what is introduction for the pit and the pendulum.?

Latin words taken from an inscription for the gates of a new marketplace in Paris to be built upon the site of the old Jacobin Club House begin this tale, “Impia tortorum longas his turba furores/Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit./Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,/Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent, [meaning]…’Here the impious clamor of the torturers, insatiate, fed its rage for innocent blood. More……

http://www.bookrags.com/notes/poe/PART33.html

“The Pit and the Pendulum” (1843)

Summary

An unnamed narrator opens the story by revealing that he has been sentenced to death during the time of the Inquisition—an institution of the Catholic government in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain that persecuted all Protestants and heretical Catholics. Upon receiving his death sentence, the narrator swoons, losing consciousness. When he wakes, he faces complete darkness. He is confused because he knows that the usual fate of Inquisition victims is a public auto-da-fé, or “act of faith”—an execution normally taking the form of a hanging. He is afraid that he has been locked in a tomb, but he gets up and walks a few paces. This mobility then leads him to surmise that he is not in a tomb, but perhaps in one of the dungeons at Toledo, an infamous Inquisition prison. He decides to explore. Ripping off a piece of the hem from his robe, he places it against the wall so that he can count the number of steps required to walk the perimeter of the cell. However, he soon stumbles and collapses to the ground, where he falls asleep. More…..

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/poestories/section7.rhtml

http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Pit.html

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-145,pageNum-21.html