Commentary Inf XI 52-60

Turning at last to fraud, Virgil now divides it into two kinds, depending on whether or not it is practiced against those who trust in one or not. He first describes the second and lesser kind, 'simple fraud,' as it were, committed by those who are punished in the eighth Circle, which we shall learn ([Inf XVIII 1]) is called 'Malebolge' after the ten 'evil pockets' that contain them (cantos XVIII-XXX). Here Dante for whatever reason (to keep his readers on their toes?) allows Virgil to name the sins in no discernible order, while also omitting two of them: (6) hypocrisy, (2) flattery, (4) divination, (10) counterfeiting, (7) thievery, (3) simony, (1) pandering [and seducing, not mentioned here], (5) barratry; totally omitted from mention are (8) false counsel and (9) schismatic deeds.

We do not know if the absence of the last two groups of sinners is due to Dante's having nodded or is rather the result of his use of 'shorthand' to include them in his phrase 'simile lordura' in verse 60, as the vast majority of the commentators believes. Only Mazzoni (DDP Mazzoni.Inf.XI.58-60) considers the verse problematic. Indeed, it is up to us to decide whether the poet has referred to these two groups in a not particularly effective (if effectively brief) way or whether he at this point in his construction of the theological epic had not yet decided to have more than eight 'pouches' for Fraud -- an interesting, if nearly certainly unverifiable, hypothesis. In its favor is the possibility that Dante intended 'simile lordura' to refer only to the inhabitants of the fifth bolgia (that punishing barratry), but this really seems a desperate attempt to bolster what is probably an incorrect understanding in the first place.