Chapter 5 · MalebolgeditchCircle VIIIBeing built
The First Ditch, the Panders
Two files walking in opposite directions, and the ones who whip them from the lip.
Revealswhat the first ditch does to whoever goes through it, and who is met there.
In the poem the panders and the seducers go in two ranks that cross without looking at each other, and on the rock above stand the demons with their whips (Inf. XVIII 31-33); in the game they are two files of thirty two bodies each, with fourteen horned devils standing still on the two lips, every one of them on a flat boulder brought there because the rock spine has no place a body can stand on. The poem watches from above: here you go down.
It is the first of the ten districts of the pit, and the ten are not ten levels: they are crossed on the stone bridges that cut the banks like spokes, and the road from one to the next is a spiral that makes more than a full turn. It is the only ditch where you do exactly what a damned soul does, because you get through it by walking among them, and the horned devils do not tell a living man from the rest as long as he keeps the pace.
The numbers
| What | How much |
|---|---|
| Outer radius | 202 drawing metres, 111.1 m in the scene |
| Width, lip to lip | 12 drawing metres, 6.6 m in the scene |