This paper examines the relationship between Ovid’s description of Tomi, the Scythian city where he was confined, and Dante’s Cocytus, the frozen lake where traitors and deceitful people are punished. The fortune of Ovid in the Middle Ages, his description of Tomi like an icy and sorrowful ‘underworld’ and some lexical correspondences demonstrate the influence of Ovid's exile poetry on the description of Hell by Dante.