Note 250 — CANTO V.
James Romanes Sibbald translation
Downward hurled: Each falls to his proper place without lingering by the way. All through Inferno there is an absence of direct Divine interposition. It is ruled, as it were, by a course of nature. The sinners, compelled by a fatal impulse, advance to hear their doom, just as they fall inevitably one by one into Charon’s boat. Minos by a sort of devilish instinct sentences each sinner to his appropriate punishment. In Inf. xxvii. 127 we find the words in which Minos utters his judgment. In Inf. xxi. 29 a devil bears the sinner to his own place.