# Longfellow’s Inferno print places Epicurus among the heretics in open tombs

Date: 1867

## The fact

Nineteenth-century public English Inferno, including Longfellow’s 1867 version now on Gutenberg, transmits Dante’s placement of [Epicurus](/people/epicurus) with those who deny the soul’s survival, punished in open tombs.

## Context

Christian polemic made atomist mortality a party badge. The canto is literature and also a durable sectarian caption. Polarisation here is confessional, not a parliament score.

Epicurus is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official edition, museum, archive, or agency page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Dante, Inferno (public-domain English) (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8800; Project Gutenberg).

## Significance

A printed heresy-caption is a cohesion cost for anyone later teaching mortality without a church licence.

A printed heresy-caption is a cohesion cost for anyone later teaching mortality without a church licence.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Epicurus: https://factrail.ai/people/epicurus

## Drivers

- Political Polarization: https://factrail.ai/drivers/political-polarization

## Sources

- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8800
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Epicurus

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ep-dante-inferno-heretics