or offering to teach mortals to fly! So
preposterous did such a claim appear to Minos--judge of the dead--that
he ruthlessly condemned its originator to undergo the punishment
awarded to magicians, alchemists, and other pretenders.

_Canto XXX._ Virgil now points out to Dante sundry impostors,
perpetrators of fraud, and false-coiners, among whom we note the woman
who falsely accused Joseph, and Sinon, who persuaded the Trojans to
convey the wooden horse into their city. Not content with the tortures
inflicted upon them, these criminals further increase each others'
sufferings by cruel taunts, and Dante, fascinated by what he sees,
lingers beside this pit, until Virgil cuttingly intimates "to hear
such wrangling is a joy for vulgar minds."

_Canto XXXI._ Touched by the remorseful shame which Dante now shows,
Virgil draws him on until they are almost deafened by a louder blast
than was uttered by Roland's horn at Roncevaux. Peering in the
direction of the sound, Dante descries what he takes for lofty towers,
until Virgil informs him that when they draw nearer still he will
discover they are giants standing in the lowest pit but looming far
above it in the mist. Ere long Dante stares in wonder at chained
giants seventy feet tall, whom Virgil designates as Nimrod, Ephialtes,
and Antaeus.

As with circling round
Of turrets, Montereggion crowns his walls;
E'en thus the shore, encompassing the abyss,
Was turreted with giants, half their length
Uprearing, horrible, whom Jove from heaven
Yet threatens, when his muttering thunder rolls.

Antaeus being unchained, Virgil persuades him to lift them both down
in the hollow of his hands to the next level, "where guilt is at its
depth." Although Dante's terror in the giant's grip is almost
overwhelming, he is relieved when his feet touch the ground once more,
and he watches with awe as the giant straightens up again like the
mast of a huge ship.

"Yet in the abyss,
That Lucifer with Judas low ingulfs,
Lightly he placed us; nor, there leaning, stay'd;
But rose, as in a barque the stately mast."

_Canto XXXII._ Confessing that it is no easy task to describe the
bottom of the universe which he has now reached, Dante relates how
perpendicular rocks reached up on all sides as far as he could see. He
is gazing upward in silent wonder, when Virgil suddenly cautions him
to beware lest he tread upon some unfortunate. Gazing down at h