Sinners

BRUNETTO LATINI
Brunetto Latini (c. 1220–1294) was an Italian philosopher, scholar, notary, and statesman. Latini was Dante’s guardian after the death of Dante's father.

Dante places Latini within the third ring of the Seventh Circle with the Sodomites, and writes of the "clerks and great and famous scholars, defiled in the world by one and the same sin".

Dante's treatment of Latini, however, is commendatory beyond almost any other figure in the 'Inferno'. He calls the poet a radiance among men and speaks with gratitude of that sweet image, gentle and paternal, / you were to me in the world when hour by hour / you taught me how man makes himself eternal. Dante addresses Latini with the respectful pronoun voi; Latini uses the informal tu, as perhaps was their custom when they spoke together in Florence. The portrait is drawn with love, pathos and a dignity that is more compelling given the squalor of the punishment.

CAPANEUS
In Greek mythology, Capaneus was a son of Hipponous and either Astynome (daughter of Talaus) or Laodice (daughter of Iphis), and husband of Evadne, with whom he fathered Sthenelus. Some call his wife Ianeira.

In the fourteenth canto of his Inferno, Dante sees Capaneus in the seventh circle (third round) of Hell. Along with the other blasphemers, or those "violent against God", Capaneus is condemned to lie supine on a plain of burning sand while fire rains down on him. He continues to curse the deity (whom, being a pagan, he addresses as "Jove" aka Jupiter) despite the ever harsher pains he thus inflicts upon himself, so that God "thereby should not have glad vengeance."

IACOPO RUSTICUCCI
Iacopo Rusticucci was a 13th-century Florentine politician. Rusticucci was a Guelph in the factional politics of his day. From humble beginnings in a family of Florence's minor nobility, he achieved great wealth, and prominence as a politician and diplomat.In the mid-1250s Rusticucci was active as a diplomat at a time when Florence exerted its power over the neighboring cities of Pistoia, Siena, and Pisa. Rusticucci also served as capitano del popolo of Arezzo in 1258.

Rusticucci appears among the sodomites in the seventh circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno, Canto XVI, the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy. With two other Florentine nobles, Guido Guerra and Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, he converses with Dante, blaming his proud wife for his sodomy, and pitifully inquiring about the situation in factious and depraved Florence