Derek Nedland

Professor Antaramian
Western Heritage
20, February, 2018

Legends Never Die

The phrase “Legends Never Die” has been echoed across centuries of time and through

all forms of media whether it has been in songs or poems about heroes. While it does usually

refer to heroes, it can also be applied to the other important figures that helped them on their way

to become legends. Without knowing the other important figures it is impossible to fully

understand the context. That is why it is essential for readers to have some sort of an idea when it

comes to Greek and Roman Mythology and to understand what Dante is driving at when using

his mythological references.

The majority of characters from ​The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri a​ re indeed from

Roman and Greek Mythology and thus need some sort of explanation to show their significance

in being needed within Dante’s story. One who does not know Greek mythology would assume

Minos, an ancient king from the Island of Crete who is the son of Zeus and Europa would be

placed in hell to be punished when in reality the gods put him there as a reward. According to

legends he had a maze constructed in which was a minotaur that was supposedly his abomination

of a son and thus was placed in the maze. The only time the minotaur would eat was once a year

when Athens had to sacrifice seven boys and seven girls. It is interesting the way Dante depicts

Minos and how those who have sinned come before him to get their fate selected based on their

sins. “So I descended down from the first enclosure down to the second circle, that which girdles

less space but grief more great, that goads to weeping. There dreadful Minos stands, gnashing his
teeth: examining the sins of those who enter, he judges and assigns as his tail twines. I mean that

when the spirit born to evil appears before him, it confesses all; and he, the connoisseur of sin,

can tell the depth of hell appropriate to it; as many times as minos wraps his tail around himself ,

that marks the sinners level” (Alighieri 42.1-12). The way Dante describes him can be

considered negative when talking about the gnashing of his teeth or calling Minos the

connoisseur of sin. It does in fact help knowing Greek Mythology that Minos did in fact sacrifice

Athenian young men and women to his minotaur all because his son was killed fighting Mino’s

pet bull in Athens to see the possible reasoning of Dante’s distaste. While Dante constantly uses

Greek and Roman myth characters, he is most likely writing them in his story to show his disdain

for them.

Most people at some point in their life will read either ​The Odyssey ​or ​The​ ​Iliad,​ a story

of a greek hero named Odysseus. Dante writes Odysseus into his story calling him by his Roman

name; Ulysses, placing him in the eighth circle of hell, “He answered me: within that flame,

Ulysses and Diomedes suffer; they, who went as one to rage, now share one punishment. And

there together in their flame, they grieve over the horse’s fraud that caused a breach (241.49-59).

Which causes some confusion and makes people wonder why he would put a greek hero in a

terrible place like that. Without the knowledge of Odysseus's “fraud” it can be hard to understand

why Dante has placed him so far into hell unless you know that he deceived those living in Troy

by hiding in a fake horse and being let into the city with a band of soldiers and laying havoc to

Troy once he was inside. While it is kind of a weak excuse for placing him that far in hell as he

is described as “god like” in many stories and myths, it does allow us to get into the mind of

Dante and see where he is coming from.

 Through Dante’s religious beliefs it is easy to see why he would put a lot of Greek and

Roman mythological characters in hell, but he puts them in certain levels of hell that makes

sense if one has an extensive knowledge of those characters mythological background. Thus

knowing the background of these mythological creatures is almost a must in order to understand

what drives Dante to put which creatures or heroes or villains in which level of hell. Without this

background knowledge it is like watching the third movie in a set of a trilogy without having

seen or read about the two previous movies and expecting to know fully what is going on.
 Works Cited

Dante Alighieri, Allen Mandelbaum, and Barry Moser. ​The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: A

​ erkeley: University of California

Verse Translation with Introds. & Commentary. B

Press, 1980. Print.

Nicole Tessmer, “Myth, Ritual, and the Labyrinth of King Minos,” ​Armstrong Undergraduate

Journal of History​ 5, no.1 (Apr. 2015)