“Upon the stairway’s summit now we stood where for the second time is cut away the mount which, as one climbs, turns bad to good”
They hear invisible voices calling things like, “Look, they have no wine!” and “I’m Orestes!” Virgil explains that these voices are a meditation on the sin of envy. A little further ahead, Dante sees a group of souls dressed in drab cloaks. As he gets closer, he sheds tears of pity, seeing that not only are these figures dressed in rough hair shirts and leaning on one another for support, but that their eyes are sewn shut with wires. The sin of envy is purged on this particular level of lower Purgatory. The meditation includes voices calling out examples of envy’s opposite—generosity. Because self-sufficiency is at the root of the sin of envy, these souls are needy beggars; and since they couldn’t bear seeing others’ good fortune on earth, now they’re blinded and unable to see at all.