18 . Aristotle says: "The good of the intellect is the highest beatitude"; and Dante in the Convito: "The True is the good of the intellect. " In other words, the knowledge of God is intellectual good. "It is a most just punishment," says St. Augustine, "that man should lose that freedom which man could not use, yet had power to keep, if he would, and that he who had knowledge to do what was right, and did not do it, should be deprived of the knowledge of what was right; and that he who would not do righteously, when he had the power, should lose the power to do it when he had the will. "
Dante – Divine Comedy (Inferno)
156 22. The description given of the Mouth of Hell by Frate Alberico, Visio, 9, is in the grotesque spirit of the Mediaeval Mysteries. "After all these things, I was led to the Tartarean Regions, and to the mouth of the Internal Pit, which seemed like unto a well; regions full of horrid darkness, of fetid exhalations, of shrieks and loud howlings. Near this Hell there was a Worm of immeasurable size, bound with a huge chain, one end of which seemed to be fastened in Hell. Before the mouth of this Hell there stood a great multitude of souls, which he absorbed at once, as if they were flies; so that, drawing in his breath, he swallowed them all together; then, breathing, exhaled them all on fire, like sparks."