Gaeta

Description

In Inferno XXVI, Ulysses, recalling his own return from Troy, remembers that the sorceress Circe detained him at her home for about a year before letting him depart, placing that sojourn "near Gaeta," a port situated along the Campanian coast. In Paradiso VIII, however, Gaeta appears together with Bari and Catona as one of the castles that adorned the southern part of the Italian peninsula, identified with the horn of Ausonia. According to the note to the passage, the verb "s'imborga" precisely designates the action of adorning and fortifying that stretch of the Kingdom of Naples with the castles of Bari, Gaeta, and Catona. The name thus designates both a coastal locality on Ulysses' itinerary and one of the southern stronghold fortresses that belonged to Charles Martel of Anjou, who died before his father Charles II.