Chapter 5 · MalebolgeditchCircle VIIIBeing built
The Ninth Ditch, the Sowers of Discord
A devil with a sword going his round, and wounds that close before he is back.
Revealswhat the ninth ditch does to whoever goes through it, and who is met there.
The sowers of discord are opened by a devil with a sword, and the wounds close again before his round brings him back (Inf. XXVIII 37-42); in the game his blade sweeps the deck of the bridge on a fixed beat, always the same, and he does not look for you, does not see you and does not wait for you: he passes. He is the only obstacle in the chapter that is neither fought nor gone around.
It is the ninth of the ten districts of the pit, crossed on its own spoke of a bridge like the rest, and on the floor there are twenty six bodies over eighty degrees of arc. Muhammad is not depicted, and the decision is written into the code and closed: the contrapasso stays and the other sowers stay. Bertran de Born is there instead, carrying his own severed head by the hair and holding it up like a lantern, and it is the only light in the ditch.
The numbers
| What | How much |
|---|---|
| Outer radius | 53 drawing metres, 29.2 m in the scene |
| Width, lip to lip | 12 drawing metres, 6.6 m in the scene |