This canto deals with the Hypocrites, represented by Caiaphas. For their punishment, they are forced to wear coats that are beautiful on the outside, but lined inside with heavy lead, forcing them to bend over and struggle to move. This punishment fits the sin since they glitter on the outside but are so weighted down that there is no chance of spiritual progress.

Dante uses the fable of the mouse and the frog (then attributed to Aesop) as an allegory to describe the scene in Cantos XXII between the demons and the escaped sinner. The fable goes that a mouse wanted to cross a pond and asked a frog to help him. The frog, wanting to drown the mouse, suggested that he take the mouse across on his back. The mouse agreed, but was afraid of falling off, so the frog suggested that the mouse tie himself to the frog. When they reach the middle of the pond, the frog decides to dive under and pull the mouse with him. However, a hawk, seeing the struggling mouse, catches it, taking the frog with him. In Dante's comparison, the sinner represents the mouse and the demons that fell into the pitch represent the frog. There are several disagreements about which creature represents what.

Because the chasm of the Hypocrites is chiefly filled with sinners with whom religion played a major role in their damnation, it is fitting that Caiaphas, High Priest of the Jews, is the chief sinner of the pit, having been crucified to the ground to suffer being walked upon for all eternity. Caiaphas advised Pontius Pilate to condemn Jesus to death on the cross for the supposed benefit of the city. Virgil marvels at his appearance because he was not yet there when Virgil made his first trip to the depths of Hell.

In the circle of the Hypocrites, Dante is again recognized as being alive, this time because his throat moves as he talks. The cloaks of the Hypocrites, which dazzle the eye, actually are instruments of torture. Moreover, the heavy garments they wear force the sinners to adopt a decorous and subdued attitude which is entirely in character with their worldly habit of hiding a vicious nature beneath a virtuous and holy appearance.

Dante has placed the Hypocrites far down in the circles of Hell. Their presence is a restatement of Dante's definition of sin as perversion of the intellect. Few sins can equal the deliberate cloaking of one's true character and feelings in a false aspect of piety, tolerance or honesty.

Glossary

Aesop real or legendary Greek author of fables; supposed to have lived in the sixth century b.c.

Frederick's capes Frederick II executed people by placing them in a leaden shell which was then melted around them.

Jovial Friars the nickname of the monks of the Glorious Virgin Mary from Bolongna.

Bolognese of Bologna, its people, or their dialect.

Pharisees a member of an ancient Jewish party or fellowship that carefully observed the written law but also accepted the oral (or traditional) law; advocated democratization of religious practices; mainly they hated Jesus for questioning their authority.

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>>7894582

After the poets reach the end of the bridge, they can see the masses of serpents and sinners in the seventh chasm where the Thieves reside. The sinners are naked, and their hands are tied behind them with a serpent whose head and tail are threaded through the spirit's body at the loins and tied in coils and knots at the front. Another serpent sinks its fangs in the neck of a shade, who immediately takes afire, burns to ashes, and falls on the ground, only to resume its shape and its torment once again. This shade seems as bewildered by what has happened as one who has been the victim of a seizure of some kind.

>>7894653

n keeping with Dante's theme of retribution, where the punishment fits the sin, the Thieves in the seventh chasm consistently steal one another's forms, and they are condemned to spend eternity with their hands bound. Just as they stole the substance of others in life, they have their only substance (their body forms) stolen throughout their eternal damnation in death.