This paper examines how the
underworlds of both Dante's "Inferno" and "The Aeneid" have striking similarities and how the
books, although written some 1400 years apart, share many of the same characteristics in structure, names of places and in residents of the underworld. It looks at how the commonalities are the geography of the two
underworlds, the common characters in both stories, and the people met in both stories. It also gives a little background about Virgil's influence on Dante's
writing.