Sicheus

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Sicheus appears in the Comedy exclusively as the husband of Dido, evoked as the term of betrayed conjugal fidelity. In Canto V of the Inferno, the verse «e ruppe fede al cener di Sicheo» indicates that Dido, having fallen in love with Aeneas, broke the promise of chastity made to the ashes of her deceased husband, according to the Virgilian account of the Aeneid. The notes to the passage gloss the expression as a translation of the Latin «non servata fides cineri promissa Sichaeo» and identify the sin as adultery, recalling Dido's violent death. In Canto IX of the Paradiso, the memory of Sicheus returns in an autobiographical comparison by Folquet de Marsiglia, who cites Dido's passion for Aeneas as a measure of his own amorous ardor; the notes to the passage explain that this ardor offended both Sicheus, Dido's dead husband, and Creusa, Aeneas' deceased wife. The figure thus remains a moral point of reference for measuring the violation of the conjugal bond.