Deidamia

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Deidamia is recalled by Dante in two passages of the Commedia. In the twenty-sixth canto of the Inferno, in a list of heroes who conspired against the fortress of Troy, Ulysses and Diomedes are associated with the memory of Deidamia's grief at Achilles' abandonment. In the twenty-second canto of the Purgatorio, within the Limbo, Statius points out Deidamia among the heroines he meets in the castle of the noble spirits: she appears together with her sisters, a figure of modesty and abandonment, as attested by Statius' Achilleid. Her presence in the two places confirms her status as a literary and mythical character whom Dante admits alongside the historical names of the ancient poets, recognizing the same exemplary reality in them. The critical notes to cantos XXII and XXVI clarify her identity and her classical source, but place her in distinct contexts of the journey.