The Falsifiers and the Story of Master Adam and Sinon
The tenth and last Bolgia of Malebolge, the final ditch of the eighth circle, is reserved for falsifiers and forgers—those who corrupted the very substance of things, whether metal, person, word, or identity. Here Dante and Virgil, having descended from the ninth Bolgia of schismatics, enter a realm of disease, stench, and raving madness that surpasses every earlier horror. The punishment is not a single, uniform torment but a gallery of distinct afflictions, each tailored to the specific kind of falsification the sinner practiced in life. The episode is the Inferno's most elaborate and visceral demonstration of contrapasso, the law that the punishment mirrors the sin, and it unfolds as a series of interlocking vignettes: the alchemists scabbed and scratching, the impersonators biting and tearing like wild boars, the counterfeit coiner dropsical and immobile, and the perjurer feverish and consumed by his own heat. The Bolgia is a microcosm of human deceit, where every form of falsehood is laid bare and made to suffer its own inverted image of truth.
The Alchemists and the Disease of Fraud
Dante and Virgil descend to the final bank of Malebolge and are met by a sight that the poet compares to the hospitals of Valdichiana, Maremma, and Sardinia in summer: a moat filled with the sick, the scabbed, and the putrefied. The stench is overwhelming, and the spirits languish in heaps, some on their bellies, some on their backs, others crawling along the dismal road. Among them, Dante sees two sitting propped against each other, covered from head to foot with scabs, scratching themselves with their nails as a stable-boy curries a horse or a fishmonger scales a bream. These are the alchemists, who in life falsified metals and now are themselves falsified, their bodies turned into diseased matter that they tear at in a frenzy of itching. One of them, Griffolino d'Arezzo, explains that he was burned at the stake by Albert of Siena for claiming he could fly, but that his presence here is for alchemy, not for that boast. The other, Capocchio, who was a skilled imitator of nature, recognizes Dante and identifies himself as the one who falsified metals. Their punishment is a kind of living decomposition, a physical corruption that mirrors the corruption they introduced into the natural order.
The Mad Impersonators: Gianni Schicchi and Myrrha
As Dante watches, two shades, pale and naked, come running through the Bolgia like a boar released from its sty. One of them seizes Capocchio by the nape of the neck and drags him along the ground, his belly grating on the stone. Griffolino identifies the attacker as Gianni Schicchi, a mad spirit who goes about harrying others. The other shade is the ancient ghost of Myrrha, who became her father's lover by counterfeiting another's form. Gianni Schicchi, in life, impersonated the dead Buoso Donati to dictate a fraudulent will, thereby gaining the lady of the herd. Both are now condemned to a frenzy of biting and tearing, their own identities dissolved into a raving animality that mirrors the false identities they once assumed. The violence is sudden, chaotic, and without reason, a stark contrast to the methodical torments of other circles.
Master Adam and the Counterfeit Coiner's Thirst
Dante's attention then turns to a figure made in the fashion of a lute, his body swollen with dropsy, his face so distorted that it does not correspond to his belly. This is Master Adam of Brescia, a counterfeiter of the Florentine florin. He is consumed by an unquenchable thirst, and the memory of the cool streams of the Casentino—the rivulets that descend from the verdant hills into the Arno—torments him more than his disease. He explains that he was burned at the stake for coining the currency imprinted with the Baptist, and that he longs to see the souls of Guido, Alessandro, or their brother, who induced him to commit the fraud. His punishment is a perfect contrapasso: he who made false gold is now a bloated parody of a man, his body a vessel of false fluid, his thirst a perpetual reminder of the genuine water he can never drink. The specificity of his longing—for the Branda fountain, for the streams of Romena—anchors his torment in the geography of his sin.
The Quarrel of the Liars: Master Adam and Sinon
Lying near Master Adam are two other figures: Potiphar's Wife, who falsely accused Joseph, and Sinon of Troy, the Greek who tricked the Trojans with the wooden horse. Both are afflicted with a burning fever that sends forth a reek like a wet hand in winter. When Master Adam names them, Sinon, offended, strikes him on his hard paunch, which gives a sound like a drum. Master Adam retaliates by striking Sinon in the face. A bitter quarrel erupts, each accusing the other of worse crimes: Sinon taunts Master Adam with his burning at the stake, Master Adam retorts that Sinon was a false witness at Troy. The exchange is a masterpiece of mutual recrimination, a verbal duel that mirrors the physical torments of the Bolgia. Virgil rebukes Dante for listening, calling it a base wish to hear such disputes, and the poet, ashamed, turns away. The quarrel is the final, degraded note of the tenth Bolgia, a cacophony of lies and counter-lies that leaves the reader with the sense that in this place, even the truth is only a weapon in an endless war of deceit.
