Nail

In the sixth ditch the hypocrites walk under gilded leaden copes, and in the middle of the road lies one of them stretched out and crucified on the ground, naked, with three stakes: the man who said it was fitting that one should suffer for the people, and who now feels the weight of everyone who passes, before all the others do.

The nails holding him down are the strongest consecrated matter to be found down here, and that is why the ribaldo, which is only iron and wood, touches devils as well. Eight per stake, three stakes, twenty four in all: that is the whole of the chapter’s good ammunition, and once it is gone you fire a counterfeiter’s alloy.

Pulling them is the game’s gesture and not the poem’s: in the canto nobody touches those nails. Here they come out one stake at a time, and the first one out is enough for the chapter to notice. The line the game shows over each of them says it is a nail of wrought iron driven through a hand, and that it held down the man who said it was better for one to die for all.