Chapter 4 · The Walls of DiscircleCircle VIIBeing built
The Phlegethon
The river of boiling blood that holds the violent against others.
«La riviera del sangue in la qual bolle / qual che per violenza in altrui noccia» (XII, 47-48). Ognuno ci sta dentro fino a dove la sua colpa lo tiene, e chi si alza più del dovuto viene saettato dalla riva.
Revealswhat lies below Dis, and what the centaurs do.
In the poem it is the first ring of the violent, the stream where tyrants stand sunk to the eyebrows and murderers to the throat; in the game it is the first time in the whole descent that danger reaches you from a distance, because centaurs run the bank with arrows and shoot from thirty metres.
The verb of this ring is not to fight, it is to stay low. A centaur runs twice your speed and cannot be caught, so the open bank costs you at once and the river costs you slowly: the blood does not hurt by the clock but by heat, which builds while you stay under and falls as soon as you climb out. You dive in, you do not live in it.
The river is also the seam of the chapter, because where it runs you walk safe, and the poem says so. Each one stands in it as deep as his guilt holds him, and whoever rises higher than he should is shot from the bank. You cross at the ford, and the one who carries you wants to know first who you are and whose names you have written down.
The numbers
| What | How much |
|---|---|
| Centaurs | 3, two running the bank and one standing at the ford |