Why does Dante spend so much time in Malebolge?

Question

Dante spends thirteen cantos in Malebolge, the eighth circle of Hell. This is a lot longer than he spends with any other circle.

Why do the sinners in this circle get so much of his attention?

Answer 1

There’s an explanation in canto 11. Recall that the eighth (malebolges) and ninth (Cocytus) are the circles of fraud. Virgil explains to Dante that fraud is the worst of sins, because it is a perversion of the faculty of reason that God granted only to humans:

“Of all malicious wrong that earns Heaven’s hate
The end is injury; all such ends are won
Either by force or fraud. Both perpetrate

“Evil to others; but since man alone
Is capable of fraud, God hates that worst”

_{Dante (c. 1314). Inferno 11.22–26. Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers (1949). The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine: Cantica I: Hell, page 134. Penguin.}

This is partly a paraphrase of Cicero:

While wrong may be done, then, in either of two ways, that is, by force or by fraud, both are bestial: fraud seems to belong to the cunning fox,† force to the lion; both are wholly unworthy of man, but fraud is the more contemptible.

_{Marcus Tullius Cicero (44 BCE). De Officiis 1.41. Translated by Walter Miller (1913). Perseus Digital Library.}

_{† Dante assigns fraud, not to the fox as in Cicero, but to the leopard (1.22) or wolf (1.49). Commentators do not agree which animal goes with which category of sin. C. H. Grandagent says that “Inasmuch as the sins of Hell fall under the three heads, Incontinence, Violence, and Fraud, it is natural that the beasts should stand for corresponding practices: the ravening wolf is Incontinence of any kind, the raging lion is Violence, the swift and stealthy leopard is Fraud” (La divina commedia, page 9). Whereas Dorothy L. Sayers says, “The gay Leopard is the image of the self-indulgent sins—Incontinence; the fierce Lion, of the violent sins—Bestiality; the She-Wolf of the malicious sins, which involve Fraud” (page 75).}

Since fraud is the worst of sins, we might expect Dante to devote more lines to it. And since fraud is primarily a sin of the intellect, it has more ramifications than the bodily sins of self-indulgence and violence which feature in upper hell, requiring a more elaborate categorization. Sayers comments:

Malbowges is, I think, after a rather special manner, the image of the City in corruption: the progressive disintegration of every social relationship, personal and public. Sexuality, ecclesiastical and civil office, language, ownership, counsel, authority, psychic influence, and material interdependence—all the media of the community’s exchange are perverted and falsified, till nothing remains but the descent into the final abyss where faith and trust are wholly and for ever extinguished.

_{Sayers, page 185.}