Then the man admits he is a traitor and that there are many others of his ilk in Antenora, the second division of the lowest circle.
_Canto XXXIII._ Beholding another culprit greedily gnawing the head of a companion, Dante learns that while on earth this culprit was Count Ugolino de'Gherardeschi, whom his political opponents, headed by the Archbishop Ruggiero, seized by treachery and locked up in the Famine-tower at Pisa, with two sons and two grandsons.

Ugolino feelingly describes his horror when one morning he heard them nail up the door of the prison, and realized he and his were doomed to starve! Not a word did the prisoners exchange regarding their fate, although all were aware of the suffering awaiting them.

At the end of twenty-four hours, beholding traces of hunger in the beloved faces of his children, Ugolino gnawed his fists in pain.

One of his grandsons, interpreting this as a sign of unbearable hunger, then suggested that he eat one of them, whereupon he realized how needful it was to exercise self-control if he did not wish to increase the sufferings of the rest.

Ugolino then describes how they daily grew weaker, until his grandsons died at the end of the fourth day, vainly begging him to help them.