Divine Comedy

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to Odysseus before he sets out for home, "You will come first of all to the Sirens, who are enchanters / of all mankind and whoever comes their way�/ They sit in their meadow, but the beach before it is piled with boneheaps / of men now rotted away, and the skins shrivel upon them" (Homer 12.39-50). Odysseus chooses to listen to their sweet song as his boat passes their island, and, were it not that he were bound fast to the mast, would have jumped overboard to seek his death upon their shores. According to Vernant, examination of the original Greek text, as well as the popular conception of these creatures "locates them in all their irresistibility unequivocally in the realm of sexual attraction or erotic appeal" (104). These seductive creatures however, as seen in the piles of decaying bodies upon the shores of their island, are truly creatures of death. Vernant further asserts, "they are death, and death in its most brutally monstrous aspect: no funeral, no tomb, only ...

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(138). In this manner sloth becomes a gateway to other sins, just as it is only through his sloth that the Siren reaches the traveler. This contemplation of empty matters engenders a perilous idleness, which, in turn, leads to pursuit of exorbitant earthly pleasures and leads the soul down a baneful path towards death.
This evil path is delineated by the sins of avarice, gluttony, and lust-the tendencies toward which are redirected at virtue on the three remaining terraces of Mount Purgatory. These sins of incontinence can all be described as different types of inordinate lust. Whether it is lust for material wealth, lust for food and drink, or lust in its traditional sense-a lust ...

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