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The law of symbolic retribution in Dante's Inferno.(Taken from the John Ciardi's translation with notes and commentary.)

Canto III

The Opportunists, neither in Hell nor out of it. As they pursued the ever-shifting illusion of their own advantage, changing their courses with every changing wind, so they pursue eternally an elusive,ever-shifting banner. As their sin was a darkness, so they move in darkness. As their own guilty conscience pursued them, so they are pursued by swarms of wasps and hornets. And as their actions were amoral filth, so they run eternally through the filth of worms and maggots which they themselves feed.

Circle 1, Limbo

Canto V

Circle 2

The Carnal, who betrayed reason to their appetites. Their sin was to abandon themselves to the tempest of their passions: so they are swept forever in the tempest of Hell.

Canto VI

Circle 3, The Gluttons, who made no higher use of the gifts of God than to wallow in food and drink, producers of nothing but garbage and offal. Here they lie through all eternity, themselves like garbage, half-buried in fetid slush, while Cerberus slavers over them as they in life slavered over their food.

Circle 4, Canto VII

The Hoarders and Wasters who are divided into two raging mobs, each soul among them straining madly at a great boulder-like weight. In life, they lacked all moderation in regulating their expenses; they destroyed the light of God within themselves by thinking of nothing but money. Thus in death, their souls are encumbered by dead weights (mundanity) and one excess serves to punish the other. Their souls, moreover, have become so dimmed and awry in their fruitless rages that there is no hope of recognizing any among them.

Circle 5, The Wrathful and the Sullen. The Wrathful attack each other in the foul slime. The Sullen lie below the mud. In life they refused to welcome the sweet light of the Sun (Divine Illumination) and in death the are buried forever below the stinking waters of the Styx,gargling the words of an endless chant in a grotesque parody of singing a hymn.

Canto IX

Circle 6, The Heretics. Since they taught that the soul dies with the body, so their punishment is an eternal grave in the fire of God's wrath.

Canto XII

Circle 7: Round 1, The Violent against Neighbors. As they wallowed in blood in life, so they are immersed in the boiling blood forever,each according to the degree of his guilt, while fierce Centaurs patrol the banks, ready to shoot with their arrows any sinner who raises himself out of the boiling blood beyond the limits permitted him.

Canto XIII

Circle 7: Round 2. The Violent against Themselves. They who destroyed their own bodies are denied a human form; and just as the supreme expression of their lives was self-destruction so they are permitted to speak only through that which tears and destroys them. Only through their own blood do they find voice. The Harpies give them their eternally recurring wounds.

Canto XIV

Circle 7: Round 3. The Violent against God, Nature, and Art.
Three classes of sinners suffering differing degrees of exposure to the fire. The Blasphemers (Violent against God ) are stretched supine upon the sand, the Sodomites (Violent against Nature) run in endless circles, and the Usurers (Violent against Art) huddle on the sands.
The burning plain, sterility and wrath. All three sins are unnatural and sterile actions, thus the burning desert, and the rain, which in nature should be fertile and cool, descends as fire.

Canto XVIII through Canto XXX

Circle 8, The Fraudulent and Malicious (Simple Fraud)

Bolgia 1, The Panderers and Seducers who make up two files are driven at an endless fast walk by horned demons who hurry them along with great lashes. In life these sinners goaded others on to serve their own foul purposes. so in Hell are they driven in their turn. The horned demons who drive them symbolize the sinners' own vicious natures, embodiments of their own guilty consciences.

Bolgia 2, The Flatterers, sunk in excrement, the true equivalent of their false flatteries on earth. Thais

Canto XIX

Bolgia 3, The Simoniacs, placed upside down -- in tube-like holes--with the soles of their feet ablaze. The holes are debased equivalents of baptismal fonts. Their confinement is temporary: as new sinners arrive, the souls drop through the bottom of their holes and disappear eternally into the crevices of the rock. As they made a mock of holy office, so are they turned upside down. Pope Nicholas III

Bolgia 4, Fortune Tellers and Diviners. Their punishment is to have their heads turned backwards on their bodies and to be compelled to walk backwards through all eternity, their eyes blinded with tears. Thus, those who sought to penetrate the future cannot even see in front of themselves; they attempted to move themselves forward in time, so must they go backwards through all eternity; and as the arts of sorcery are a distortion of God's law, so are their bodies distorted in Hell.

Bolgia 5, The Grafters are sunk in boiling pitch and guarded by Demons who tear them to pieces with claws and grappling hooks if they catch them above the surface of the black pitch. The sticky pitch is symbolic of the sticky fingers of the Grafters. It serves also to hide them from sight, as their sinful dealings on earth were hidden from men's eyes. The demons are forever ready to rend and tear all they can get their hands on, just as the grafters did on Earth.

Bolgia 6, The Hypocrites, weighted down by great leaden robes, walk eternally round and round a narrow track. The robes are brilliantly gilded on the outside and are shaped like a monk's habit, for the hypocrite's outward appearance shines brightly and passes for holiness, but under that show lies the terrible weight of his deceit which the souls must bear through all eternity.

Bolgia 7, The Thieves. Reptiles fly through the air and pierce the jugular vein of a sinner who immediately bursts into flames until only ashes remain. From the ashes the sinner re-forms painfully. Thievery is reptilian in its secrecy; therefore, it is punished by reptiles. The hands of thieves are the agents of their crimes; therefore they are bound forever. And as the thief destroys his fellow men by making their substance disappear, so is he painfully destroyed and made to disappear.

Bolgia, 8, The Evil Counselors are hidden from view inside great flames. As they sinned by glibness of tongue, so are the flames made into a fiery travesty of tongues. Ulysses (Odysseus) and Diomede are punished together.

Bolgia, 9, The Sowers of Discord. As their sin was to rend asunder what God had meant to be united, so are they hacked and torn through all eternity by a great demon with a bloody sword. After each mutilation the souls are compelled to drag their broken bodies around the pit and to return to the demon.
Sowers of Religious Discord: Mohammed
Sowers of Political Discord
Sowers of Discord Between Kinsmen: Bertrand de Born; he separated father from son, and for that offense carries his head separated from his body, holding it with one hand by the hair.

Bolgia 10, Falsifiers (Alchemists, Evil Impersonators, Counterfeiters, False Witnesses) They are punished by afflictions of every sense: by darkness, stench, thirst, filth, loathsome diseases,and a shrieking din. Some of them run through the pit, tearing others to pieces. Just as in life they corrupted society by their falsifications, so in death these sinners are subjected to a sum of corruptions.

Circle 9, Cocytus, Compound Fraud: Traitors

The treacheries of these souls were denials of love (which is god) and of all human warmth. Only the remorseless dead center of the ice will serve to express their natures. As they denied God's love, so are they furthest removed from the light and warmth of His Sun. As they denied all human ties, so are they bound only by the unyielding ice.

Round 1: Caina, The Treacherous to Kin -- heads and neck out of the ice

Round 2: Antenora, The Treacherous to Country -- heads out of the ice; Dante kicks Bocca degli Abate; listens to Count Ugolino's story of starvation at the hands of Ruggieri. Ugolino gnaws perpetually on the nape of Ruggieri's neck: as Ruggieri starved Ugolino and his sons so is he eaten.

Round 3: Ptolomea, The Treacherous to Guests and Hosts -- half their faces above the ice and their tears freeze in their eye sockets, sealing them with little crystal visors. Friar Alberigo

Round 4: Judecca, The Treacherous to Their Masters -- completely under the ice, their bodies in distorted positions.

Satan: speechless; as the father of lies, he is now denied all speech.