Answer 1: Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

Answer 2: The first answer is only the 9th line of the inscription above the gate of hell in Dante's "Inferno." Eight lines come before it.

The full nine-line inscription, in Dante's 13th century Italian (with italicized English translation to the right of each line) is:

Per me si va ne la città dolente, (Through me you go to the grief wracked city,)

per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, (through me you go to everlasting pain,)

per me si va tra la perduta gente. (through me you go a pass among lost souls.)

Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore: (Justice inspired my exalted Creator:)

fecemi la divina podestate, (I am a creature of the Holiest Power,)

la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore. (of Wisdom in the Highest and of Primal Love.)

Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create (Nothing till I was made was made,)

se non etterne. E io etterno duro. (only eternal beings. And I endure eternally.)

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate. (Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.)

Another English translation version:

Through me the way to the suffering city,

through me the everlasting pain,

through me the way that runs among the Lost.

Justice urged on my exalted Creator:

Divine Power made me,

the Supreme Wisdom and the Primal Love.

Nothing was made before me

but eternal things. And I endure eternally.

Abandon all hope, you who enter here.

The inscription above the gate of hell is contained in "Canto III" of the "Inferno" part of the epic poem, "The Divine Comedy," written between 1308 and 1321 by Dante Alighieri. The poem, is made-up of three parts, or canticas, the first being the "Inferno" (Hell), the second being "Purgatorio" (Purgatory), and the third being "Paradiso" (Paradise). "The Divine Comedy" is widely considered the central epic poem and preeminent work of Italian literature, and easily one of the greatest literary works of human kind... though not so much during "The Enlightenment" period. The role it nevertheless played in the development of Italian culture cannot be overestimated, because it helped to establish the Tuscan dialect, in which Dante penned it, as the standard of Italian language.

Superficially, the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. However, the deeper allegorical representation is that of the human soul's journey toward God. To adequately convey that, Dante drew on his understanding of the medieval world view of the Western Church; its theology and philosophy, particularly the Thomistic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, as Dante understood it from his reading of Aquinas's "Summa Theologica." For that reason, many have said that Dante's "Divine Comedy" is little more than Aquinas's Summa, but in verse.

Dante originally called the work, simply, "Comedia." Since he died not long after he completed "Comedia" in 1321, Dante had no control over what others would subsequently call it; and it was not long after his death that Italian author and poet Giovanni Boccaccio dubbed it "Divinia." It took some more than 200 years, though, for "Divinia" to be included in the title, alongside "Comedia," when Venetian humanist Lodovico Dolce so edited the work's title in its 1555 publication by Venetian printer/publisher Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari.

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