Amulius et Numitor
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|---|---|
| Title: | Amulius et Numitor |
| Genus: | tragedy |
| Original language: | French |
| Author: | Voltaire |
| Premiere: | not listed |
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Amulius et Numitor was the first tragedy in five acts that the twelve-year-old Voltaire wrote as a student at the Collége-Louis le Grand in 1706. The play was never performed. Voltaire burned the manuscript when he found it one day.
action
Voltaire took the material from Titus Livius (Ab urbe condita I, 3-6). Amulius was a legendary king of Alba Longa who snatched the throne from his brother Numitor . Amulius forced his niece Rhea Silvia to become a vestal virgin and had her buried alive after the birth of Romulus and Remus because she had broken the law of chastity. The abandoned sons raised by a she-wolf were found by a shepherd by the name of Faust (ul) us and brought before Amulius. Romulus overthrew Amulius and reinstated the rightful king Numitor.
Going to press
In 1815 there were two fragments of the tragedy believed to be lost in the library of M. Jean-Corneille Jacobsen de la Crosnière on the Île de Noirmoutier , which were published in the volume Pièces inédites de Voltaire by Didot in 1820 . Presumably Voltaire's childhood friend Nicolas-Claude Thieriot had saved the verses.
First edition
- Fragments d'une tragédie intitulée Amulius et Numitor , in: Pièces inédites de Voltaire, imprimées d'après les manuscrits originaux, pour faire suite aux différentes éditions publiées jusqu'a ce jour, Didot, Paris, 1820, pp. 13-18.
literature
- Theodore Besterman: Im Louis-le-Grand (1704–1711), in: Voltaire, Winkler, Munich, 1971, p. 29.
Individual evidence
- ^ Longchamp et Wagnière. Mémoires sur Voltaire, Aimé André, Paris, 1826, p. 20.