The spirits returned towards the bright light in which they lived,
talking with Dante by the way, and brought him to a magnificent castle,
girt with seven lofty walls, and further defended with a river, which
they all passed as if it had been dry ground. Seven gates conducted them
into a meadow of fresh green, the resort of a race whose eyes moved with
a deliberate soberness, and whose whole aspects were of great authority,
their voices sweet, and their speech seldom.[8] Dante was taken apart to
an elevation in the ground, so that he could behold them all distinctly;
and there, on the "enamelled green," [9] were pointed out to him the
great spirits, by the sight of whom he felt exalted in his own esteem.
He saw Electra with many companions, among whom were Hector and Æneas,
and Cæsar in armour with his hawk's eyes; and on another side he beheld
old King Latinus with his daughter Lavinia, and the Brutus that expelled
Tarquin, and Lucretia, and Julia, and Cato's wife Marcia, and the mother
of the Gracchi, and, apart by himself, the Sultan Saladin. He then
raised his eyes a little, and beheld the "master of those who know" [10]
(Aristotle), sitting amidst the family of philosophers, and honoured
by them all. Socrates and Plato were at his side. Among the rest was
Democritus, who made the world a chance, and Diogenes, and Heraclitus,
&c. and Dioscorides, the good gatherer of simples. Orpheus also he saw,
and Cicero, and the moral Seneca, and Euclid, and Hippocrates, and
Avicen, and Averroes, who wrote the great commentary, and others too
numerous to mention. The company of six became diminished to two, and
Virgil took him forth on a far different road, leaving that serene air
for a stormy one; and so they descended again into darkness.

It was the second circle into which they now came--a sphere narrower
than the first, and by so much more the wretcheder. Minos sat at the
entrance, gnarling--he that gives sentence on every one that comes, and