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Limbo: Unbaptized

As your eyes finally adjust to the darkness, Virgil leads you on as you are following him as if you were walking upon his heels. After a long walk you some to the foot of a noble castle, seven times circled by high walls, defended around by a streamlet. You then speak: "Why seven walls?" "The castle is the symbol of the abode of Philosophy, or human wisdom unenlightened by revelation. It's walls signify the four moral virtues; Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, and Justice; and three intellectual virtues; Understanding, Knowledge, and Wisdom; all which could be attained by the virtuous heathen." You then fallow Virgil through hard ground through seven gates until you reach a meadow of fresh verdure. People are here with slow and grave eyes, of great authority in their looks as the walk about. They speak seldom, and when they did it was with soft voices. You then withdrew to one side, into an open, luminous and high place so all of them could be seen. Virgil then points out many of people to you: Hector, Aeneas, Cæsar in armor with gyrfalcon eyes, Camilla, Penthesilen, King Latinus sitting with Lavinia his daughter, Brutus who drove out Tarquin, Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, Cornelia, Saladin all alone, Master of those who knows (Aristotle) sitting amid the philosophic family that all regard him and do him honor, Socrates and Pluto who in front of the others standing near him. Democritus who ascribes the world to chance, Diogenes, Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Zeno, Dioscorides a good collector of the qualities, Orpheus, Tully, Linus, Moral Seneca, Euclid the geometer, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Avicenna, Galen, And Averrhoës who made the great comment on Aristotle. Virgil then leads you out from the quietness air into a region where the air makes you tremble as if nothing will shed light upon it.

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