Tydeus

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Tydeus is mentioned by Dante in Inferno XXXII, v. 130, in the simile «non altrimenti Tidëo si rose», with which the poet compares the act of the damned man gnawing the skull of his companion to the gesture performed by the Theban hero. The notes to the canto clarify that the comparison alludes to an episode of the Theban war: Tydeus, mortally wounded beneath the walls of Thebes, had the bleeding head of his enemy brought to him in order to devour it. The remembrance of ancient Thebes, opened at the beginning of the canto with the reference to the stones of Cithaeron moved by Amphion's song, thus closes with the citation of Tydeus, so that the horror of the two brothers biting each other in the frozen lake reproduces by analogy the «nefarious» act of the Greek hero, likewise carried out beneath those same walls.