Rhodes

Rhodes is not simply a stopping place in the Decameron’s maritime tales: it repeatedly turns a hoped-for escape into capture, conflict, or uncertain refuge. Cimon is carried back there by a storm and imprisoned after abducting Iphigenia; later, Rhodes is the setting for the violent wedding-day raid that releases them both and brings Lysimachus and Cassandra together. In a separate sequence, Alatiel and Antiochus flee there with precious goods, only for his death to leave her dependent on the friend to whom he entrusts her. For another pair of lovers, the island is the last destination before a life ending in poverty.

An Island in Interlocking Voyages

The stories place Rhodes within a network of sea journeys rather than presenting it in isolation. Cimon sails from Cyprus to intercept the ship carrying Iphigenia to her marriage in Rhodes. Alatiel reaches the island after a succession of changes in custody and circumstance: after living with Constantine on Chios, she is captured there by Osbech, taken to Smyrna, and later escapes with Antiochus to Rhodes. A separate pair of lovers, driven from Crete by accusations of murder, also makes its way to Rhodes. Across these narratives, travel by sea repeatedly changes who holds power over a character and where safety might be found. Rhodes therefore occupies several different positions in these journeys. For Cimon, it is both the intended destination of Iphigenia’s voyage and the place where his attempt to take her is brought to a halt. For Alatiel and Antiochus, it offers temporary shelter after they leave Smyrna. For the fleeing lovers from Crete, it is a final refuge, but not a prosperous one. The island’s narrative significance lies in these reversals and contrasts, not in a single uniform role.

Cimon’s Return and Imprisonment

Cimon attacks the ship carrying Iphigenia toward Rhodes, after her father has promised her to Pasimondas. He takes her by force at sea, but his success lasts only a short time. A violent storm overtakes the ships, and the wind drives Cimon and his company toward Rhodes without their knowing where they are. Seeking land to save their lives, they enter a small inlet. At dawn they discover that they have arrived near the ship they had seized the day before. The Rhodian sailors recognize Cimon and report his arrival to the young men from the captured ship, who have gone to a nearby village. They come to the shore with villagers, seize Cimon, Iphigenia, and his companions, and bring them to the village. Pasimondas appeals to the island’s senate. Lysimachus, then holding Rhodes’s chief magistracy, arrives with armed men and takes Cimon and his companions to prison. Iphigenia, meanwhile, is received and comforted by noblewomen of Rhodes while she awaits the marriage already arranged for her. Cimon and his men are spared execution because they had released the Rhodian youths after their first attack. They are nevertheless condemned to perpetual imprisonment, while Pasimondas presses ahead with preparations for his marriage to Iphigenia. The island thus reverses Cimon’s initial victory: the storm returns him to the power of the people he had attacked, and his capture separates him from Iphigenia again.

The Wedding-Day Raid

Rhodes becomes the scene of a second reversal when Lysimachus and Cimon join forces. Lysimachus loves Cassandra, who is promised to Ormisdas, Pasimondas’s brother. As the two weddings are being celebrated, the conspirators and their companions enter and seize the brides. In the ensuing violence, Cimon kills Pasimondas with a blow from a cudgel; Ormisdas and others who attempt to intervene are also killed or beaten back. The attackers carry Iphigenia and Cassandra away to their waiting ship. They reach Crete, where friends and relatives receive them, and the two couples marry. Their actions provoke loud disputes in both Cyprus and Rhodes, but friends and relatives intervene and arrange a settlement after a period of exile. Cimon returns to Cyprus with Iphigenia; Lysimachus returns to Rhodes with Cassandra. The island that had held Cimon as a prisoner becomes the home to which Lysimachus returns with the woman he has chosen, while Cimon’s reunion takes place elsewhere. Rhodes’s political authority and family arrangements first block the lovers, then become part of the conflict that must be settled after their escape.

Alatiel and Antiochus in Rhodes

Rhodes also marks a turning point in Alatiel’s long passage between households. After Osbech captures her in Chios and makes her his wife, he leaves her in Smyrna with his trusted servant Antiochus when he goes to war. Antiochus falls in love with her, and they begin an affair. When they learn that Osbech has been defeated and killed, they take some of his most valuable possessions and flee secretly to Rhodes. Their stay is brief in comparison with the travels that precede it, but it changes Alatiel’s circumstances once more. Antiochus becomes mortally ill. A merchant from Cyprus, his close friend and housemate, is with him, and Antiochus entrusts both his possessions and Alatiel to the merchant’s care. The merchant and Alatiel promise to honor his request. After Antiochus dies and is buried, the merchant asks whether she will accompany him to Cyprus. She agrees, hoping he will treat her as a sister out of love for their dead friend. To protect her from possible affront on the voyage, the merchant presents Alatiel as his wife. They share a small cabin and one bed aboard the ship. In the darkness and warmth of the confined space, their relationship changes from the protective arrangement they had intended; before they reach Baffa, they have formed an intimate bond. Rhodes is therefore the setting not for a settled new life, but for the threshold between Antiochus’s death and Alatiel’s next attachment.

Refuge and Reversal

A third account gives Rhodes a bleaker meaning. Three young men love three sisters and flee with them to Crete. After a murder and a second death, the youngest sister and her lover are accused and taken. They confess, then bribe their keepers with money and escape for fear of execution. Their flight carries them to Rhodes, where they eventually die in poverty. Unlike the return arranged for Cimon and Lysimachus, or the onward passage from Rhodes to Cyprus made by Alatiel and the merchant, this arrival does not lead to renewed prosperity or reconciliation. Taken together, the episodes make Rhodes a hinge between capture and escape, and between temporary safety and lasting hardship. Its harbor and roads connect stories whose characters have been displaced by storms, violence, political arrangements, and changing allegiances. Yet arrival on the island guarantees neither freedom nor good fortune: Cimon is imprisoned there, Lysimachus returns there after a settlement, Alatiel leaves it under another’s protection, and the fleeing couple find refuge only to end their lives in poverty.