Dispater and the City of Dis: Welcome to the Iron City of Hell
The second circle of Hell is a flat, black, barren wasteland, with only one outstanding geographical attribute: the City of Dis, where the Archduke Dispater sits upon an iron throne inside a fortress no mortal army could hope to breach. Or at least that's the version of Hell we're interested in.
Like most good infernal geography, the story of Dispater and the City of Dis gets considerably stranger the farther backward you follow it. Pagan religion, Roman mythology, medieval Christianity, Dante, demonology and modern fantasy have spent centuries borrowing from one another until Dis has become less a single location than a city continually rebuilt in the human imagination. Somewhere in the middle of it all sits Dispater, who began his career not as a devil at all, but as a god.
Before He Was a Devil
The name comes from the Roman Dis Pater, usually interpreted as "Father of Riches." That might seem like an odd name for an underworld god until you remember where ancient people believed riches came from. Gold, silver, gemstones and other mineral wealth were taken from beneath the earth. The god who controlled the world below therefore controlled not only the realm of the dead, but the treasures buried underground.
Dis Pater became closely associated with Pluto, the Roman counterpart of the Greek Hades, and eventually the identities became difficult to separate. This is an important distinction because the ancient Dis Pater wasn't Satan and wasn't necessarily evil. The classical underworld wasn't simply the Christian Hell with different management. Death had its gods just as the sea, harvest and sky did. As Christianity absorbed and reinterpreted the mythology of the ancient Mediterranean world, however, pagan gods and underworld figures had a tendency to acquire considerably more sinister résumés. Dis was headed downstairs.
Dante Builds the City of Dis
Then came Dante Alighieri. In The Divine Comedy, written in the early fourteenth century, Dante created what became the most influential guided tour of Hell in Western literature. His Inferno transformed Hell into an enormous physical landscape with rivers, cliffs, storms, swamps, monsters, gates, towers and carefully organized punishments. Deep within this landscape stands the City of Dis.
There is an important distinction between Dante's geography and the version of Hell that later fantasy inherited. Dante does not put the City of Dis in the second circle. His second circle is the realm of the lustful, where souls are eternally driven through a supernatural storm. Dante and Virgil don't approach Dis until after crossing the swamp of the Styx in the fifth circle. The city represents a major boundary in Dante's Hell: outside its walls are the upper circles, while beyond the gates begins the much more terrible territory of lower Hell.
The city announces itself from a distance. Its towers and structures appear red, as though heated by eternal fire. Fallen angels guard its gates and initially refuse Dante entrance. The Furies appear and threaten him with Medusa before a heavenly messenger arrives and forces the gates open. Dante has reached something different from the circles he has already traveled through. He has reached the fortified interior of damnation.
Immediately within the walls lies the sixth circle, where heretics occupy burning tombs. Beyond them Hell descends toward increasingly deliberate forms of violence, fraud and betrayal. That's what makes Dis so interesting. It isn't merely another neighborhood in Hell; it is a border. Dante distinguishes between sins associated with uncontrolled appetite and weakness and darker sins committed deliberately through violence and deceit. Passing through the gates of Dis therefore feels like crossing from ordinary human failure into something colder, more intentional and more organized. Hell itself becomes a fortress.
Dispater Takes Over
The figure modern fantasy fans know as Dispater, ruler of an infernal city and lord of an impregnable iron fortress, owes more to later fantasy mythology than directly to Dante. Modern fantasy, most notably the cosmology developed around Dungeons & Dragons, took the ancient name Dis Pater and transformed it into Dispater, one of the great archdevils of Hell.
Here the geography changes again. The Nine Hells become nine distinct layers, each with its own ruler and character. Dis is the second layer, and Dispater is its lord. This is probably where the idea of Dispater ruling the "second circle" comes from. Dante's circles and the fantasy Nine Hells have become crossed in the popular imagination. The two systems aren't actually the same, but they fit together so naturally that it's easy to see how one version of Hell began bleeding into the other.
In this later tradition, Dispater doesn't simply live somewhere in Hell. He owns the place. Dis becomes a vast infernal metropolis dominated by iron, stone, smoke and oppressive architecture, and at its center rises Dispater's great fortress, commonly known as the Iron Tower. From there the archdevil watches his domain and, more importantly, watches everyone who might someday attempt to take it from him.
The Iron Duke
Dispater is traditionally portrayed in fantasy as one of Hell's great survivors, and that may be his most interesting characteristic. Hell is full of ambitious supernatural beings plotting against one another, forming alliances, betraying those alliances and waiting centuries for an opportunity to destroy a rival. Dispater's response is essentially to build the greatest fortress imaginable, remain inside it and become extraordinarily difficult to kill. It's hard to argue with the strategy.
He is patient, suspicious and calculating. Where another infernal ruler might seek glory through conquest, Dispater's great talent is remaining Dispater. His paranoia and his fortress complement each other perfectly. Every wall requires another wall, every conspiracy suggests another spy, every visitor might be an assassin and every ally is potentially a future enemy. The Iron Duke survives because he assumes everybody is eventually coming for him. In Hell, this probably qualifies as common sense.
The result is a particularly effective vision of evil because Dispater isn't the romantic rebel represented by some versions of Lucifer or the raging monster we might expect from a demon lord. He's something colder: an immortal ruler who has had eternity to think about security. His kingdom is a city, his city is a fortress and his fortress is an expression of his own personality. Dis is what paranoia looks like when given unlimited labor, unlimited iron and unlimited time.
All Roads Lead to Dis
There is something wonderfully bleak about imagining the landscape outside the city: black plains stretching toward the horizon, smoke obscuring whatever passes for a sky, no vegetation, no birds and no water worth drinking. Wherever you travel, eventually the iron towers of Dis appear in the distance. You might walk away from them for days only to look back and discover they don't seem to have become any smaller.
Perhaps there aren't really any roads across the wasteland. Perhaps there don't need to be. If there were roads in Hell, sooner or later they would all lead to Dis, and above the city would rise the Iron Tower. Somewhere inside it, behind enough gates, guards, traps, walls and conspiracies to make eternity itself feel insecure, Dispater would still be sitting on his throne, watching his kingdom and waiting for the attack he has always known will eventually come.
That's ultimately what makes Dispater interesting. Satan gets the poetry. Lucifer gets the tragic grandeur. Mephistopheles gets the clever dialogue. Dispater gets the fortress. He is the paranoid landlord of an infernal metropolis, an ancient pagan name transformed across two thousand years into an immortal ruler sitting behind walls nobody can breach. The god became an archdevil, the underworld became a city, and the city became a prison.
Much like the Hotel California, you can check in anytime you like, but leaving is another matter entirely.
