thirty-four: i) one of its two factors is seventeen; a traditional labyrinth (one in which the visitor travels step by step to the center point, achieves spiritual change, and proceeds back through the same steps, but with a different experience) with thirty-three steps, then the center point would be the seventeenth step : ii) the reason the comedy has one hundred cantos is that each of the three parts contain thirty three cantos except the inferno which has thirty four, the first of which is commonly considered an introductory canto to the whole piece, and iii) it is the sum of twenty one and thirteen