The body politic-creation of natural law-becomes corrupted and merged into a serpentine entity

If, reader, you are slow to credit
what I'm about to tell you, it's no wonder:
I saw it, and I myself can scarce believe it.
While I stood staring, with eyebrows raised,
a reptile with six legs propelled itself
at one of them, and fastened itself to him.
It grabbed his belly with its middle claws,
then with its forepaws held his arms
and bit through both his cheeks.
It stretched its hind feet down the other's thighs,
thrusting its tail between them
and curled it up behind, above the buttocks.
Never did clinging ivy fix itself
so tight upon a tree as did that fearsome beast
entwine itself around the other's limbs.
Then they fused together, as if made
of molten wax, mixing their colors
so that neither seemed what it had been before,
as over the surface of a scrap of parchment,
before the advancing flame, a brownish color comes
that is not black, yet makes the white die out.
The other two were looking on and each
was shouting: 'Oh my, Agnello, how you change!
Look, now you are neither two nor one!'
The two heads had already been united,
two sets of features blending,
both lost in a single face.
Four separate limbs combined to form two arms.
The thighs and calves, the stomach and the chest
turned into members never seen before.
All trace of their first aspect was erased
and the unnatural figure seemed both two
and none and lumbered off at its slow pace.
Canto XXV Inferno