Canto XXX Judith Schultheis November 20,2007

Summary Saturday, April 9, early afternoon Circle VIII, Malebolge, Bolgia X The falsifiers This canto deals with the three remaining categories of falsifiers: impersonators, counterfeiters and liars. Unlike all other sinners in Hell, the falsifiers are tortured from within themselves, rather than from without. (We speak of the immediate agent of torture, not the ultimate contrapasso punishment, which in all cases is engendered by the sin within the sinner.) As the alchemists in the previous canto were afflicted with leprosy, so the impersonators are mad, the counterfeiters have dropsy, and the liars have a fever which makes them smell. These sinners, who falsified nature, themselves, money or language, have basically corrupted their own souls, which are diseased for eternity. The two illustrations of madness with which Dante begins the canto are an ironic contrast to the madness of Schicchi and Myrrha. The first of these classical torments was inflicted by the goddess Juno, and the second by fortune, while the sinners portrayed here brought about their own punishment through petty greed and cunning. Master Adam, the counterfeiter suffers from eternal thirst, and is fittingly more parched by his own images of running water than by the disease dessicating his face. When one of the liars, Sinon the Greek, gets into an argument with Master Adam, Dante watches with great interest until Virgil rebukes him, as he did at the beginning of the previous canto. Dante blushes at once, for he knows that sympathetic curiosity is an unworthy stance toward such low behavior; nevertheless he needs Virgil to break his fascination. The incident adds a final metaphor to the theme of the canto, for Dante is being captured by this utterly spurious quarrel, briefly falling prey to its falsity. Indeed, through this display of curiosity he leaves Malebolge with a fitting tribute to the subtle power of fraud.

Characters Gianni Schicchi A scene in the tenth chasm, of the Falsifiers, in the eighth circle. Dante sees two pale and naked shadows rushing out biting like hungry swine. One, Gianni Schicchi, grabs Capocchio by the neck with his fangs. Myrrha –In Greek Myhollogy, Myrrha was the daughter of Theias, and mother of Adonis. He sees her shade suffering rabies for all eternity in the eighth circle of Hell. Her punishment is not the consequence of her unnatural lust (which would have landed her in the second circle) but for her practice of the art of deception.Myrrha was changed into a myrtle. Adonis was born from her trunk. Potiphar's wife Sinon Of Troy- In Greek mythology, Sinon, was a Greek warrior during the Trojan War. He pretended to have deserted the Greeks and, as a Trojan captive, told the Trojans that the giant wooden horse the Greeks had left behind was intended as a gift to the gods to ensue their safe voyage home. His story convinced the Trojans because it included the former details as well as an explanation that he was left behind to die by the doing of Odysseus who was his enemy. The Trojans brought the Trojan Horse through the doors. Inside the giant wooden horse were Greek soldiers, who, as night fell, disembarked from the horse and opened the gates of Troy, thus sealing the fate of Troy. Capocchio – probably the Florentine alchemist who was burned alive in Sienna in 1281 Master Adam- Master Adam, the counterfeiter suffers from eternal thirst, and is fittingly more parched by his own images of running water than by the disease dessicating his face

oIncluded among Virgil's catalogue of fraudulent offenses in Inferno 11 are theft, falsifying, and "like trash" the sins that are punished in the final four ditches of circle 8. With the thieves appearing in the seventh pit and the falsifiers in the tenth, the "like trash" must by default fill up ditches eight and nine. Divisive individuals--sowers of scandal and discord-- are tormented in the ninth ditch, and the shades punished in the eighth pit hidden within tongues of fire.