In the seventh bowge of the eighth circle are the thieves. Here, the naked men run around with their hands tied behind their backs, running away from repulsive serpents. When a serpent catches and stings a man, he is reduced to ashes and then returns to his original form. The hands tied are significant because in life these men used their hands to steal. By burning and then being reborn, they are damned to suffer in this way forever.
Some thieves also have the punishment of constantly changing form.
It is fitting that now they cannot call their body or their personality their own. The eighth bowge holds the counselors of fraud, who did not commit fraud themselves, but counseled others to do so. The punishment they are given is to hidden in flames because their sin was committed in secret, much like the barraters of the fifth bowge. Their speech must pass through the tongue of the flames they are concealed in, which is justified because in life they sinned with their words, so now their words are not their own. The sewers of discord are the inhabitants of the ninth bowge of this circle.