Rhea

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In the fourteenth canto of the Inferno, during the description of the Phlegethon and its origins, Dante recalls the mythical infancy of Jove to explain the meaning of a premonitory sign. According to the poetic account, Rhea chose Crete as a safe refuge for the birth of her son, concealing him in a faithful cradle to save him from the fury of his father Saturn. The mention is inserted into the simile with which the poet compares the intensification of violence in the river of boiling blood, on the occasion of the passage of the Minotaur, to the disturbance that in the past stirred the river Asopus in Thessaly because of the abduction of Aegina. The divinity, mother of Jove and consort of Saturn, thus appears as a figure of the classical mythological tradition evoked by Dante in a comparative key, without rising to an autonomous character of the otherworldly journey.