“But all the while were passing through the wood, the wood, I mean, of spirits crowded thick.”
. . . . .
Circle of Limbo (between the vestibule and hell (the place of punishment) Dante awakes to the “thunder of Hell’s eternal cry” on the brink of a deep abyss. Virgil, deathly pale from pity does not fear, asks Dante to follow him into the first circle of Hell - Limbo (the place where virtuous pagans reside, here only because they were born without the benefit of Christianity). Seeing a fire ahead with figures of honour nearby Virgil explains their fame on earth gained them this place - Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan. The group salutes Dante as one of their own as they walk to a castle with 7 walls. Dante recognizes rulers and philosophers - Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Seneca, and "the master of those who know" (Aristotle). Dante allows reason (human wisdom and thought) to create a small light of its own in a place of darkness without the light of God. Socrates, for example, wrote that he envisioned the afterlife as a place where one would have discussions with great people that came before or that lived in the present. Therefore, Socrates gained his ideal eternity. His afterlife is not punishment; it is the failure of the imagination to envision the coming of Christ and faith in the coming of the Messiah Allegorically, the fact that these pagans lived a highly virtuous, ethical, or moral life and are still in Limbo implies that no amount of humanistic endeavour and no amount of virtue, knowledge, ethics, or morality can save or redeem a person who hasn't had faith in Christ. Likewise, if an individual has faith in Christ, they must be openly baptized and in a state of grace to avoid Limbo. For Dante, good works, virtue, or morality count for nothing if a person hasn't acknowledged Christ as the redeemer.