Blossius Aemilius Dracontius

Blossius Aemilius Dracontius was a late antique Latin poet of the late 5th century AD. He was of senatorial origin and worked as a lawyer in Carthage .

Around 484 Dracontius composed a (not preserved) hymn of praise to a non-Vandal ruler, probably the Eastern Roman emperor Zeno . For this, he and his family were arrested under Gunthamund (484-496), the ruling king of the vandals in Africa : while the Roman population in North Africa, which had come under Vandalism in the years after 429, regarded the emperor in Constantinople as their real sovereign, appeared this Gunthamund as high treason. Dracontius was probably only released under Gunthamund's successor Thrasamund , for whom he wrote a (also lost) thank you poem.

In the period before and after his imprisonment, he created a collection of ten hexametric poems, the Romulea , which he dedicated to the grammarian Felicianus . From this a piece with the title Orestis tragoedia has survived . Two late poems with the titles De mensibus and De rosis nascentibus deal with school subjects in the style of the grammarist Ausonius . They were printed by the Italian humanist Bernardino Corio in the 16th century. The Aegritudo Perdicae is probably wrongly ascribed to Dracontius.

The essential works of Dracontius, however, were apparently created during his imprisonment. These include a penitential poem to Gunthamund in elegiac distichs with the title Satisfactio , which is based on Ovid's Tristia and in which Dracontius apparently tries to obtain the king's forgiveness; also the main work of Dracontius: De laudibus Dei . It is comprised of three books in hexameters and glorifies God's benefits to man. It also invites Gunthamund to imitatio Christi . The language and style of the work have their own characteristic style, in the metric Dracontius skilfully leans on his models Virgil , Properz and Juvenal . Overall, Dracontius had an extensive knowledge of both classical Latin literature and the Bible, proof that the Vandal conquest had by no means brought an end to ancient learning.

Dracontius had some influence on Latin poetry in Africa and medieval Europe. His works were in the Visigoth Empire by Eugenius III. edited by Toledo .

Editions (some with translation and commentary)

• Katharina Pohl (ed.): Dracontius: De raptu Helenae. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2019, ISBN 978-3-515-12216-0 (critical edition with introduction, translation and commentary)
• Friedrich Vollmer (Ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 14: Fl. Merobaudis reliquiae. Blossii Aemilii Dracontii Carmina. Eugenii Toletani episcopi Carmina et epistulae. Berlin 1905, pp. 21–228 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )

literature

• Friedrich Vollmer : Dracontius 4 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume V, 2, Stuttgart 1905, Col. 1635-1644.
• Kurt Smolak : Blossius Aemilius Dracontius. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 3, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01473-8 , column 809 f.
• Roswitha Simons: Dracontius and the Myth. Christian worldview and pagan culture in late antiquity (= contributions to antiquity , vol. 186). Munich / Leipzig 2005, ISBN 978-3-598-77738-7 .
• Tanja Thanner:  Dracontius, Blossius Aemilius. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 30, Bautz, Nordhausen 2009, ISBN 978-3-88309-478-6 , Sp. 266-275.
• Doreen Selent: Allegorical Explanation of Myths in Late Antiquity. Paths to the work of Dracontius. Leidorf, Rahden / Westf. 2011 (Dissertation Rostock 2009).
• Katharina Pohl (ed.): Poetry between Romans and Vandals. Tradition, transformation and innovation in the works of Dracontius. With a complete bibliography on Dracontius. Palingenesia 118, Stuttgart 2019.

Web links

Wikisource: Blossius Aemilius Dracontius  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Blossius Aemilius Dracontius in the catalog of the German National Library