Cadmus

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Cadmus is mentioned in the Divina Commedia in a passage of Canto XXV of the Inferno, where Dante, within the poetic boast about the metamorphoses narrated by Lucan, tacitly invites an authoritative predecessor to yield the field. The verse «Taccia di Cadmo e d'Aretusa Ovidio» places the name of Cadmus in a sequence of comparisons with classical poets, pairing it with that of the nymph Arethusa, another figure tied to the Ovidian tradition of metamorphoses. There are no further specifications about Cadmus provided by the verse itself or by the notes on the same canto, which focus instead on the scenes of metamorphosis of the snakes involving the two soldiers of Cato's army, Sabellus and Nasidius, and on the comparison with Lucan. The presence of the name in the Commedia is thus exhausted in its function of reference to classical mythology within the rhetorical comparison among poets.