Virgil interrupts two of the souls who are picking at each other's scabs and asks them if there are any Italians (Latians) among them. One replies that they are Italian and once Virgil explains their presence in the circle, the souls tell their history. One is from Arezzo ,and he supposedly joked with Albert of Siena that he could fly and thus, he was burned for the lie, though he is in this circle for alchemy, another form of falsifying. The other soul is Capocchio, Dante's friend in his school days, who was burned for alchemy in 1293.
Dante begins Canto XXX with a long metaphorical mythological comparison to describe the rage of the two spirits that come furiously out of the darkness, one of which descends on Capocchio. The other alchemist tells Dante that this raging beast was Gianni Schicchi, who impersonated a dead man so that he cold benefit from the will. The other raging shade is Myrrha, who posed as another and mated with her father; once caught, she changed herself into a tree and bore Adonis from the trunk. These are the Evil Impersonators, damned to rage though Hell and seize on souls, and in turn, they are seized upon by one another.
The next class of Falsifiers that the poets encounter is in the form of Master Adam, a Counterfeiter who made florins from alloyed gold and was burned for the offense. On top of his afflictions and the curse of not being able to move, he is damned with extreme thirst, though his belly is waterlogged. He says that he imagines sweet water running from the Arno's banks.
