Trojans

Profile

The Trojans appear in the Commedia as a people of antiquity to whom tradition attributed the descent of Aeneas and the founding of Rome. In Inferno XIII the poet mentions the Trojans driven from the Strophades Islands by the Harpies, recalling the episode of the Aeneid in which the hideous birds fouled their tables, forcing them to flee. In Paradiso XV the mention of the Trojans is instead linked to the legends about the origins of Florence, which the chroniclers traced back to Aeneas and thus to the Trojans themselves, according to a popular narrative spread during the evening gatherings in the home. In Paradiso XX the form Troiano designates Ripheus, the Virgilian character celebrated as the most just among the Teucrians, whose salvation in the heaven of Jupiter is presented as a prodigious and unexpected event for the Christian tradition. The dual occurrence of the term, in the singular and in the plural, shows the breadth with which Dante interweaves classical material and providential design.