Hecuba

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Hecuba is introduced by Dante in the opening double simile of Canto XXX of the Inferno, alongside the Theban king Athamas, as a tragic term of comparison for the two rabid falsifiers who attack their fellow sinners. The text defines her with the three adjectives «trista, misera e cattiva», which gather together her total unhappiness: afflicted, deprived of everything, and a prisoner. The Dantean scene shows her on the seashore while, having drawn near to wash the body of her daughter Polyxena sacrificed on Achilles' tomb, she catches sight of the body of her other son Polydorus, killed by Polymestor, king of Thrace, to whom he had been entrusted. Dante focuses the portrait on the desperate grief of the mother, omitting the cruel act of tearing out Polymestor's eyes, which Ovid narrates in the Metamorphoses and which is only briefly recalled later in the canto. The episodes of Polyxena and Polydorus are narrated in Metamorphoses XIII 481-568.