Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek - Ugolino and His Sons

A Bitter Fate : Ugolino and His Sons - By Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

According to Dante, the prisoners were slowly starved to death and before dying Ugolino's children begged him to eat their bodies.

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'Father our pain', they said, 'Will lessen if you eat us you are the one Who clothed us with this wretched flesh: we plead For you to be the one who strips it away'. (Canto XXXIII, ln. 56–59)

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… And I, Already going blind, groped over my brood Calling to them, though I had watched them die, For two long days. And then the hunger had more Power than even sorrow over me (Canto XXXIII, ln. 70-73)[3]

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Ugolino's statement that hunger proved stronger than grief, has been interpreted in two ways, either that Ugolino devoured his offspring's corpses after being driven mad with hunger, or that starvation killed him after he had failed to die of grief.

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