Limbo — the virtuous pagans

Dante wakes on the other side of the Acheron. The first circle opens around him: a valley of sighs rather than screams, a place of sorrow without torment. Virgil explains: these are not sinners but souls who lacked the faith — baptism, or belief in the Christ who was to come — without which there is no entry to Heaven. Even Virgil is among them.

A light glows among the darkness. They move toward it and find a noble castle encircled by seven walls, a gentle stream around them, a green meadow within. On the enameled grass, souls of great authority move with slow, grave eyes, speaking seldom. Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan come forward to greet Virgil; they greet Dante in return, admitting him as the sixth of their company. He will not name the others he sees among them but lists them: Electra with Hector and Aeneas; Caesar in armor; Camilla; Penthesilea; King Latinus; Lavinia; Brutus; Lucretia.

Then the philosophers: Aristotle seated in a circle of the great thinkers, honored by all as master. Around him: Socrates, Plato, Democritus, Diogenes, Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Zeno. The natural scientists: Dioscorides, Orpheus, Cicero, Seneca, Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Avicenna, Galen. And Averroës, who wrote the great commentary on Aristotle. And Saladin, the Muslim sultan who held Jerusalem, alone, set apart — not among the pagans and not among the philosophers, but present. Dante does not explain Saladin's placement. He does not need to.