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Canto XXV - Circle Eight, Bolgia Seven - Thieves  After the ornament-stealing, Vanni, tells Danté his fate, he blasphemes by making some kind of finger gesture towards god. Let's just say he gave god the finger. Danté now believes that the "serpents were my friends" as they coiled around Vanni's neck. Soon a centaur approaches and "on his shoulders crouched a dragon with its wings spread wide that sets on fire whatever it encounters."The dragon sits atop Cacus, the son of Vulcan who was killed by Hercules for stealing cattle as told in Virgil'sAeneid. But in the AeneidCacus is not a centaur, he is a man who exhales smoke and fire. It seems Danté took some liberties here and what this displays is that Danté is willing to revise the Aeneid to make it work for him in The Inferno . Three souls then shout at Danté and Virgil, "You, who are you?" Danté is amazed when a "reptile with six legs propels itself at one of them, and fastene...

Canto XXII - Circle Eight, Bolgia Five - Barrators (cont'd) So off Dant é and Virgil head with a ten-demon escort, an escort befitting their current location "in church with saints, with guzzlers in the tavern." Dant é spies barrators (corrupt politicians) emerging from the pitch to relieve their aching backs "like dolphins, when they arch their backs above the water" until they see the Demon Barbariccia approaching and then the barrators sink below the boiling surface, that is all except one. A demon pulls Ciampolo out of the pitch with a billhook, who is a native of Navarre and took bribes while serving the "noble Thibaut." Isn't there anyone in this boiling pitch from Italy? asks Virgil. Yes, there is one Friar Gomita of Gallura "a vessel full of fraud," who instead of punishing wrongdoers, let them off for the right amount of money. He was "no small-time swindler but a king." Another barrator is Don Michel Zan...