Dante's Inferno
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50 free Dante's Inferno trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Seven centuries after it was written, Dante's Inferno is still the picture most people have in mind when they imagine hell. The poem follows its author on a guided descent through a pit of narrowing circles, each reserved for a different kind of sinner and each with a punishment designed to fit the crime. This quiz walks the same route. It starts where the poem does, with the opening cantos and the gate of hell, then works down circle by circle to the very bottom, stopping at famous episodes from cantos such as 1, 3 and 30. Later questions cover the poet's own life and exile, and the painters, composers and novelists the poem has inspired. It suits students revising for a class quiz, book clubs, and anyone who has met the circles of hell in a film, a game or a meme and wants to know what Dante actually wrote. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even from the ones you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What must souls abandon as they pass through the gate of hell in Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno?
All hope
All hope is what the gate's inscription orders newcomers to leave behind. Its closing line in Italian, 'Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate', is usually translated 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'.
Q 02What holds the traitors fast in the lowest circle of Dante's Inferno, where the Devil himself is trapped?
Ice
Ice, not fire, fills the bottom of Dante's hell, where traitors are locked in a frozen lake called Cocytus. The wind from the Devil's own beating wings keeps it frozen.
Q 03Which Roman poet rescues Dante from three beasts and guides him down through hell in Dante's Inferno?
Virgil
Virgil wrote the Aeneid, whose hero also travels through the underworld. In Dante's Inferno he lives among the virtuous pagans of the first circle.
Q 04Into how many circles, each for a graver sin than the last, is hell divided in Dante's Inferno?
Nine
Nine circles narrow toward the centre of the Earth, each holding worse sinners than the one above. Counting the vestibule outside them, hell has ten main divisions.
Q 05Which two Romans does Satan chew alongside Judas at the very bottom of hell in Dante's Inferno?
Brutus and Cassius
Brutus and Cassius hang from the side mouths for murdering Julius Caesar, whom Dante saw as divinely appointed to govern the world. Judas, in the centre, has his head inside the jaws.
Q 06Which sinners does the three-headed dog Cerberus claw as they lie in filthy rain in Dante's Inferno?
Gluttons
Gluttons wallow in the stinking slush of the third circle while Cerberus flays them. Dante's guide gets past by stuffing the beast's three mouths with mud.
Q 07How are fortune tellers punished in Dante's Inferno for trying to see into the future?
Their heads face backwards
Their heads face backwards, so they must walk in reverse forever, blinded by their own tears. Having tried to look too far ahead, they can no longer see what lies in front of them.
Q 08Which Rodin bronze, first called The Poet, was made for a doorway inspired by Dante's Inferno?
The Thinker
The Thinker began as the central figure above The Gates of Hell, a portal Rodin was commissioned to make in 1880. Some critics read the seated man as Dante himself, pondering his poem.
Q 09What does Dante see again in the closing line of Dante's Inferno, after climbing out of hell?
The stars
The stars return in the last line, as the poets come out beneath the open night sky. Each of the three parts of the Divine Comedy ends on the same word, 'stelle'.
Q 10Which sin earns souls an eternity of being blown about by a violent storm in Dante's Inferno?
Lust
Lust fills the second circle, where the winds toss the lovers about as their passions once did. Dante treats it as the least serious of the sins punished in hell proper.
Q 11Where does Dante find himself lost at the opening of Dante's Inferno, midway through his life?
A dark wood
A dark wood, the 'selva oscura', is where the poet realises he has strayed from the straight way. He is 35, half the seventy years the Bible allots to a human life.
Q 12Which of the three beasts in Canto 1 of Dante's Inferno finally drives Dante back down the hill?
A she-wolf
A she-wolf, lean with endless hunger, pushes him back into the valley after a leopard and a lion have blocked his path. The translator John Ciardi reads her as the sins of unchecked appetite.
Q 13On the evening of which Christian holy day does Dante enter hell in Dante's Inferno, set in 1300?
Good Friday
Q 21Which judge in Dante's Inferno coils his tail around himself to show each soul how far down to go?
Minos
Minos hears every soul's confession at the entrance to the second circle. The number of times his tail wraps around him is the number of the circle the sinner must go to.
Q 22Which knight's love story are Paolo and Francesca reading when their affair begins in Dante's Inferno?
Lancelot
Lancelot and his affair with Queen Guinevere were the pair's reading that day, and Francesca blames the book for what followed. Her husband, Paolo's own brother, stabbed them both.
Q 23Which Greek poet, sword in hand, leads the band of poets who greet Dante in Dante's Inferno?
Homer
Homer walks ahead of Horace, Ovid and Lucan like their lord. The group then welcomes Dante as the sixth in their company.
Good Friday of 1300 is the day the journey starts, and the poets come out the other side just before dawn on Easter Sunday.
Q 14Which woman, Dante's lost love, comes down from Heaven to send him a guide in Dante's Inferno?
Beatrice
Beatrice, urged on by the Virgin Mary and Saint Lucia, goes down to the first circle to ask a poet she trusts to rescue him. The real Beatrice Portinari had died in 1290.
Q 15What do the souls who never took sides in life chase forever in Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno?
A banner
A banner that never stops whirls ahead of the uncommitted while wasps and hornets sting them. Refused by Heaven and by hell proper, they stay on the near shore of the Acheron.
Q 16Which ferryman carries the newly damned across the river Acheron in Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno?
Charon
Charon at first refuses to carry Dante because he is still alive. He gives way on hearing that the journey is willed from on high.
Q 17What does Dante do as Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno ends, leaving the river crossing undescribed?
He faints
He faints as the ground shakes and a crimson light flashes, and wakes on the far bank. He collapses the same way two cantos later, overcome by pity for Francesca da Rimini.
Q 18What name does Dante's Inferno give the first circle, home to virtuous pagans and the unbaptised?
Limbo
Limbo holds souls who did not sin but lacked baptism, so they suffer no torment yet can never reach Heaven. Its great castle houses the poets and thinkers of antiquity.
Q 19Which part of the Divine Comedy follows Dante's Inferno and takes the poet up a mountain?
Purgatorio
Purgatorio comes second and follows the climb up an island mountain on the far side of the world. Paradiso completes the three-part poem.
Q 20In which marshy river of Dante's Inferno do the wrathful fight each other in the slime?
Styx
Styx is the swamp of the fifth circle, where the wrathful tear at one another on the surface. The sullen lie beneath the water, unable even to speak their rage.
Q 24Which Muslim sultan, famed for chivalry, is set apart from the other virtuous pagans in Dante's Inferno?
Saladin
Saladin, who fought the Crusaders, is set apart in the castle of the first circle, honoured for his generous and merciful conduct. The Muslim thinkers Avicenna and Averroes are placed there too.
Q 25What do hoarders and spendthrifts roll against each other in the fourth circle of Dante's Inferno?
Great weights
Great weights are shoved chest-first by the two crowds, who crash together shouting 'Why do you hoard?' and 'Why do you waste?'. Dante cannot recognise a single face among them.
Q 26Which walled city, guarded by fallen angels, encloses the lower circles of hell in Dante's Inferno?
Dis
Dis shuts in everything from the sixth circle down, and its towers glow fiery red in the distance. The name was also a Roman one for Pluto, king of the underworld.
Q 27Which monster do the Furies summon against Dante at the gates of lower hell in Dante's Inferno?
Medusa
Medusa is called to turn the living visitor to stone, so his guide spins him round and tells him to keep his eyes shut. An angel then opens the gate with the touch of a wand.
Q 28In what are the heretics of the sixth circle of Dante's Inferno trapped for eternity?
Flaming tombs
Flaming tombs hold Epicurus and his followers, who taught that the soul dies with the body. From one of them Farinata degli Uberti rises to argue Florentine politics with Dante.
Q 29Which creatures patrol the river of boiling blood in Dante's Inferno, firing arrows at the sinners?
Centaurs
Centaurs led by Chiron keep murderers and tyrants sunk in the blood to the depth their guilt deserves. One of them, Nessus, guides the poets along the bank to a shallow ford.
Q 30Into what are the souls of suicides transformed in Dante's Inferno, able to speak only when broken?
Thorny trees
Thorny trees fill a pathless forest where Harpies tear at the leaves. When Dante snaps a twig, the trunk bleeds and tells the story of Pier della Vigna, minister to Emperor Frederick II.