Il Sodoma

Description

Sodom is mentioned by Dante in two passages of the Commedia. In Inferno XI 50, in the list of emblematic sinners, its name appears alongside that of Caorsa: both cities are taken as symbols respectively of the sin against nature and of usury, notoriously practiced in the French Cahors. In Purgatorio XXVI 40, Sodom is instead recalled together with Gomorrah in the invocation shouted by the second band of the lustful, for whom the names of the two biblical cities are enough to evoke both the guilt and the divine punishment. In the Purgatorio the sodomites are placed among the lustful, while in the Inferno, according to the different subdivision of sins, they appear among the violent against nature (canto XIV).