Farsala

Description

In Canto VI of the Paradiso, Cacciaguida recalls Caesar's lightning campaigns against Pompey, arranging the places in a tight geographical sequence from West to East: the war in Spain, the sea journey toward Durazzo on the coasts of Epirus, where Pompey had concentrated his forces, and finally the crushing victory at Pharsalus, which forced the defeated commander to take refuge on the Nile, in Egypt. The verse «poi ver' Durazzo, e Farsalia percosse» thus places Pharsalus as the third stage of that victorious march, evoking the blow dealt to Pompey with an image of violence that, according to the commentary, propagates its effect as far as the Nile. The Dantean toponym Farsalia is an archaic form equivalent to Farsalo.