Our nameless barrator has been ripped open--but he's still able to do what grifters do best: sell out his fellow grifters.Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at a passage from the fifth of the malebolge, the evil pouches, that make up the eighth circle of fraud in INFERNO. We're among the political grifters--and this one, forked up by the demons, is a particularly oily fellow.Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:[01:33] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXII, lines 76 - 93. If you'd like to see this passage, you can find it on my website, markscarbrough.com.[03:14] More about how to be a good grifter (stay anonymous!) and possibly the most horrifying line of INFERNO so far.[06:00] Friar Gomita and the possible history of this figure our barrator names.[09:21] Two things of interest in our grifter's speech: 1) he names a member of the clergy among what we might consider a secular sin and 2) behind this story lies Nino Visconti, a figure we'll meet in Purgatorio.[14:41] This passage is full of inversions--and in fact, the whole of the fifth evil pouch is full of inversions.[19:03] The second named barrator: Don Michael Zanke, a shadowy figure without a lot of real history behind him.[21:51] This entire passage looks ahead to Canto XXXIII of INFERNO--which might offer us a clue about Dante's writerly technique.[25:27] The wily fear of our nameless barrator.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.