“On meurt deux Source fois, je le vois bien : > > Cesser d’aimer & d’être aimable, > > C’est une mort insupportable : > > Cesser de vivre, ce n’est rien.”
This 18th-century French verse speaks of two deaths. The first is a spiritual death: to cease loving and being lovable. The second is merely physical: to cease living. For the poet, the first death is unbearable, while the second is nothing. This idea finds a powerful, older echo in the depths of Dante Alighieri‘s Inferno. Specifically, it resonates within the flickering flame that encases the Greek hero Ulysses in the Eighth Circle of Hell. There, we witness a man who died a spiritual death long before his ship sank beneath the waves.
Dante’s Canto XXVI presents one of the most compelling and debated figures in his entire epic. Ulysses, the great hero of Homer’s Odyssey, is not celebrated for his cunning or bravery. Instead, Dante condemns him for his silver-tongued deceit and his insatiable, transgressive quest for knowledge. His story serves as a profound meditation on virtue, ambition, and the dangerous allure of the unknown.
The Eighth Circle: A Pit of Deception
Before we hear from Ulysses, Dante and his guide, Virgil, must navigate the grim landscape of the Eighth Circle. This realm is reserved for the sins of fraud. Here, sinners are punished in ten different ditches, or bolge. Dante places Ulysses in the eighth bolgia, designated for the fraudulent counselors. These are the souls who used their superior intellect and gift of speech to advise others to commit fraud. Their punishment is fittingly symbolic. They are forever encased in tongues of flame, hidden from sight just as they hid their true intentions behind deceptive words.
Virgil points out a great twin flame moving toward them. He explains that this single flame holds two souls: Ulysses and his companion Diomedes. Together, they are punished for the schemes they devised during the Trojan War. These deceptions include the ambush of the Trojan Horse, a trick that led to the fall of Troy. They are also condemned for luring Achilles into the war and for stealing the sacred statue of Pallas. Consequently, their shared guilt binds them in a shared punishment, their voices muffled by the very fire that represents their eloquent sin.
A Noble Speech to Damnation
Virgil addresses the flame, and the greater horn begins to flicker and murmur. From it emerges the voice of Ulysses, who recounts his final, fatal voyage. This is not the homecoming story from the Odyssey. Instead, this is a tale Dante invents, a new ending for the Greek hero. Ulysses explains that after leaving the sorceress Circe, his burning desire for experience overcame his love for his son, his father, and his wife. He could not resist the call of the unknown. Therefore, he gathered his aging crew for one last journey beyond the known world.
His speech to his men is a masterpiece of rhetoric. It is inspiring, powerful, and ultimately, damning. He rallies his companions with these famous lines:
“‘O brothers,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the west, to this so brief vigil of our senses that remains to us, do not deny the experience, following the sun, of the world without people. Consider your origin: you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.'”
These words are undeniably beautiful. Ulysses appeals to his crew’s highest nature. He calls them to reject a brutish existence in favor of pursuing what makes them human: virtue and knowledge. On the surface, it is a call to greatness. His men, stirred by this oration, eagerly sail past the Pillars of Hercules, the boundary of the known world. However, this noble-sounding quest leads them directly to their doom.
The Hubris of the Seeker
The central paradox of Canto XXVI is why this beautiful speech is the centerpiece of Ulysses’ damnation. The answer lies in the concept of hubris. Ulysses pursued knowledge not for a higher purpose or with divine blessing, but for his own glory and experience. He placed his intellect and ambition above all else, including his duties to his family and his king. Furthermore, his journey past the Pillars of Hercules was a direct violation of the limits set for humanity by God.
In Dante’s Christian worldview, the pursuit of knowledge must be guided by faith and humility. Ulysses represents the opposite. He is the intellectual adventurer who relies solely on his own abilities. His call to virtue and knowledge is a perversion because it is disconnected from divine will. He uses his gift of eloquence, a tool that should serve truth, to lead his men to their destruction for a selfish goal. This makes him a fraudulent counselor not just to kings, but to his own loyal crew.
Scholarly interest in this specific canto remains high. Source This enduring fascination highlights the timeless tension between human ambition and perceived limits.
A Warning for Dante Himself
Dante the poet feels a personal connection to Ulysses’ sin. After hearing the story, he writes, “I grieved then, and I grieve again now when I direct my mind to what I saw, and I curb my genius more than I am wont, lest it run where Virtue does not guide it.” Dante, too, is a man of great intellect and ambition. His own journey through the afterlife is a quest for knowledge and salvation.
Ulysses serves as a powerful cautionary tale for him. The hero’s fate is a stark reminder that genius without virtue and divine guidance is a path to damnation. Dante must ensure his own quest is guided by faith, represented by Virgil and later Beatrice, and not by intellectual pride. He must rein in his own genius to avoid the same fate. This moment of self-reflection makes the canto one of the most personal and poignant in the Inferno.
Conclusion: The Enduring Call
Ulysses’ last voyage is a tragic story about the misapplication of greatness. His desire to follow virtue and knowledge was not inherently evil. However, his pride and his decision to transgress divine boundaries transformed a noble impulse into a damnable sin. He chose a path that led to the unbearable “first death”—a spiritual separation from the divine order—long before the sea consumed him and his crew.
Canto XXVI continues to resonate because it asks timeless questions. Where is the line between laudable ambition and destructive hubris? How do we pursue knowledge and experience responsibly? Dante’s Ulysses reminds us that the journey matters just as much as the destination. Ultimately, he suggests that true virtue lies not just in seeking knowledge, but in seeking it with humility and a sense of our proper place in the universe.