WeLCRO ay INFERNO. Translated by John Cia r diCanto XXVIII ——— cmeLe EIGHT: Bolgia Nine ; The Sowers of Discord The Poets come to the edge of the NINTH BOLGIA and look down at a parade of hideously mutilated souls. These are the SOWERS OF DISCORD, and just as their sin was to tend asunder what God had meant to be united, so are they hacked and torn through all eterni by @ great demon with a bloody sword. After each mutt- lation the souls ave compelled to drag their broken bod- fes around the pit and to return to the demon, for in the course of the circuit their wounds knit in time to be inflicted anew. Thus is the law of retribution observed, each sinner suffering according to his degree. Among them Dante distinguishes three classes with varying degrees of guilt within each class, First come the SOWERS OF RELIGIOUS DISCORD. Mahomet is chief among them, and appears first, cleft from crotch to chin, with his internal organs dangling between his legs. His son-in-law, Ali, drags on ahead of him, cleft from topknot to chin, These reciprocal wounds symbolize Dante's judgment that, between them, these two sum up the total schism between Christianity and Mohammedan- ism. The revolting details of Mahomet’s condition clearly imply Dante's opinion of that doctrine. Mahomet issues on tronic warning to another schismatic, FRA DOL- INO, Next come the SOWERS OF POLITICAL DISCORD, among them PIER DA MEDICINA, the Tribune CU- RIO, and MOSCA DEI LAMBERTI, each mutilated according to the nature of his sin.236 Canto xxvm, Circle 8, Bolgia qi A wine tun when a stave or cant-bar starts ) does not split open as wide as one I saw split from his chin to the mouth with which man farted Between his legs all of his red guts hung with the heart, the lungs, the liver, the gall bladder, 4 and the shriveled sac that passes shit to the bung. | 1 stood and stared at him from the stone shelf; he noticed me and opening his own breast with both hands cried: “See how I rip myself! (30) | . See how Mahomet’s mangled and split open! =: Ahead of me walks Ali in his tears, 4 his head cleft from the top-knot to the chin, And all the other souls that bleed and mourn along this ditch were sowers of scandal and schism: as they tore others apart, so are they torn. Behind us, warden of our mangled horde, the devil who butchers us and sends us marching waits to renew our wounds with his long sword when we have made the circuit of the pit; for by the time we stand again before him all the wounds he gave us last have kuit. But who are you that gawk down from that sill— probably to put off your own descent to the pit you are sentenced to for your own evil?” (45) “Death has not come for him, guilt does not drive his soul to torment,” my sweet Guide replied. “That he may experience all while yet alive I, who am dead, must lead him through the drear and darkened halls of Hell, from round to round: and this is true as my own standing here.”