Malacoda

Article summary

and Dante in the fifth Bolgia, portrayed by Gustave Doré. Malacoda is a character in Dante Alighieri's Inferno (Cantos 21-2), where he features as the leader of the Malebranche, the twelve demons who guard Bolgia Five of Malebolge, the eighth circle of Hell. The name Malacoda is roughly equivalent to "bad tail" or "evil tail" in Italian. Unlike other characters such as Geryon, which are based on mythical characters, Malacoda was invented by Dante and is not a mythological reference. He with his fiends guard the grafters, caught in boiling pitch to represent their sticky-fingered deals, torturing with grappling hooks whoever they can reach. Dante and Virgil gain a safe conduct from him (Malacoda) and he allows the poets to cross to the next Bolgia. However, Malacoda lies to the poets about the existence of bridges over the sixth Bolgia, making him less a help and more an impediment. In the Inferno it does not state whether or not Malacoda chases the poets after his demons Grizzly (Barbariccia) and Hellken (Alichino) fall into the boiling pit of pitch. All the Inferno states is that the poets were being chased by the fiends before they escaped by sliding down a bank to the next Bolgia. Malacoda and his fiends cannot leave the fifth Bolgia of the grafters.…

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