Virgil calls Dante away from the penitents and to the pavement, which is now carved with exempla of pride punished — a counterbalance to the wall's examples of humility rewarded. Dante reads them like walking through an open book. The catalogue is dense with classical and biblical reference: Lucifer falling from Heaven, Briareus the giant hurled down by the gods, Nimrod surveying Babel's collapsed tower, Niobe weeping over her dead children (she had boasted herself greater than Latona), Saul dead on his sword at Gilboa, Arachne transformed to a spider for challenging Minerva, Rehoboam fleeing in his chariot, Eriphyle who sold her husband's life for gold, Sennacherib slain by his sons in the temple, Tomyris with Cyrus's head in her cup, the Trojans slaughtered when their pride fell with their walls. Each image is a memento mori of vanity — carved in stone under the feet of the prideful, so that the bent-over penitents, face-to-floor, must read them with every shuffled step.
An angel descends, dazzling white, his face impossible to look at — like a trembling star in summer dawn. He sweeps his wing across Dante's forehead and erases one of the seven P's. The ascent to the next terrace suddenly becomes easier. Dante feels lighter. The angel's beatitude rings out: "Blessed are the poor in spirit" — the first of the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, which Dante assigns to each of the seven terrace transitions. The pattern is now established: examples of virtue, examples of vice punished, angel erasing a P, beatitude from Christ's teaching.