Third circle of hell

The third circle of hell is depicted in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the first part of the 14th-century poem Divine Comedy. Inferno tells the story of Dante's journey through a vision of the Christian hell ordered into nine circles corresponding to classifications of sin; the third circle represents the sin of gluttony, where the souls of the gluttonous are punished in a realm of icy mud.

Within the third circle, Dante encounters a man named Ciacco, with whom he discusses the contemporary strife between the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Florence; the circle is also inhabited by the three-headed hound Cerberus, who torments sinners by rending them apart.

Rather than focussing on the contrapasso punishment of the damned, Dante's depiction of the third circle of hell uses the figure of Ciacco—whose historicity is disputed—to explore the politics of Florence, which had previously led to the author being exiled from the city under pain of death. As such, the poem draws a parallel between gluttony and the thirst for power.