In Dante's Inferno, do the penalties seem harsh? No, that's all.

All the
penalties in Dante's Inferno seem incredibly harsh because of the fact that
they are all destined to last throughout eternity. It is the time factor that makes them seem
not only harsh but sadistic. Otherwise some of them might be called poetic justice. It is hard
to believe that Dante was writing anything but poetry and that he was inventing torments that
were metaphorically appropriate to the sins commited in life by those unfortunate souls he was
observing. Eternity is endless. A billion billion years is only the beginning. Just being
confined in Dante's catacombs without any kind of physical torture would be sufficiently
excruciating if there was never any end in sight. Dante himself seems to have...