Abstract

this study aims to look at least partially into the intricate network of meanings implied in the text of dante’s twelfth canto of the Inferno. the article analyzes particularly the Centaurs and the damned, it stresses the fact that dante seems to conceive the sin of violence against one’s neighbor as political-military violence. the Centaurs in fact seem to be “allegories” of armies and warfare, and the damned, actually cooking in the boiling blood of the river Phlegethon, are commanders punished by means of retaliation law. they are now darted by the Centaurs representing the armies they led when they were alive to satisfy their “blind greed” and their “mad fury”