The third ring of violence is a burning plain of sand. Flakes of fire fall from above in a steady, slow rain — like snow in windless mountains, but fire. Three groups occupy this plain: the blasphemers lie on their backs, spread-eagled, fully exposed to the falling fire; the sodomites run in circles, never stopping; the usurers crouch, unable to still their hands from brushing at the fire. The fire falls with equal impartiality on all three.
One great figure lies apart, motionless and vast, contemptuous — Capaneus, one of the seven kings who besieged Thebes, who died cursing Jupiter on the walls and curses him still. Nothing God has done or can do will break him. He shouts his defiance upward. Virgil speaks sharply to him: your own rage is your greater punishment; no torture greater than your own fury. Capaneus is unmoved. He is the image of the damned soul at its most absolute: not broken by Hell but unconvertible, his pride so total that even God's justice cannot reach him — can only contain him. His damnation is, in a sense, freely chosen and continuously re-chosen.
They reach a red stream of boiling water flowing across the plain, its steam protecting a path above the fire. Virgil explains its origin: the Old Man of Crete, whose body is made of gold (head), silver (shoulders), bronze (waist), iron (legs) — except the right foot, which is clay. From every crack in this figure, except the gold, tears flow and collect as Hell's rivers: Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, and ultimately Cocytus.