Antenore e Rifeo. Troiani all'Inferno e in Paradiso ("A capta Troja" II)

This contribution constitutes the second instalment of an investigation published in this journal (LXVIII, 2016). Dedicated to classifying the category of tragedy in a way that is not merely stylistic, it focuses on the fall of Troy as the tragic nexus that Dante’s Comedy extracts from Vergil’s Aeneid. After the cases of the Greeks Eurypylus, Ulysses, Diomedes and Sinon – who were analysed in the preceding essay – I consider the “destinies” of the Trojans Antenor and Rifeus. The former – absent as a character – baptizes with his name the circle in Hell that contains the traitors to their “faction” (with precise allusive implications); the latter is daringly promoted to salvation. The destiny assigned to him by Dante – as in the case of Eurypylus – gives rise to the “formation” of a character, which in Virgil’s poem appears only as a mere name.