Learco

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The name Learco appears in the first verse of the mythological simile that opens canto XXX of the Inferno: «prendendo l'un ch'avea nome Learco», where Dante recalls the fury unleashed by Juno against the house of Cadmus. The notes to the canto specify that the goddess, jealous of Semele, daughter of Cadmus and beloved of Jove, drove Athamas, king of Orchomenos, mad to the point of making him believe he saw a lioness in his wife Ino and two lion cubs in his two little children: Athamas thus killed his wife and the two children. The myth, narrated by Ovid in the Metamorphoses (IV 512-530), is used by Dante as an exemplum to raise the comic scene of the falsifiers to the tragic plane, illustrating divine vengeance and establishing the stylistic alternation characteristic of the entire canto. Learco, as the son of Athamas, belongs to this Theban mythological tradition and appears solely as a victim of the madness induced by Juno.