Africa (Petrarch)
(Redirected from
Africa (epic poem)
)
Africa is an
Latin hexameters by the 14th century Italian poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). It tells the story of the Second Punic War, in which the Carthaginian general Hannibal invaded Italy, but Roman forces were eventually victorious after an invasion of north Africa led by Scipio Africanus, the poem's hero. Noteworthy passages include the death of Hannibal's brother Mago Barca, the description of Syphax's palace, and the tragic love story of Sophonisba.[1][2]
The first sections of Africa were written in the valley of
Robert of Naples, king of Sicily. It was first printed, as part of Petrarch's collected works, at Venice in 1501. Petrarch set great store by Africa and his other classicizing works, but the epic was not particularly well-received because of the literary transposition from Livy
.
References
Further reading
- Petrarch's Africa. Translated by Bergin, Thomas G.; Wilson, Alice S. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1977. OCLC 3001940.
External links
- Latin text of Petrarch's Africa, ed. Léonce Pingaud, Paris, 1872 (archive.org)
- Latin text in HTML format: Itinera Electronica (with concordances and French translation by Victor Develay); single-page text
- Petrarch's Africa I-IV: a translation and commentary, by Erik Z.D. Ellis (M.A. thesis in History, Baylor University, 2007)