The
soothsayers are people who could foresee the future and who provided information to others based
on what they saw.The classical soothsayer Tiresias from the Oedipus cycle is one example, and
Michael Scot, the medieval polymath. There is a distinction between charlatans who only claim to
know the future and those who are indeed gifted with foresight.In the medieval period, not all
foretelling or prophetic gifts would have seemed illicit.
In Dante's
Inferno, the soothsayers occupy the 20th , among other sins involving
fraud. Dante presents fraud as more dangerous to human society and more dangerous to the
sinner's soul, compared to sins of appetite or desire and sins of violence. Fraud plays upon
others' minds and on their trust of others. When this trust is violated, so too is their
capacity to love other people in the way that God expects.
The other reason
that Dante suggests soothsayers are more serious sinners is because they seek to deprive the
human of his or her choice.Choice, says Virgil early in the journey, is the "good of the
intellect," and the poem is designed to illustrate the need to choose rightly, and to
reject false appearances. To damage a person's ability to make an authentic choice--by leading
them to believe that a future event is already a foregone conclusion--tampers with their choice
and therefore their authentic self. They may fail to strive to become the person they should be
if they believe the striving has no effect on their eventual outcome.
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