The Price of Division — Divine Comedy

The ninth chasm holds the sowers of discord, and Dante opens with a challenge to his own language: no tongue could describe what he saw, not even if you assembled every battlefield casualty from Apulia's history. A demon with a sword walks the circuit; as the spirits complete the round, their wounds close; they pass the blade again and are cut open fresh. The first figure Dante sees is split from chin to groin, entrails hanging. It identifies itself: Mohammed, and in front of him Ali, his face cleft to the forelock. They sowed schism in religion, so they are split. Before he moves on, Mohammed delivers a warning for Fra Dolcino: stock up on food or the snows of Novara will finish you. Piero of Medicina comes next, his throat pierced, one ear gone, nostrils cut away, a political informer who set lords against each other in the Romagna. He sends a message warning two Fano nobles that a one-eyed tyrant will drown them near Cattolica. He points to the shade beside him and forces its jaws open: Curio, who overwhelmed Caesar's doubt at the Rubicon with a single phrase, tongue now cut out. Then Mosca: both hands gone, stumps held up, blood spattering his own face. In life he told the Amidei clan that 'the deed once done, there is an end', the counsel that triggered the first murder in the Buondelmonte feud and seeded generations of Florentine civil war. Dante adds: and death to your own tribe. Mosca staggers off. Last is Bertrand de Born, carrying his own severed head like a lantern. He held it up by the hair so the head could speak. He turned father and son against each other, King Henry II and his son Prince John, as Ahitophel turned Absalom against David. For severing what was joined, his head is severed from its body. The law of retribution, he says, fiercely works in me.