Amphion

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According to the classical tradition, Amphion is the Theban poet who, with his singing, moved the stones of Mount Cithaeron to erect the walls of Thebes. The authoritative source recalls that the poet aided by the Muses is precisely Amphion, who "induced the stones of Cithaeron to descend from the mountain and gird Thebes with walls." In the Comedy Dante evokes him in a programmatic passage: the mention, placed at the beginning of Canto XXXII of the Inferno, serves to invoke the same Muses who helped Amphion, so that they may assist him in describing the furthest zone of the abyss, where Lucifer dwells. Amphion does not appear as a living character in the journey: he is merely a mythical exemplum cited for invocative purposes, and the critical note ranks him among the ancient poets placed alongside Dante at the moment of greatest expressive difficulty. The text attributes no other episodes to him, nor places him in a circle or in another beyond-the-sea realm: the only scene in which he is recalled is the prologue of the thirty-second canto of the Inferno.