Peloreus

Description

Dante mentions Peloro in two cantos of the poem. In Purgatorio XIV the poet recalls that the mountains of Sicily, formerly joined to the peninsula, would have violently detached themselves from the Apennine chain, reading this account in Virgil and in Lucan; Peloro is presented as the promontory from which Sicily appears "truncated," and the notes identify this cape with today's Capo Faro, at the eastern extremity of the island, facing Calabria. In Paradiso VIII Peloro returns as one of the two extremes—together with Pachynus—between which Sicily stretches, the "fair Trinacria" enveloped by the smoke of the volcano: the gulf enclosed therein is, according to the notes, struck by the southeast wind with greater violence than by any other. The term, of classical origin, is thus used by Dante in its geographical sense of a Sicilian cape.