Dante's Inferno Part 10 - Fraud

Описание: As they arrive on the back of Geryon to the eighth circle...Fraud, Virgil explains to Dante that this circle is also called the Malebolge and is divided into ten ditches where the fraudulent and malicious are punished:

Ditch 1 - Panderers and seducers: These sinners make two files, one along either bank of the ditch, and march quickly in opposite directions while being whipped by horned demons for eternity. They "deliberately exploited the passions of others and so drove them to serve their own interests, are themselves driven and scourged".

Ditch 2 - Flatterers: These also exploited other people, this time abusing and corrupting language to play upon others' desires and fears. They are steeped in excrement (representative of the false flatteries they told on earth) as they howl and fight amongst themselves.

Ditch 3 - Simoniacs: those who committed simony, or the sale of ecclesiastic favors and offices, and therefore made money for themselves out of what belongs to God. These sinners are placed head-downwards in round, tube-like holes within the rock with flames burning the soles of their feet, the heat of the fire is proportioned to their guilt.

Ditch 4 - Sorcerers: the souls of fortune tellers, diviners, astrologers, and other false prophets. The punishment of those who attempted to "usurp God's prerogative by prying into the future", is to have their heads twisted around on their bodies; in this horrible contortion of the human form, these sinners are compelled to walk backwards for eternity, blinded by their own 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."

Ditch 5 - Barrators: Corrupt politicians, who made money by trafficking in public offices, are immersed in a lake of boiling tar, which represents the sticky fingers and dark secrets of their corrupt deals. They are guarded by demons called the Malebranche, who tear them to pieces with claws and grappling hooks if they catch them above the surface of the tar.

Ditch 6 - Hypocrites: These souls are condemned to walk listlessly around a narrow track for eternity, weighted down by leaden robes. The robes are brilliantly gilded on the outside and are shaped like a monk's habit – the hypocrite's "outward appearance shines brightly and passes for holiness, but under that show lies the terrible weight of his deceit", a falsity that weighs them down and makes spiritual progress impossible for them.

Ditch 7 - Thieves: The shades of thieves are pursued and bitten by monstrous snakes and lizards, who curl themselves about the sinners and bind their hands behind their backs, just as they stole other people's substance in life, their very identity becomes subject to theft here.

Ditch 8 - Counsellors of Fraud: The souls of fraudulent advisers or evil counsellors move about, hidden from view inside individual flames. These are not people who gave false advice, but people who used their position to advise others to engage in fraud.

Ditch 9 - Sowers of Discord: The Sowers of Discord are hacked and mutilated for all eternity by a large demon wielding a bloody sword; their bodies are divided as, in life, their sin was to tear apart what God had intended to be united; these are the sinners who are "ready to rip up the whole fabric of society to gratify a sectional egotism." The souls must drag their ruined bodies around the ditch, their wounds healing in the course of the circuit, only to have the demon tear them apart anew. There are divided into three categories: religious schism and discord, civil strife and political discord, and family disunion, or discord between kinsmen.

Ditch 10 - Falsifiers: The final ditch of the eighth circle, is home to various sorts of falsifiers. A "disease" on society, they are themselves afflicted with different types of afflictions: horrible diseases, stench, thirst, filth, darkness, and screaming. Some lie prostrate while others run hungering through the pit, tearing others to pieces.


Dante and Virgil approach the Central Well, at the bottom of which lies the ninth and final circle of Hell. The well is guarded by the giants Nimrod, Ephialtes, Briareus, Tityos, Antaeus and Typhon who are punished for their pride and spiritual flaws lying behind acts of treachery. At Virgil's persuasion, Antaeus takes the Poets in his large palm and lowers them gently to the final level of Hell.