Meaning:
`Abandon all hope ye who enter here' is the supposed inscription at the entrance to Hell.
Background:
The expression `Abandon all hope ye who enter here' is first found in Dante's Divine Comedy.
The 1814 translation into English by the Reverend H. F. Cary is the origin
for this phrase in English, although he gave it as the less commonly used
`All hope abandon ye who enter here'.
Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric mov'd:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Dante Alighieri wrote this allegorical epic poem between 1306 and 1321.
Virgil is the guide who takes the reader through the author's examination of
the afterlife, which travels through the Inferno (Hell), the Purgatorio
(Purgatory), and the Paradiso (Heaven).
In the story the motto is inscribed above the gates of Hell.
Hell itself is described as consisting of nine concentric circles, which mark
a descending scale of sins that humans are capable of:
1. Limbo
2. Lust
3. Gluttony
4. Greed
5. Wrath
6. Heresy
7. Violence
8. Fraud
9. Treachery
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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I once thought Limbo was by default the destination for all unbaptized heathens.
Except for a bad hood and maybe crappy weather, however, it was otherwise not
that terrible. At least there'd be ethnic foods. Heaven, on the other hand,
sounded like a boring retirement community where people, after a scrupulous life
of virtue, still kowtowed to a needy lunatic.
