Dante the pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, have come down to the bottom of the sixth evil pouch to escape the demons from the fifth. Here, they find a group of guys in cowls or capes that look sort of like the ones from the abbey at Cluny but that are in fact made out of gilded lead.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we settle into the bottom of the sixth of the malebolge of fraud in the eighth circle of hell. Dante and Virgil are about to find out that fraud is about more than just tricking people. It's about killing them, too.

Here are the segments of this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:18] My English translation of the passage: Inferno, Canto XXIII, lines 58 -81. If you'd like to read along, you can find this translation on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:56] The first descriptions of the hypocrites: the quiet, the procession, the cloaks, Cluny, and Frederick II, all bound up in a few lines. It's quintessential Dante!

[13:18] COMEDY is as much a work of assembly as it is of coherence. It's important to keep that fact in mind.

[15:48] How does the punishment of hypocrisy fit the crime?

[20:14] The end of this passage: a possible slam at Virgil, then one of the hypocrites finally speaks.

[24:15] The on-going question of the thematics of circularity in the sins of fraud.