Dardanelles

Description

In Purgatorio Dante compares the short stretch of water that separates him from Matelda to the strait of the Hellespont, presenting it as a stretch of sea both easy and difficult to cross. Xerxes crossed it at the head of his army on a bridge of ships in order to subdue Greece, but he was defeated, and on the return the fleeing army caused the bridge to collapse; Xerxes himself barely saved himself, crossing the strait on a fisherman's boat, a story which the canto's notes also connect to the Monarchia. The strait is further linked to the myth of Leander, who swam across it every night to reach his beloved Hero, but could not do so when the sea was stormy, as Leander himself laments in his Ovidian texts. Against this background, the wretched fate of Xerxes is read as a warning against human pride, while the impossibility of the crossing takes on the value of an obstacle to happiness.