Malacoda

Malacoda is a character in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, part of The Divine Comedy. He is the leader of the Malabranche, the demons who guard Malebolge, the eighth circle of Hell. The name Malacoda is roughly equivalent to "bad tail" or "evil tail" in Italian. Unlike other characters such as Geryon, which are based on mythical characters, Malacoda was invented by Dante and is not a mythological reference.

Malacoda is mentioned in Bolgia five in Dante Alighieri's Inferno. He with his fiends guards the grafters, caught in boiling pitch, torturing with grappling hooks whoever they can reach. Dante and Virgil gain a safe conduct from him (Malacoda) and he allows the poets to cross to the next Bolgia. However, Malacoda lies to the poets about the existence of bridges over the sixth Bolgia, making him less a help and more an impediment. In the Inferno it does not state whether or not Malacoda chases the poets after his demons Grizzly and Hellken fall into the boiling pit of pitch. All the Inferno states is that the poets were being chased by the fiends before they escaped by sliding down down a bank to the next Bolgia. Malacoda and his fiends cannot leave the fifth Bolgia of the grafters. It is said in the inferno

"For the providence that gave them (the fiends) the fifth pit to govern as the ministers of its will takes from their souls the power of leaving it".