Canto XXIII, starting after line 126…

Behind the road lined with those crucified souls
my tired eyes saw what looked to be a gleaming
maze stretching for miles around the malebolge.

My guide encouraged me to take a closer look.
What I saw set me in fear for every judgment
that ever came through my lips against another man.

A maze it was, of cracked and broken mirrors.[1]
Behind each pane of glass there sat a soul
who in life was guilty of hypocrisy.

Here I came upon a soul I knew above, in life.[2]
He sat upon a wooden beam like a chair,
except spikes held his thighs in place eternally.

Spewing from his lips by divine force were
words of hate and self-degradation once aimed
at another, but for which the sinner was also guilty.

Now piercing his own heart, the words of the past caused
a pain that resided in the shade that was
equally matched by the actions of the hands.

Each hand held a jagged shard of human bone[3]
which was thrust in and through the shade’s face till he
picked himself apart like he did to those above.

[1] Guilty of judging other, the sinner is forced to always look in the mirror to judge himself.
[2] An ex-friend, who will remain nameless, but who always made fun of/criticized other people for things he always did. It was really obnoxious.
[3] Actually, the person’s own bone, possibly picked from the pierced thigh.

My Question: Does The Inferno paint an accurate picture of what people of the time thought Hell was like?
Answer: After looking at a bunch of different sites on wikipedia (medieval europe, hell, etc.) it seems like it would have been completely accepted by the people of the time because all they heard about was Hell being torturous and one wrong step away. Most descriptions come from texts like Dante's, so it's hard to know how history has been skewed by what he wrote.

~Rachael Jones