The Fourth Circle of Hell: Greed
Greed is the fourth circle of Dante's Hell, described in Canto VII. It holds hoarders and spendthrifts, in equal number. The punishment: shoving enormous dead weights in a circle, colliding, reversing, forever.
The punishment
Shoving enormous dead weights in a circle, colliding, reversing, forever.
Both extremes lost themselves in money, so neither gets a face. They are unrecognisable even to each other, pushing wealth that goes nowhere.
Who guards it
Plutus, who babbles and swells with rage.
Who Dante puts here
Named residents of the fourth circle include:
- Anonymous popes and cardinals — Dante says their greed erased their identities
The modern read
The circle for the friend who splits a bill to the cent and the one who buys a boat. Dante puts them in the same room on purpose.
Sending someone to Greed
The friend who Venmo-requests you for $3.50 — or the one who never pays anyone back.
Damnation Vacation sells a numbered, permanent plot in one of Dante's nine circles of Hell. You pay $6.66, pick who it's for, name their cardinal sin in twenty characters or fewer, and choose their circle. They get a public gravestone page with their name on it, their plot number, and a counter tracking how many days they've been down there. Greed is Circle IV, and it has open plots.
Common questions
What is the fourth circle of Hell?
Greed, described in Canto VII of Dante's Inferno. It holds hoarders and spendthrifts, in equal number, whose punishment is: shoving enormous dead weights in a circle, colliding, reversing, forever.
Which circle of Hell is greed?
The fourth — Circle IV of nine.
Who guards the fourth circle?
Plutus, who babbles and swells with rage.