The poet interrupts--who could tell this story in its fullest? Even unshackled from rhyme, and with 10,000 attempts? All the dead at Apulia, victims of Trojan conflicts, the dead from the battle with Robert Guiscard, and the dead from the treachery at Ceperan could not compare in their ghastliness to the ninth bowge. Dante sees one who gapes like a cask stove in, slit from chin to anus. The Sower of Discord here (Mahomet) is disemboweled, intestines hung by his feet and his other innards (pluck) are on display. He rends himself, weeping for the schism in Islam created by his nephew Ali, who is here for that reason.
"Sowers of scandal, sowers of schism...therefore they now go split."
The shades are constantly slashed by a fiend with a sword.
The schisms shown here are religious and family. Dante finally reveals in this canto how it is that the shades can be torn for eternity--during each of the fiend's rounds the shades are repaired and torn once more when he comes past them. The shades are amazed when Virgil tells them that Dante is not dead. Mahomet asks him to warn Fra Dolcino, the head of a sect who was burnt after his defeat at the hands of Clement V. Mahomet predicts this fall and the starving-out of Dolcino's troops.
Next is Pier da Medicina (gullet pierced and nose shorn to the brow, only one ear--this symbolizes his eavesdropping, nosiness, and lying throat), who warns of the betrayal and drowning of Ser Guido and Angiolello. This shade suggested Caesar cross the Rubicon and declare war on the Republic in 49 BC.
A man with both hands cut off cries out to be remembered. He said what's done is ended, and threw Florence into the ongoing feud between the Ghuelfs and Ghibellines. Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti jilted an Amadei girl for a Donati, and Mosca (the shade) advised her family to take revenge. Dante points out Mosca is responsible for the deaths of many of his kin, and Mosca flees.
A shade carrying his severed head by the hair runs toward him. He is Bertrand de Born, and his punishment is like his crime--he separated father and son, which is like parting head from body. He is blamed for the rift between Henry II and Prince Henry--the "Young King" who was crowned in his father's lifetime. He is compared to Absalom and David (see 2 Samuel 15-17), torn apart by the advice of Achitopel. Note in this canto the fitting of punishment to crime.
Canto XXIX
Dante is almost in tears. Virgil warns him they cannot tarry here--Dante is looking for Geri del Bello, a cousin of his father, and thinks perhaps the shade turned away because he is angry he was not avenged. Finally we arrive in the tenth bowge, the Pit of Disease, wherein the Falsifiers are tormented.
All the horrors of the plagues and swamps are in this trench. There is a putrefying stench and gangrene, and a sickness like the Plague at Aegina, sent by Juno. The shades lie in heaps, some crawling lethargically on all fours. Two are seated back to back, covered with scabs and sores, scratching madly and shedding layers of skin. Virgil asks if any be Latian, and both the itchy shades are in fact. They stir to speak. One is Griffolino d'Arezzo, burned for heresy by Alberto of Siena. He was an alchemist and extorted money from a young nobleman.
The second mentions four nobles, members of a club of spendthrifts. This list can be found on the cataloging page. The shade is a friend of Dante's named Capocchio, also an alchemist. He was called an "ape of nature"--either because of his skills as a draughtsman or as a mimic.
Canto XXX
Speaks of the homicidal rage of Juno toward Athamas, whose wife mothered Bacchus by Jupiter. He was a king of Thebes.
Two naked shades run past, biting and savaging the others. One falls on Capocchio and drags him away. This is Giannia Schicchi, and his companion is Myrrah. Gianni pretended to be a dead Donati in order to falsify a will (to help the man's son, but he also liberated the best mare and some cash for himself). Myrrha story is recounted in Metamorphosis (Ovid): she is the daughter of Cinyras, king of Cyprus. She held an incestuous passion for him and snuck into his bed while her mother was away. He drew his sword to kill her, but she escaped to Arabia. Legend holds that she became a myrtle (a kind of tree) and from her trunk was born Adonis.
One shade is shaped like a lute, swollen by dropsy. Master Adam suffers painfully from thirst. He was burned in 1281 for counterfeiting florins. Two shades nearby lie in a steaming heap: Sinon of Troy (a Greek spy who convinced the Trojans to bring in the wooden horse) and Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39). Their fever makes them steam. Sinon hits Master Adam, who strikes back.
Virgil is angered by Dante's morbid curiosity with this vulgarity.