Ninth Circle (Treachery)

The Ninth and last circle of Dante's Divine Comedy is ringed by titans from classical events, including the Bible and mankind's history.  The meaning anchored to the likeness of those sentenced to the Ninth Circle is often attributed to pride and that taking inordinate pride is wrong, which is often thought of as the sin that takes men the most astray from their path to righteousness. The titans hover on a ledge above the ninth circle in order to be seen from the waist up. Among them are Nimrod, Ephialtes, Tityos and typhon. The giant Antaeus (the only one unbound with chains) drops Dante and Virgil down into the pit that constitutes the Ninth Circle of Hell.

The traitors are set apart from the fraudulent in that their deeds  indicated that they betrayed the trust put upon them while they were part of a relationship or that they scammed their partners out of something valuable enough to warrant divine punishment. The traitors are rounded up into 4 concentric zones:

1- family ties betrayal
2- community ties betrayal
3- betrayal of guests
4- liege lords betrayal

The accomplish the betrayours' punishment, they are frozen in a lake of ice known as Cocytus, with each set of perpetrators encased in ice to progressively greater depths.

Round 1 is named Caïna, after Cain, Adam's son who slayed his own brethren out of jealously. Traitors to kindred are here immersed in the up to their chins. Mordred, who launched an attack on his uncle in King Arthur, is quickly noticed as one of the traitors here.

Round 2 is named Antenora, after Antenor of Troy (not Bathsheba's love interest, mind you) backstabbed his own acropolis in order to render it vulnerable to Greek attacks. Political entities traitors are subjected to the same prison as the traitors in the Caïna circle.

Round 3 is Ptolomaea, after Ptolemy, Abubus' son, who invited Simon Maccabaeus and his sons to a feast in a ploy to slaughter them. Their scourge is remarkably starker than the previous 2 rings on account that relationships with guests to one's house is entirely optional, without any compliance rule binding them together. 

 Round 4 is named after Judas Iscariot: Judecca, reserved for traitors to their lords and entirelt confined in an icy prison "distorted in all conceivable positions".

In the very centre of Hell, condemned for committing the ultimate sin, is Satan, who is a giant, terrifying beast with three faces, one red, one black, and one a pale yellow:

    he had three faces: one in front bloodred;
    and then another two that, just above
    the midpoint of each shoulder, joined the first;
    and at the crown, all three were reattached;
    the right looked somewhat yellow, somewhat white;
    the left in its appearance was like those
    who come from where the Nile, descending, flows.

Satan is waist deep in ice, weeping tears from his six eyes, and beating his six wings as if trying to escape, although the icy wind that emanates only further ensures his imprisonment (as well as that of the others in the ring). Each face has a mouth that chews on a prominent traitor. Brutus and Cassius are feet-first in the left and right mouths respectively, for their involvement in the assassination of Julius Caesar – an act which, to Dante, represented the destruction of a unified Italy and the killing of the man who was divinely appointed to govern the world. In the central, most vicious mouth is Judas Iscariot, the namesake of Round 4 and the betrayer of Jesus. Judas is receiving the most horrifying torture of the three traitors: his head gnawed by Satan's mouth, and his back being forever skinned by Satan's claws. What is seen here is an inverted trinity: Satan is impotent, ignorant, and full of hate, in contrast to the all-powerful, all-knowing, and loving nature of God.