Delos

Description

In Purgatorio XX, v. 130, the island of Delos is invoked as a term of comparison to describe the violent shaking of the mountain of Purgatory during the earthquake that follows the death of a soul. According to the commentary note on the verse, Delos is the Aegean island that Neptune caused to rise from the sea so that Latona could give birth there to Apollo and Diana, that is, the sun and the moon. The island, according to myth, wandered at the mercy of the waves and with every storm was shaken violently, until Apollo, to reward it for the refuge it had offered his mother, made it stable. Dante uses this mythical image to suggest the impression that the mountain of Purgatory was no longer firmly rooted on its base, but swayed over the waters as the island of Delos once did.