The Fifth Ditch, the Pitch

The barrators lie under boiling pitch and the Malebranche wait for them on the lip with their hooks (Inf. XXII 19-23); in the game this is the only liquid that really hides anything, since the blood of the Phlegethon is red and clear enough to swim in, and this one is black and opaque. What is under it is known only when it comes out, and fourteen heads come out over a hundred and twenty degrees of the ring.

It is the fifth of the ten districts of the pit, crossed on its own spoke of a bridge like the rest, and the first where the devils do not stay in their own ditch: the ten walk behind whoever passes, following the trace a living body leaves, which is the first rule of the game and holds here too. They touch nobody. Whoever falls into the pitch burns fast, and it is not a punishment: it is what the Malebranche do to each other when they quarrel (Inf. XXII 133-141).