Who is semiramis in dantes inferno

The second Minos, grandson of the first, exacted harsh revenge on the Athenians who had killed his son Androgeos by demanding an annual tribute of fourteen youths seven boys and seven girls as a sacrificial offer to the Minotaur, the hybrid monster lurking in the labyrinth built by Daedalus.

Minos' long tail, which he wraps around his body a number of times equal to the soul's assigned level circle of hell Inf. How do you think the judged souls travel to their destined location in hell for eternal punishment? Might Minos' tail be somehow involved in this unexplained event? Dante leaves this detail to our imagination. Francesca's shade tells Dante that her husband is destined for punishment in Caina--the infernal realm of familial betrayal named after Cain, who killed his brother Abel Genesis --for murdering her and Paolo.

Francesca was the aunt of Guido Novello da Polenta, Dante's host in Ravenna during the last years of the poet's life She was married c. Dante may have actually met Paolo in Florence where Paolo was capitano del popolo --a political role assigned to citizens of other cities--in , not long before he and Francesca were killed by Gianciotto.

Although no version of Francesca's story is known to exist before Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio--a generation or two after Dante--provides a "historical" account of the events behind Francesca's presentation that would not be out of place among the sensational novellas of his prose masterpiece, The Decameron.

Even if there is more fiction than fact in Boccaccio's account, it certainly helps explain Dante-character's emotional response to Francesca's story by presenting her in a sympathetic light.

Francesca, according to Boccaccio, was blatantly tricked into marrying Gianciotto, who was disfigured and uncouth, when the handsome and elegant Paolo was sent in his brother's place to settle the nuptial contract. Angered at finding herself wed the following day to Gianciotto, Francesca made no attempt to restrain her affections for Paolo and the two in fact soon became lovers. Meet the World's Confessional Lutherans. What Is "Progressive Christianity? Roger E.

My Book on Fascism Revisited. The Failure of the "Youth Group" Related posts from Leithart. Our Sexual Class War. Hell and Primal Love. Dante's Journey. In light of same-sex marriage, some couples and pastors are wanting to Studies show that most people are bought into the idea that Christianity In the last several years journaling Bibles have become extremely popular. Copyright , Patheos. All rights reserved. Her husband was the grandson of Assyria's great ruler, Ashurnasirpal II, a flamboyant monarch who built a magnificent palace at Nimrud in the early ninth century B.

This event is commemorated by the Banquet Stela, which recorded thousands of guests and a celebration that lasted for 10 days. Ashurnasirpal II stabilized the empire, putting down revolts with a level of cruelty that he made no attempt to hide. One inscription tells of the vengeance meted to rebels at one particular city of his realm:.

A ninth-century B. Some, I impaled upon the column on stakes and others I bound to stakes around it. The empire that Ashurnasirpal II's grandson inherited may have been stable and wealthy, but it did not stay that way for long. King -Shamshi-Adad V appears to have spent a great deal of -resources in defeating his rebellious elder brother, who wanted to take the throne. By the time Shamshi-Adad died in B. His young son, Adad-nirari III, was too young to rule.

It would be left to Queen Sammu-ramat to restore stability to Assyria through her regency. Although the four main sources do not spell out whether she claimed the regency, the inscriptions make it clear that Sammu-ramat exercised a degree of political power--unlike that of any other woman in the history of Mesopotamia.

The stela from the city of Kizkapanli, for -example, mentions that the queen accompanied her son when he crossed the Euphrates River to fight against the king of the Assyrian city of Arpad.

Her presence was unusual for the time, and the fact that the stela bothers to mention her participation gives Sammu-ramat's actions a strong degree of honor and respect. After Sammu-ramat's death, her name seems to have echoed down through the generations. In a society with a rich oral tradition, a certain amount of embellishment crept into her story, which seemed to grow larger from one telling to the next. In the fifth century B. It is by this name that she is best known today.

His colossal, semi-historical work Bibliotheke surveys events from creation myths to his own day and age. In it he offers a detailed, if somewhat fantastic, narrative of the Assyrian queen. Some of Diodorus Siculus's work is based on a previous, now lost text by Ctesias of Cnidus, a Greek doctor who had served the Persian court in the fourth century B. Ashamed of the relationship, the goddess abandoned the baby girl, who at first was cared for by doves. Later, the chief shepherd of the king of Assyria ended up adopting the child and giving her the name Semiramis.

Semiramis grew into a young woman of extraordinary beauty. The royal governor of the province of Syria, named Onnes, was struck by her beauty when he met her while inspecting the royal flocks. Onnes obtained her adoptive father's consent to marry her. After the wedding, he took Semiramis with him to Nineveh.

Later, Onnes was sent to besiege the city of Bactra in central Asia.