First a centaur killed by Hercules, then souls being tormented by reptiles, those with fraudulent lives burning in hell, and dismembered parts of those who inflamed dissent.
Flaxman
Barrators, who traded in public office and bribed courts, hypocrites whose clothes are weighted with lead, and thieves who are stuck in a pit of snakes.
On a barren, sandy plain, naked spirits suffer under showers of flakes of fire. Blasphemers lie flat on their backs, sodomites keep moving, and usurers crouch with purses strung from their necks.
Descending past the Minotaur of Crete, they reach a group of centaurs and travel on past famous killers, into a wood of thorn trees of those who committed suicide.
The three Furies appear on top of the gate to Dis, and try to turn Dante to stone using the face of Medusa. Once allowed in, they meet some of the heretics in their burning tombs.
First Dante and Virgil have to negotiate the three-headed monster dog Cerberus, guarding Hell, then the stinking mud containing gluttons.
After Achilles slaughtered the rest of her family, Briseis becomes his enslaved concubine. While he’s angry, she remains devoted to him until his death.
Achilles acquires himself a concubine, as does his commander Agamemnon. When the latter is forced to return his, and takes Briseis from Achilles, there’s trouble.
Paintings by Klimt, Bouguereau, Moreau, von Stuck, and John Singer Sargent’s last vast masterpiece in Boston.
More superb paintings of the closing moments of the book, by Rossetti, Odilon Redon and others.
The Eclectic Light Company 