Chapter 4 · The Walls of Disone of the damnedCircle VIBeing built
The Heretics, Farinata and Cavalcante
The field of open tombs inside the walls, and the souls that come loose from them.
«Suo cimitero da questa parte hanno / con Epicuro tutti i suoi seguaci, / che l’anima col corpo morta fanno» (X, 13-15). Ogni arca è di una setta, e dentro sta chi ha creduto che di là non ci fosse niente. Sono aperte fino al Giudizio, e poi si chiuderanno per sempre.
Revealshow you get a soul off you in the field of the arks.
In canto X, inside Dis, there is a graveyard of open red hot tombs with their lids set down beside them. The game lays them out on a spiral rather than a grid, because a chessboard reads as a warehouse and down a straight aisle an enemy is visible from thirty metres away; every ark has its own fire, and the fallen lids are the only cover the field has.
The field is not something you simply walk across: the souls come loose from their ark and make for the living body, twelve while the gate is still shut and twenty four once it opens, because from then on the field is the road and the city knows you are inside. They do not die, and none of them needs a mechanism of its own: their own ark takes them back, and walking one over its tomb is how you get it off you. Anyone who would rather not herd has the bow and the censer, which work again here after a circle where the arrow was good for nothing.
Farinata rises «col petto e con la fronte» (Inf. X 35) and Cavalcante rises «infino al mento» (Inf. X 53): they are the only two left above the rim, and the rest lie down inside.
The numbers
| What | How much | When |
|---|---|---|
| Loose souls crossing it | 12 | While the gate is still shut |
| And once the gate opens | 24 | Thirty six in all |
| How many stay above the rim | 2 | Farinata and Cavalcante |
Links
- Found in
- The Necropolis of the Heretics