.

Moving on, Dante then begins to smell a horrible stench as they approach the circle of the flatterers. The flatterers grovel eternally in excrement, living in the substance which previously came out of their mouths (Dante did have a sense of humor). Included in this group is the literary character of Thais, the whore, as well as another political figure from Florence. Dante and Virgil then move on to the next circle where they see one of the most interesting landscapes in the Inferno. …continue…or…go back…