{"id":1319,"date":"2026-06-23T08:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T08:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discoverscilla.com\/?page_id=1319"},"modified":"2026-08-19T07:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T07:41:08","slug":"giovanni-boccaccio-de-montibus","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverscilla.com\/en\/giovanni-boccaccio-de-montibus\/","title":{"rendered":"Giovanni Boccaccio"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-builder-row-1 fusion-flex-container has-pattern-background has-mask-background nonhundred-percent-fullwidth non-hundred-percent-height-scrolling\" style=\"--awb-border-radius-top-left:0px;--awb-border-radius-top-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-left:0px;--awb-flex-wrap:wrap;\" ><div class=\"fusion-builder-row fusion-row fusion-flex-align-items-flex-start fusion-flex-content-wrap\" style=\"max-width:1331.2px;margin-left: calc(-4% \/ 2 );margin-right: calc(-4% \/ 2 );\"><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-0 fusion_builder_column_1_1 1_1 fusion-flex-column\" style=\"--awb-bg-size:cover;--awb-width-large:100%;--awb-margin-top-large:0px;--awb-spacing-right-large:1.92%;--awb-margin-bottom-large:20px;--awb-spacing-left-large:1.92%;--awb-width-medium:100%;--awb-order-medium:0;--awb-spacing-right-medium:1.92%;--awb-spacing-left-medium:1.92%;--awb-width-small:100%;--awb-order-small:0;--awb-spacing-right-small:1.92%;--awb-spacing-left-small:1.92%;\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-column-has-shadow fusion-flex-justify-content-flex-start fusion-content-layout-column\"><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-1\"><p class=\"translation-block\">Giovanni Boccaccio (Certaldo, July 1313 \u2013 Certaldo, 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer and poet and is\nconsidered one of the most important figures in the literary landscape of fourteenth-century Europe.\nHe is celebrated, together with Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch, as one of the so-called \u201cThree Crowns\u201d\nof Italian literature.Regarded by many scholars as the greatest European prose writer of his age, Boccaccio\ndistinguished himself through his extraordinary versatility: he succeeded in blending diverse literary trends\nand genres into original works, thanks to remarkable creative talent and a strong spirit of experimentation.\nHe is also remembered as one of the precursors of Humanism: together with his friend Petrarch, he helped lay\nthe foundations, particularly in the Florentine cultural environment.His most famous work is the Decameron\n(1351), a collection of novellas that played a fundamental role in shaping the Italian literary tradition.His importance\nwas also recognized in later centuries, particularly during the sixteenth century, when Pietro Bembo\nelevated Boccaccio\u2019s style as the model for Italian prose.Boccaccio\u2019s influence extended far beyond Italy,\nreaching all of Europe and profoundly inspiring authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, a central figure in English\nliterature, and Miguel de Cervantes.\nIn the final twenty years of his life, Boccaccio devoted himself primarily to the writing of scholarly and encyclopedic\nworks of strong humanistic significance, reflecting the new cultural spirit of the age.\nAmong the most notable are the De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de\ndiversis nominibus maris (commonly abbreviated as De montibus), a learned work written in Latin between\n1355 and 1373 under the influence of Petrarchan Humanism.It is an encyclopedic geographical dictionary, organized\ninto sections dedicated to the various natural features named in the title\u2014mountains, forests, springs,\nlakes, rivers, ponds or marshes, and the names of seas\u2014with entries arranged alphabetically.\nThe work was conceived to facilitate the understanding of geographical references found in classical Latin and\nGreek texts and represents one of the pillars of Boccaccian humanistic scholarship, testifying to his commitment\nto recovering, organizing, and transmitting the knowledge of Antiquity.In Book VI of the work, entitled\nDe diversis nominibus maris (\u201cOn the Various Names of Seas\u201d), Boccaccio shifts his attention from land to sea.\nThis section is devoted to the description and cataloguing of the seas of the ancient world, carried out through\nthe authority of classical sources\u2014from Homer and Virgil to Pliny and Ovid\u2014thus providing a true linguistic\nand cultural map of the maritime world, one that restores to seas their identity through the place names handed\ndown by tradition.Within this intertwining of encyclopedic knowledge and classical tradition, under entry\n104, Boccaccio defines the Scyllaean Sea (Scyllaeum mare) as that stretch of sea located between the Italian\npeninsula and Sicily, corresponding to today\u2019s Strait of Messina.Drawing upon the classical sources that had\nalready shaped its imagery, the author also provides a morphological description of the Rock of Scilla, to which\nthis stretch of sea is historically and inseparably linked.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cThe Sea of Scylla (Scyllaeum Mare) is that which we call the Faro, between Sicily and Italy, and it takes its\nname from the monster Scylla, from the part of Italy nearest to it. It is said to be a gigantic rock, human in\nappearance in its upper part, while in the lower part it possessed sharp cliffs, among which, as the waters rushed\nwith great force, rebounding from those rocks and stirred both by their natural noise and by the violence\nof the waves, a dreadful sound was produced, seeming to roar with the voice of a dog barking with immense\nfury. This, according to the ancients, gave rise to the myth: namely that the maiden Scylla, beloved of Glaucus,\nwhile she was bathing, was enchanted by Circe and transformed from the waist downward into a monstrous\ndog; others maintain that Scylla was a most beautiful woman who stole from men their sheep, and that she was\ncast into the sea from the place that took its very name from the rock, thus giving that location its fantastical\nassociation.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-2\"><p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Giuseppe Ribuffo<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-builder-row-2 fusion-flex-container has-pattern-background has-mask-background nonhundred-percent-fullwidth non-hundred-percent-height-scrolling\" style=\"--awb-border-radius-top-left:0px;--awb-border-radius-top-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-left:0px;--awb-flex-wrap:wrap;\" ><div class=\"fusion-builder-row fusion-row fusion-flex-align-items-flex-start fusion-flex-content-wrap\" style=\"max-width:1331.2px;margin-left: calc(-4% \/ 2 );margin-right: calc(-4% \/ 2 );\"><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-1 fusion_builder_column_1_1 1_1 fusion-flex-column\" style=\"--awb-bg-size:cover;--awb-width-large:100%;--awb-margin-top-large:0px;--awb-spacing-right-large:1.92%;--awb-margin-bottom-large:20px;--awb-spacing-left-large:1.92%;--awb-width-medium:100%;--awb-order-medium:0;--awb-spacing-right-medium:1.92%;--awb-spacing-left-medium:1.92%;--awb-width-small:100%;--awb-order-small:0;--awb-spacing-right-small:1.92%;--awb-spacing-left-small:1.92%;\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-column-has-shadow fusion-flex-justify-content-flex-start fusion-content-layout-column\"><div ><a class=\"fusion-button button-flat fusion-button-default-size button-custom fusion-button-default button-1 fusion-button-default-span\" style=\"--button_accent_color:#f20800;--button_border_color:#2038b2;--button_accent_hover_color:var(--awb-color1);--button_border_hover_color:var(--awb-color1);--button_gradient_top_color:var(--awb-color1);--button_gradient_bottom_color:var(--awb-color1);--button_gradient_top_color_hover:var(--awb-color4);--button_gradient_bottom_color_hover:var(--awb-color4);--button_text_transform:none;\" target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverscilla.com\/en\/fontana-della-scilla-mitologica\/\"><i class=\"fa-angle-double-right fas awb-button__icon awb-button__icon--default button-icon-left\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/i><span class=\"fusion-button-text awb-button__text awb-button__text--default\">Next page: 56. Mythological Scylla Fountain, Giovanni Pirrotta, 2003<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1847,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1319","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Giovanni Boccaccio - Discover Scilla<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverscilla.com\/en\/giovanni-boccaccio-de-montibus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Giovanni Boccaccio - Discover Scilla\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.discoverscilla.com\/en\/giovanni-boccaccio-de-montibus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Discover Scilla\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-08-19T07:41:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.discoverscilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/55-Antonio-Minasi-G.-Fortuyn-1776-1024x758.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"758\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.discoverscilla.com\\\/giovanni-boccaccio-de-montibus\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.discoverscilla.com\\\/giovanni-boccaccio-de-montibus\\\/\",\"name\":\"Giovanni Boccaccio - 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