Name of the fourth and last river in Inferno (from Greek χωχύω, “I groan”), both seat and instrument of punishment inflicted to the traitors who belong to the ninth circle. It is fueled by the painful tears of human misery that flow from the cracks of the Old Man of Crete. These flow into the Acheron, the Styx, and the Phlegethon, to finally stagnate in the Cocytus: “Taking their course from rock to rock into this depth, / when they form Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon, / then, going down this narrow channel, / down to where there is no more descent, / they form Cocytus” (Inf. 14, 115-119). It should be noted that, according to some, each infernal river has its own watercourse.
Dante’s Cocytus appears as a pond or a lake, frozen by the three winds unleashed by the flapping of Lucifer’s six wings. It has the shape of a slightly inclined funnel: “a lake / so frozen that it seemed more glass than water” (Inf. 32, 23-24).
The Dantean representation of this river differs from the Virgilian one (Aen. VI, 296-297 “turbidus hic / caeno vastaque voragine gurges [l’Acheronte] / aestuat atque omnem Cocyto eructat harenam”; 323 “Cocyti stagna alta”) or biblical (lob. 21, 32-33 “Ipse [malus] ad sepulcra ducetur / et in congerie mortuorum vigilabit. / Dulcis fuit glareis Cocyti...”) which do not depict it as a frozen body of water and do not link it to the sin of treason.
It is likely that Dante, in his elaboration of the Cocytus, considered the ancient etymologies of “Tartarus,” like the one quoted by Lactantius Placidus (Ad Achill. I, 134 : “ἂπὸ τοῦ ταρταρίζειν, id est a tremore frigoris”) or that of Isidore of Seville (Etym. XIV, IX, 6-9 : “quia omnia illic turbata sunt, ἀπὸ τοῦ ταρταρίζειν, aut, quod est verius, ἀπὸ τῆς ταραχῆς, id est a tremore frigoris, quod est algere et rigere,” which in the text follows “Cocytus” as “a luctu et gemitu”). Other suggestions along the same lines could come from certain passages in the Bible that make a connection between the cold, ice, and Lucifer. This can be seen in the verse Is. 14, 13, which Saint Augustine comments as follows: Lucifer “statuit sedem suam ponere in Aquilone, ut te perversa et distorta via imitantes, tenebrosi frigidive servirent,” Conf. X, XXXXVI, 59; similarly, a correlation is established with the notion of evil and sin in Ierem. 6, 7: “Sicut frigidam fecit cisterna aquam suam, sic frigidam fecit malitiam suam.” The image of the cistern in this passage is found in Inf. 33, 133. Finally, we can evoke, as an inspiration of Dante’s Cocytus, the numerous medieval descriptions of Hell which evoke the immersion in the ice as an infernal punishment.
Consult the entry of the Enciclopedia Dantesca in Italian.
Entry taken from the Enciclopedia Dantesca published by the Istituto Treccani — Texts revised by the Centre d’études médiévales of the Université de Montréal.
Editing: Gabrielle Hamelin, Martyna Kander.
English translation: Brittany Buscio.
