This tercet rapidly dismisses Filippo Argenti from our attention and induces our curiosity about the identity of the next sinners, whose distress apparently seemed particularly noteworthy to Dante's offended ears. We soon learn that he and his guide have reached a new low, the city of Dis, containing only those marked by willful perverse behaviors. Previously, we have met, after the unspeakable Neutrals, only those whose appetites, fleeting by their very nature, condemned them to eternal punishment. From now on we become accustomed to those who were entirely perverse in that they never willed the good, but only evil. This is perhaps the most significant threshold that the protagonist crosses. And if some of the sinners may not seem more degraded by their sins than some of those we have met in 'upper hell,' their guardians are clearly especially intent on doing them harm.
