Dante, bewildered in sin, meets Virgil, sent to him by Beatrice. Together, they enter the terrible gates of Hell.
Dante and Virgil, after meeting the virtuous pagans in Limbo, the rim of Hell, meet the adulterers, gluttons, avaricious, wrathful, and slothful.
Virgil and Dante enter the first ring of the City of Dis, which includes the materialist heretics, who reveal to us the terrible constriction of the intellect entailed by sin.
Dante and Virgil encounter the violent against self, God, Nature, and human industry. These are not simply murderers; they are suicides, blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers.
Dante and Virgil travel through the "pouches of evil" on the eighth circle of Hell where they meet various practitioners of fraud, including seducers, simonists, and grafters.
As they continue around the Malebolge, Dante and Virgil journey past those who used their intellects to deceive: hypocrites, thieves, and evil counselors.
In the ninth pouch, Virgil and Dante find the schismatics, who are punished by division in their bodies. In the final pouch, they meet the counterfeiters who are punished by disease.
Dante and Virgil come to the very last circle of Hell, and encounter the impotence of evil in the frozen pit where the Father of Lies is trapped in ice.