Red Sea

Description

In the Commedia the Red Sea appears in Inferno XXIV 90, within the simile with which Dante describes the variety of serpents that populate the seventh ditch of thieves. The verse establishes a comparison between the eastern regions of the serpents — designated as «that which is above the Red Sea» — and the quantity and diversity of serpents observed in the infernal ring, going so far as to declare them superior. The note to canto XXIV also recalls the description of the Libyan desert in Lucan's Pharsalia, where the names of the serpent species mentioned by Dante are found. The Red Sea is then recalled in the note to Paradiso XXII, where the biblical prodigy of the waters that drew back is remembered, likened to the miracle of the Jordan that flowed upstream, as an image of a divine intervention greater than any human degeneration.