Arethusa

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In Canto XXV of the Inferno, within the passage in which Dante compares his own work to that of poets who have sung of metamorphoses, the poet invokes Ovid's silence on Cadmus and Arethusa, presenting them as supreme examples of mythical transformation. The verse ("Taccia di Cadmo e d'Aretusa Ovidio") places Arethusa among the Ovidian characters tied to a tale of metamorphosis, cited as a term of comparison for the exceptional nature of the episode of the two transmuted beings (the man into a serpent and the serpent into a man) that Dante is describing. The authorized note to Canto XXV confirms the Ovidian reference and the context of literary boasting with which Dante, according to the rhetorical tradition indicated, proclaims the superiority of his own subject over the classics. No further details about the myth of Arethusa (the spring, the nymph, the river, Artemis) emerge from the verses in question, nor any different placement in the journey beyond the one implicit in Canto XXV.