The soul, Vanni Fucci, being punished for stealing makes an obscene gesture directed to God. This provokes all the snakes to swarm around his body and neck, paralyzing him. Immediately a centaur appears covered with snakes and a fire-breathing dragon on his back, to torment Fucci further. In an incredible scene, two other sinners appear, one as a man, the other as a lizard-like reptile.

A stunned Dante watches as these two sinners gradually and painfully transform and merge into one horrible monster. Next, another sinner in the form of a snake attacks a soul in the form of a man, causing their forms to slowly transform into the other, snake becomes man, man becomes snake. Dante describes these transformations in detail as their colors change, faces recede, and tongues become forked.

As in life, these sinners constantly transformed ownership of property they stole, their punishment is to never have any permanent ownership of their own bodies. As in many other cantos, the souls being punished were characters that Dante knew of from Florentine politics. Dante and Virgil then continue into the flames of Hell. …continue.. …or go back…