dentities. Truly, as Longfellow suggests, "of these five Florentine nobles... nothing is known about them save what Dante tells us. Perhaps that is enough."[08] In this, Alighieri is making an implicit statement about the nature of thieves.
             Two instances of transformation occur in this canto t each frightening in its own way. The first occurs from line 49 to 78, a long and grotesque transformation. The man, Cianfa Donati, now a hideous six-footed serpent-monster, attacks Agnello Brunelleschi. A ghastly mutation takes place. First, the serpent, in an explicitly sexual assault, clutches Agnello from behind, stretching "its rear feet out along his thighs and ran its tail along between the two, then straightened it again behind the loins" (XXV, 55-57). Next, "as if their substance was warm wax" (XXV, 61), they begin to melt together into one, becoming "neither two n
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