  Cross sections for elastic and inelastic scattering of the weakly-bound
$^9$Be nucleus on a $^{120}$Sn target have been measured at seven bombarding
energies around and above the Coulomb barrier. The elastic angular
distributions are analyzed with a four-body continuum-discretized
coupled-channels (CDCC) calculation, which considers $^9$Be as a three-body
projectile ($\alpha$ + $\alpha$ + n). An optical model analysis using the S\~ao
Paulo potential is also shown for comparison. The CDCC analysis shows that the
coupling to the continuum part of the spectrum is important for the agreement
with experimental data even at energies around the Coulomb barrier, suggesting
that breakup is an important process at low energies. At the highest incident
energies, two inelastic peaks are observed at 1.19(5) and 2.41(5) MeV.
Coupled-channels (CC) calculations using a rotational model confirm that the
first inelastic peak corresponds to the excitation of the 2$_1^+$ state in
$^{120}$Sn, while the second one likely corresponds to the excitation of the
3$_1^-$ state.
