copyright © 2021
by Robert L. Blau
You may have heard of old
Dante and his trip to the Inferno, but this is one story that seems to
have fallen out of the official account. It took place just as
Virgil, the Roman poet who was Dante's guide through hell, was leading
Dante into the Ninth Circle ...
"So, here we are at the Ninth Circle," said Virgil, "otherwise known as
'the deepest pit of hell.' And it seems that we have arrived just
in time for Satan's trial. You are
a lucky pilgrim!"
"Satan's trial?" spluttered
Dante. "He's being tried for
something? This is
hell, isn't it? And he is
the boss, right?"
"Shh! Not so loud!" cautioned Virgil. "Yes, of course, he's the boss,
but he likes to let the damned have a little fun once in a while.
He's a damned good
boss, you might say."
"Or a damned evil one," Dante
replied. "What's he 'on trial' for?"
"Oh, buying souls and condemning them to eternal torment," said Virgil
off-handedly. "The usual."
"And who's bringing charges?"
"Some of the damned from the lower circles. The lustful, the
gluttonous, the greedy, the religiously mistaken, and so forth.
Basically, the nonviolent, nonfraudulent types," Virgil explained.
"Hmph," muttered Dante. "And who are those souls over there?"
"Ah," said Virgil. "Those are
the members of the jury. I know some of them. Let me point
them out for you: Vidkun Quisling, Benedict Arnold, Judas
Iscariot, Mir Jafar, who basically gave India to the British, Qin Hui,
who basically gave China to barbarian invaders, ..."
"But those are all A-list traitors!" objected Dante. "What are
they doing on the jury?"
"Keep it down, will ya?"
insisted Virgil. "You'll upset the prosecuting geeks. They want
to believe that they don't know that the fix is in. You didn't
expect a
conviction, did you? None of the jury can vote to convict because
every one of them sold him their soul."
"Just for interest," sighed Dante, "how many of
them are there?"
"Forty-three."