Tarquinia

Description

In Inferno XIII, v. 9, Dante writes "tra Cecina e Corneto i luoghi cólti," indicating with these two place names the boundaries of the Maremma region: the river Cecina to the north and Corneto to the south, in Lazio. The notes to the passage point out that, with his reference to the Maremma scrubland, famous in his time as one of the wildest and most inhospitable places in Italy, the poet redirects the reader's imagination to a well-known point of reference, in order to make the places of the beyond more concrete. Corneto is recalled as an extreme place also in the rhetorical device—already used in Inf. III 49-50 with Lerici and Turbia and later in Inf. XV 4 with Guizzante and Bruges—of designating the entire extent of a territory through its two geographical landmarks. The name Corneto is moreover associated with that of the brigand Rinieri, remembered as a native of that area in the closing lines of Canto XII.