“Here saw I crowds, more dense than elsewhere, throng this side and that, who, with loud howls, by sway and heave of chest were rolling weights along”
. . . . .
4th circle of hell - for the wasters and hoarders. Plutus' words are untranslatable, though some believe that they are a kind of incantation to Satan. The hoarders and wasters are housed together, constantly fighting their opposite never to win. But why is hoarding and spending more horrible than mere gluttony? The Gluttons misused the natural products of the world, which, for Dante, was not as bad as the misers and spendthrifts who hoarded and had no respect for the manmade objects (that is, money and property) of Earth Virgil's discussion of Dame Fortune explains why these sinners are placed below the Gluttons. Dame Fortune is one of God's chosen ministers, who doles out luck and misfortune in a preordained manner. The Hoarders and Wasters, however, believed that they could outrun her; thus they believed that they could outrun God. 5th Circle - for the wrathful They come to a marsh called Styx (in mythology is was the river of hate one of 5 rivers of hades) with people immersed in mud striking and biting one another - souls destroyed by wrath (anger). The souls talk of the sullenness of their lives, when they should've been happy in the light of the sun, and that they now live sullen (alone and joyless) forever, as they did in life. The styx separate upper hell from nether hell but also functions as the 5th circle for the wrathful now residing in a river of hate. There are three kinds of wrath: the actively wrathful (open violent and hatred), the sullen (who kept wrath inside and are choking below the surface - slow hatred - unable to express themselves because choked on own malevolent hatred), and the vindictive (who strike out at others). The sinners in the first section went from those less likely to hurt another human to those that probably did cause harm to others moving from incontinence to violence (which begins in the fifth circle).