The Eighth Circle of Hell: Fraud

Fraud is the eighth circle of Dante's Hell, described in Cantos XVIII–XXX. It holds the fraudulent, sorted into ten stone ditches called the malebolge. The punishment: a different punishment per ditch: whipped by demons, sunk in filth, planted head-down in rock, heads twisted backwards, boiled in tar, crushed under gilded lead cloaks, fused with snakes, wrapped in flame, cut open again and again, and rotted by disease.

The punishment

A different punishment per ditch: whipped by demons, sunk in filth, planted head-down in rock, heads twisted backwards, boiled in tar, crushed under gilded lead cloaks, fused with snakes, wrapped in flame, cut open again and again, and rotted by disease.

Fraud is the sin Dante treats as most human, so it gets the most detail — ten distinct ways to be paid back precisely in the currency you cheated in.

Who guards it

Geryon, who has an honest face, a decorated body and a scorpion's tail.

Who Dante puts here

Named residents of the eighth circle include:

• Ulysses
• Guido da Montefeltro
• Pope Nicholas III
• Mohammed
• Bertran de Born

The modern read

The largest, most bureaucratic circle. Nine sins get a field. Fraud gets a filing system.

Sending someone to Fraud

The friend who "was five minutes away" forty minutes ago.

Damnation Vacation sells a numbered, permanent plot in one of Dante's nine circles of Hell. You pay $6.66, pick who it's for, name their cardinal sin in twenty characters or fewer, and choose their circle. They get a public gravestone page with their name on it, their plot number, and a counter tracking how many days they've been down there. Fraud is Circle VIII, and it has open plots.

Common questions

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