Sophonisba
Encyclopedia
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
noblewoman who lived during the Second Punic War
Second Punic War
The Second Punic War, also referred to as The Hannibalic War and The War Against Hannibal, lasted from 218 to 201 BC and involved combatants in the western and eastern Mediterranean. This was the second major war between Carthage and the Roman Republic, with the participation of the Berbers on...
, and the daughter of Hasdrubal Gisco
Hasdrubal Gisco
Hasdrubal Gisco or Hasdrubal son of Gisco was a Carthaginian general who fought against Rome in Iberia and North Africa during the Second Punic War. He should not be confused with Hasdrubal Barca, the brother of Hannibal....
Gisgonis (son of Gisco). In an act that became legendary, Sophonisba poisoned herself rather than be humiliated in a Roman triumph
Roman triumph
The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...
.
Life
A celebrated beauty, Sophonisba had been betrothed to King Massinissa until 206. Massinissa was the leader of the Massylian (or eastern) NumidiaNumidia
Numidia was an ancient Berber kingdom in part of present-day Eastern Algeria and Western Tunisia in North Africa. It is known today as the Chawi-land, the land of the Chawi people , the direct descendants of the historical Numidians or the Massyles The kingdom began as a sovereign state and later...
ns. However, in 206, Massinissa allied himself to Rome and Hasdrubal, having lost this valuable alliance, started to look for another ally. He found one in Syphax
Syphax
Syphax was a king of the ancient Algerian tribe Masaesyli of western Numidia during the last quarter of the 3rd century BC. His story is told in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita .-Biography:...
, king of the Masaesyli
Masaesyli
The Masaesyli were a North African tribe of western Numidia and the main antagonists of the Massylii in eastern Numidia.During the Second Punic War the Masaesyli initially supported the Roman Republic and were led by Syphax against the Massyllii, who were led by Massinissa...
(or western Numidians). As was normal in those days, Hasdrubal used his daughter to conclude the diplomatic alliances with Syphax, who had himself previously been allied to Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
.
Syphax was defeated and captured in 203 BC by Masinissa and Scipio Africanus
Scipio Africanus
Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus , also known as Scipio Africanus and Scipio the Elder, was a general in the Second Punic War and statesman of the Roman Republic...
in the Battle of the Great Plains
Battle of the Great Plains
The Battle of the Great plains was a battle fought between Scipio Africanus of Rome and a combined Carthaginian and Numidian army late in the Second Punic War, designed as diversionary tactic by Rome to disrupt Hannibal's attack on Italy...
at Bagradas. Masinissa fell in love with Sophonisba and married her. Scipio, however, refused to agree to this arrangement, insisting on the immediate surrender of the princess so that she could be taken to Rome and appear in the triumphal parade
Roman triumph
The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...
. Masinissa, upbraided by Scipio for his weakness, was urged to leave her.
Masinissa feared the Romans more than he loved Sophonisba. Thus, he went to Sophonisba and swore his love to her. He told her that he could not free her from captivity or shield her from Roman wrath, and so he asked her to die like a true Carthaginian princess. With great composure, she drank a cup of poison
Poison
In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
that he offered her. The outrage that Sophonisba escaped was being led in a triumphal parade at Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, with its accompanying degradations and humiliations.
Her story, probably much embellished, is told indirectly in Polybius
Polybius
Polybius , Greek ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 220–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece...
(14.4ff.); and more concretely in Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
(30.12.11-15.11), Diodorus (27.7), Appian
Appian
Appian of Alexandria was a Roman historian of Greek ethnicity who flourished during the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius.He was born ca. 95 in Alexandria. He tells us that, after having filled the chief offices in the province of Egypt, he went to Rome ca. 120, where he practised as...
(Pun. 27-28), and Cassius Dio (Zonaras 9.11). Polybius, however, never refers to Sophonisba by name in his allusions to her marriage to Syphax, and in his extensive account of Laelius' maneuvers against Syphax. The historian had met Masinissa. Nevertheless, it has been proposed that Polybius' account provides the basis for the Sophonisba story. When Polybius does refer to her, he uses the diminutive in a tone that may be less than flattering. In one passage, Polybius ridicules Syphax for being less courageous than his own "child bride".
In literature, art and film
PetrarchPetrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
elaborated her story in his epic poem Africa
Africa (Petrarch)
Africa is an epic poem in Latin hexameters by the 14th century Italian poet Petrarch . 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 Publius Cornelius Scipio...
, published posthumously in 1396.
Sophonisba became the subject of tragedies (and later operas) from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and, along with the story of Cleopatra, furnished more dramas than any other. The first tragedy is credited to the Italian Galeotto Del Carretto (c.1470–1530) which was written in 1502, but issued posthumously in 1546. The first to appear, however, was Gian Giorgio Trissino
Gian Giorgio Trissino
Gian Giorgio Trissino was an Italian Renaissance humanist, poet, dramatist, diplomat, and grammarian.-Biography:...
's play of 1515 which, "in codifying the forms of Italian classical tragedy, helped consign Del Carretto's Sofonisba to oblivion." In France, Trissino's version was adapted by Mellin de Saint-Gelais
Mellin de Saint-Gelais
Mellin de Saint-Gelais was a French poet of the Renaissance and Poet Laureate of Francis I of France.- Life :...
(performed in 1556), and may have served as the primary model for versions by Antoine de Montchrestien
Antoine de Montchrestien
Antoine de Montchrestien was a French soldier, dramatist, adventurer and economist.Montchrestien was born in Falaise, Normandy...
(1596) and Nicolas de Montreux
Nicolas de Montreux
Nicolas de Montreux was a French nobleman, novelist, poet, translator and dramatist.Born in province of Maine, he was the son of a maître des requêtes and may have become a priest around 1585. In 1591 he came under the protection of the Duke of Mercœur and participated in the civil wars on the...
(1601). The tragedy by Jean Mairet
Jean Mairet
Jean Mairet was a classical French dramatist who wrote both tragedies and comedies.- Life :He was born at Besançon, and went to Paris to study at the Collège des Grassins about 1625. In that year he produced his first piece Chryséide et Arimand...
(1634) is one of the first monuments of French "classicism", and was followed by a version from Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...
(1663).
The story of Sophonisba also served as subject for works by John Marston
John Marston
John Marston was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods...
(1606), Nathaniel Lee
Nathaniel Lee
Nathaniel Lee was an English dramatist.He was the son of Dr Richard Lee, a Presbyterian clergyman who was rector of Hatfield and held many preferments under the Commonwealth...
(1676), Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein (1680), Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
(1685), Antonio Caldara
Antonio Caldara
Antonio Caldara was an Italian Baroque composer.Caldara was born in Venice , the son of a violinist. He became a chorister at St Mark's in Venice, where he learned several instruments, probably under the instruction of Giovanni Legrenzi...
(1708), Leonardo Leo
Leonardo Leo
Leonardo Leo , more correctly Lionardo Oronzo Salvatore de Leo, was an Italian Baroque composer.-Biography:...
(1718), Luca Antonio Predieri
Luca Antonio Predieri
Luca Antonio Predieri was an Italian composer and violinist. A member of a prominent family of musicians, Predieri was born in Bologna and was active there from 1704. In 1737 he moved to Vienna, eventually becoming Kapellmeister to the imperial Habsburg court in 1741, a post he held for ten years...
(1722), James Thomson (1729), Niccolò Jommelli
Niccolò Jommelli
Niccolò Jommelli was an Italian composer. He was born in Aversa and died in Naples. Along with other composers mainly in the Holy Roman Empire and France, he made important changes to opera and reduced the importance of star singers.-Early life:Jommelli was born to Francesco Antonio Jommelli and...
(1746), Baldassare Galuppi (1747, 1764), Tommaso Traetta
Tommaso Traetta
Tommaso Michele Francesco Saverio Traetta was an Italian composer.-Biography:Traetta was born in Bitonto, a town near Bari, near the top of the heel of the boot of Italy. He eventually became a pupil of the composer, singer and teacher Nicola Porpora in Naples, and scored a first success with his...
(1762), Antonio Boroni (1764), Christopher Gluck (1765), Maria Teresa Agnesi
Maria Teresa Agnesi
Maria Teresa Agnesi was an Italian composer. Though she was most famous for her compositions, she was also an accomplished harpsichordist and singer, and the majority of her surviving compositions were written for keyboard, the voice, or both. She was born in Milan to Pietro Agnesi, an...
(1765), Mattia Vento (1766), François Joseph Lagrange-Chancel
François Joseph Lagrange-Chancel
François Joseph Lagrange-Chancel , born at Périgueux, was a French dramatist and satirist.He was an extremely precocious boy, and at Bordeaux, where he was educated, he produced a play when he was nine years old. Five years later his mother took him to Paris, where he found a patron...
, revised by Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
(1770), Christian Gottlob Neefe
Christian Gottlob Neefe
Christian Gottlob Neefe was a German opera composer and conductor.Neefe was born in Chemnitz, Saxony. He received a musical education and started to compose at the age of 12...
(1776), António Leal Moreira
António Leal Moreira
António Leal Moreira was a Portuguese composer and organist. He composed a large number of operas, most of which were premiered in Lisbon; much of the rest of his output is sacred, though he composed a handful of symphonies as well.-Reference:* at Answers.com...
(1783), Joseph Joaquín Mazuelo (1784), Vittorio Alfieri
Vittorio Alfieri
Count Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian dramatist, considered the "founder of Italian tragedy."-Early life:Alfieri was born at Asti in Piedmont....
(1789), Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi
Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi
Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi was an Italian opera composer.Guglielmi was born in Massa. He received his first musical education from his father, and afterwards studied under Francesco Durante at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto at Naples...
(1802), Marcos Portugal
Marcos Portugal
Marcos António da Fonseca Portugal was a Portuguese classical composer, who achieved great international fame for his operas in Italian....
(1803), Ferdinando Paer
Ferdinando Paer
-Biography:Paer was born at Parma. His father was a trumpeter with the Ducal Bodyguards and also performed at church and court events. His name, Ferdinando, was after Duke Ferdinand of Parma and was given to him by Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, Duke Ferdinand's wife...
(1805), Vincenzo Federici (1805), Luigi Petrali
Luigi Petrali
Luigi Petrali was an Italian composer. He was a student of Saverio Mercadante. His opera Sofonisba premiered at La Scala on 6 February 1844. On 23 February 1854 his opera Ginevra di Scozia premiered at the Teatro Sociale di Mantova....
(1844), Emanuel Geibel
Emanuel Geibel
Emanuel von Geibel , German poet and playwright, was born at Lübeck, the son of a pastor in the city.He was originally intended for his father's profession and studied at Bonn and Berlin, but his real interests lay not in theology but in classical and romance philology. In 1838 he accepted a...
(1869), Jeronim de Rada (1892), Giuseppe Brunati (1904), Dimitrie Cuclin
Dimitrie Cuclin
Dimitrie Cuclin was a Romanian classical music composer, musicologist, philosopher, translator, and writer.-Early life:Dimitrie Cuclin was born in the city of Galaţi, a port on the left shore of the Danube. His father was an immigrant from czarist Bessarabia, from the village of Cucleni, near the...
(1945), and others.
Sophonisba also appears in film, first in Giovanni Pastrone
Giovanni Pastrone
Giovanni Pastrone, also known by his artistic name Piero Fosco , was an Italian film pioneer, director, screenwriter, actor and technician.Pastrone was born in Montechiaro d'Asti...
's 1914 silent film Cabiria
Cabiria
Cabiria is a silent movie from the early years of Italy's movie industry, directed by Giovanni Pastrone . The movie is set in ancient Sicily, Carthage, and Cirta during the period of the Second Punic War . It follows a melodramatic main plot about an abducted little girl, Cabiria, and features...
and again in Carmine Gallone
Carmine Gallone
Carmine Gallone was an early acclaimed Italian film director, screenwriter, and film producer. Considered one of Italian cinema's top early directors, he directed over 120 films in his fifty year career between 1913 and 1963.-Filmography:*Il bacio di Cirano *La donna nuda *Senza colpa! *Fior di...
's 1937 epic movie Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal
Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal
Scipione l'africano — in English Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal — is an Italian historical film that focuses on Publius Cornelius Scipio from the time of his election as dictator until his defeat of Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. It was directed by Carmine Gallone and stars...
.
Some years after writing a play called The Tragedy of Sophonisba, the aforementioned James Thomson authored the still-current patriotic British song "Rule, Britannia!
Rule, Britannia!
"Rule, Britannia!" is a British patriotic song, originating from the poem "Rule, Britannia" by James Thomson and set to music by Thomas Arne in 1740...
"; Sophonisba's proud defiance and refusal to submit to slavery might have inspired that song's famous refrain "Britons never, never will be slaves!".
In the 1922 hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
ic high fantasy
High fantasy
High fantasy or epic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that is set in invented or parallel worlds. High fantasy was brought to fruition through the work of authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, whose major fantasy works were published in the 1950s...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
The Worm Ouroboros
The Worm Ouroboros
The Worm Ouroboros is a heroic high fantasy novel by Eric Rücker Eddison, first published in 1922. The book describes the protracted war between the domineering King Gorice of Witchland and the Lords of Demonland in an imaginary world that appears mainly medieval and partly reminiscent of Norse sagas...
by E. R. Eddison
Eric Rucker Eddison
Eric Rücker Eddison was an English civil servant and author, writing under the name "E.R. Eddison."-Biography:...
, there is a character named "Queen Sophonisba", though her role in the book has little in common with the historic Sophonisba.