Giants

Profile

In the Purgatorial vision, Dante beholds the limbs of the Giants scattered on the ground: a participle at the end of the verse expressing astonishment at the great physical power now laid low, as though struck by the lightnings of Jove on the Phlegraean fields. The reference connects this vision to Canto XXXI of the Inferno, where the Giants are present in the well that descends toward the traitors: figures described as human beings, not monsters, whose immense stature is a sign of human pride against God. Among them is recalled Nimrod, builder of the tower of Babel in the plain of Shinar, a figure of punished pride already in the patristic tradition. Dante's Giants thus preserve the moral meaning of proud defiance of God, from the rebellion of Phlegra to the Babel-like confusion of language.