Malebolge — the Evil Ditches — is a great stone cone of concentric trenches, each one a bolgia (ditch or pouch) containing a different form of simple fraud. They are connected by stone ridges over which Dante and Virgil walk from one ditch to the next. The architecture is the architecture of fraud: compartmentalized, subdivided, each variety of deceit contained in its own precise category, all nested within the larger structure of the deceptive will.
First bolgia: two columns of shades march in opposite directions, whipped from behind by horned demons. One column contains panderers — those who used others' bodies for their own profit; the other contains seducers — those who turned the bodies and souls of others into instruments of their own desire. Dante recognizes Venedico Caccianemico, a Bolognese lord who sold his sister's honor for political advantage. Jason the Argonaut strides through, magnificent and contemptuous despite the whip — he who seduced Hypsipyle and abandoned her, who seduced Medea and destroyed her. The greats of ancient seduction walk with the small corruption of Dante's contemporaries.
Second bolgia: the flatterers are submerged in human excrement, writhing, slapping themselves. Alessio Interminei of Lucca — a man famous in life for his flatteries — is recognized, his head covered with filth. Thais the courtesan from Terence, who told her lover his gift was "wonderful, absolutely wonderful!" when it was ordinary. The contrapasso speaks for itself: those who larded their speech with ordure now live in it.