In keeping with Dante’s theme of justice, the sinners in round one of the seventh circle are the violent against others, and they spend eternity boiling in blood, just as they were steeped in blood in life. The river of blood is called Phlegethon and the souls in it are standing in a depth according to their sin—the worse the sin, the deeper they stand in the river. Should a soul try to leave the river, one of thousands of Centaurs will shoot it with an arrow but only so as to drive it back into the proper depth of the river.
The Minotaur is a perfect guardian for the sinners of the seventh circle because of his bestial and violent nature. Dante distorts neither the mythological Minotaur nor the Centaurs in Inferno; he found them appropriate as they were for this particular circle.
Unlike the other circles, Dante does not choose a soul to speak with or to make an illustration of; instead, he simply names some of the sinners in the round and moves on.
However, among the sinners are some of the most violent men in Dante’s estimation, and two of them are of the Ghibelline party, the party in opposition to that of Dante’s political party, the Guelphs. Dante again uses his divine narrative to make a political statement. In fact, rarely does a Ghibelline leader escape Dante’s judgment.
