Polydorus

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Polydorus is recalled by Dante as the last and favorite son of Priam. According to the notes to Canto XXX of the Inferno, Hecuba, Priam's wife, led into captivity, saw on the shore of the sea the body of her son Polydorus, killed by Polymestor king of Thrace, to whom he had been entrusted; the two episodes of the deaths of Polyxena and Polydorus are narrated in Ovid's Metamorphoses (XIII 481-568). The note to verse 18 specifies that Dante defines Polydorus as «the last and favorite», and that Hecuba, approaching the shore to wash the body of Polyxena, glimpsed on the other shore the body of her other murdered son. In Canto XX of the Purgatorio, Polydorus is cited by a soul on the cornice of the avaricious to recall the cruelty of Polymestor, who «slew Polydorus», Priam's son-in-law, killing his brother-in-law by treachery to seize his riches, as narrated in the Aeneid (III 19-68) and in the Metamorphoses (XIII 429-575).