[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
This volume is a collection of nine articles on the reception of the north African queen Sophonisba from the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. It contains an introduction and epilogue by the editors. There is no index, regrettably so, for it would have been useful to be able to find the instances of King Masinissa, the Renaissance playwright Trissino or Walter Benjamin, the cultural historian.
Unlike her famous counterparts Dido and Cleopatra, Sophonisba (or Sophoniba to use the Livian form), daughter of the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal Gisgo, is almost unknown in ancient historiography (and other forms of ancient literature). She was, however, to become queen consort of two well-known North African Berber kings, Syphax, of the Masaesylii (in present-day central and western Algeria) and Masinissa, of the Massylii (in eastern Algeria), and both a pawn and an active participant in the bloody conflicts between these kingdoms and the Carthaginians and the Romans under the command of Scipio the Elder. In about 205 B.C. she had married Syphax from whom she demanded a pro-Carthaginian policy. She is however said, by Appian, the other main source for our knowledge about the queen (8.1.111-120), but not by Livy, to have been betrothed previously to Masinissa. Scipio captured Syphax and restored Masinissa to his ancestral kingdom, Numidia. Masinissa hurried to the capital, Utica, where he was met right on the threshold of the royal palace by Sophonisba, who flung herself before his knees. Masinissa fell in love with her instantly (ut est genus Numidarum in venerem praeceps, amore captivae victor captus, writes Livy 30.12.18 ‘thanks to the Numidian race’s proclivity to lust, he was captivated by love for his captive), and married her. Scipio distrusted her Carthaginian patriotism and insisted on taking Sophonisba as Roman war booty, but Masinissa had promised her never to extradite her to the Romans. To solve the dilemma he offered her poison, which she bravely and ironically accepted: Accipio […] nuptiale munus, ‘I receive this as a wedding present’.
Livy touches upon a number of (still) burning questions such as racialization, liminality, the role of women in politics, the precariousness of civilians in war, and the conflation of private life and policy. In early modern times, beginning with Petrarch, dramatists and poets all over Europe (Italy, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany – and Crete) took a remarkable interest in the Sophonisba story which certainly had many elements that could take readers’ fancy, from her role as a Carthaginian agent embedded at Syphax’s court, and her dramatic meeting with Masinissa at Cirta to her taking poison rather than being paraded in a Roman triumph.
In the introduction the editors Larn and Zirak-Schmidt draw our attention to three reasons that early modern writers and dramatists became so fascinated by Sophonisba: first, her ambiguous and exceptionally versatile character (brave patriot, miserable lover), second, early modernity’s complex relationship with the Roman past as new Latin and Greek authors (such as Appian and Plutarch) were discovered and sifted by the humanists (Petrarch and Boccaccio played an important role in this process); third, her suitability as political allegory.
The racialization of Sophonisba is studied by Samuel Agbamu who traces it back to Livy’s book 30. Agbamu points out that Livy makes Sophonisba ask Masinissa not to extradite her to the Romans by appealing to their common ”Africanity”. Petrarch on the other hand portrays Sophonisba as white to facilitate our understanding of their love as a love story in Renaissance style, where the lady was conventionally white. Petrarch ‘white-washed’ her, to use the term Agbamu coins for the process. Thus, Petrarch could make their love a story of liminality and transgression and demonstrate the danger of the lust she evoked in Masinissa. Petrarch’s works De viris illustribus, Africa, and Triumphus Cupidinis were to be “pivotal moments in the racialization of Sophonisba” and can be seen as being of crucial importance in understanding modern discourses on race.
Nina Hugot dedicates her article to four French 16th century adaptions of Gian Giorgio Trissino’s Italian Sophonisba tragedy (published 1524), namely by Mellin de Saint-Gelais (1556; primarily in prose), Claude Mermet (1584), Antoine de Montchrestien (1596), and a rather different version by Nicolas de Montreux (1601). Sophonisba’s tragic life story, her cruel fate, her magnanimity in adversity, her courage, lived up to the ethic and esthetic expectations of that period. Her beauty and eloquence were suitable subjects (e.g. her eloquence persuades Masinissa at Cirta). Hugot’s close reading of the plays and their model, Trissino, allows her to pinpoint the character of the four tragedies. Montchrestien, for instance, put her beauty as the driving force, whereas Saint-Gelais and Mermet had been fascinated by her eloquence.
Early modern Cretan theatre has left us three tragedies, one of which is the Erofili (or Erophile) by Georgios Chortatsis (c. 1545–c. 1610), written in Cretan Greek verse, a tragic love story about an Egyptian princess and her secret marriage to one of her father the king’s successful generals, a parvenu, whose marriage hinders necessary alliances. Important elements of the plot were adopted from Giovanni Battista Giraldi’s drama Orbeche (1541) and Trissino’s tragedy Sofonisba), which was the first tragedy of Italian vernacular literature in the ancient style; choruses were for instance used to divide the play. In his article, Christian Høgel analyses how Chortatsis adapted large parts of two choral songs from Trissino’s tragedy to enhance dramatic effects. Høgel also examines why Chortatsis’ play was set in Egypt unlike Orbeche which was set in Persia, and the themes of meritocracy and virtue, questions occasioned by the rise of Panaratos, the upstart lover. The wedding gift Erofili receives by her father is indeed worthy of a tragedy, namely her lover’s head, hand and heart in a bowl.
Jan Bloemendal and James A. Parente, Jr., examine two neglected Dutch Sophonisba tragedies from the 1620s, by Govert van der Eembd and Guilliam van Nieuwelandt. The dramas seem to have been occasioned by the contemporary political situation, viz. the wars in The Netherlands between the Dutch and the Spanish Habsburgs. The narrative richness of the Sophonisba story, her two marriages, the political complications, the difficulties of making alliances between small states and those with imperial ambitions, cities under siege and occupation, the sufferings of the defeated, particularly the women, repaid writing and production. Political intrigue is mixed with desire and betrayal, always marketable subjects. Although Sophonisba is made to curse the Roman Empire (read: the Habsburgs), the hero is Scipio, as in Petrarch’s Africa, a paragon of virtue and a conqueror of passion.
The best-known playwright dramatising the Sophonisba story is Pierre Corneille, whose Sophonisbe opened in 1663. Roman history had become Corneilles’s most important source of inspiration. Although in principle historicity was important for French-classical writers, Guðrún Kristinsdóttir-Urfalino points out that Corneille allows himself poetic licence in exaggerating Sophonisba’s hatred for the Romans and inventing a mirror character, Éryxe, queen of the Getulians, to allow him to make the love story more complex by adding the element of jealousy and to express criticism of imperial arrogance. It is certainly worthwhile to regard Sophonisbe as an example of a postcolonial play which allows us to see history from both sides.
Beth Cortese calls our attention to England and the court of Charles II whose politics and polyamorous affairs were indeed complicated enough to call for a very artful plot if the dramatist wanted to let the stage mirror and comment on the court. The author of the 1675/1676 tragedy Sophonisba, or Hannibal’s Overthrow, Nathaniel Lee, introduces a new character, as shown in the title, a General Hannibal, and creates a parallel plot to that of Sophonisba and Masinissa. Hannibal is endowed with a mistress, the beautiful and courageous Rosalinda. She is the one who contributes to Hannibal’s overthrow as love makes him neglect politics and warfare. Cortese examines the adaptions Lee made in his play to disentangle “the political anxieties [primarily the relationship with France] present in Charles II’s Court […] in the 1670s”. The play was dedicated to Charles II’s French mistress, Louise the Kéroualle, whose beauty Lee praises: her eyes are “more attractive than those of Rosalinda”.
Sofie Kluge points out that, considering the popularity of the Sophonisba figure on the European stage, it is striking that there is no known 16th or 17th century Spanish play about her (the earliest extant Spanish play is from 1772). This is however a qualified truth, she claims a few lines later, and it proves that she imaginatively, with the help of Erich Auerbach’s method of figural interpretation, disentangles a Sophonisba character in Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s comedia entitled El segundo Escipión (The Second Scipio) 1677/1683. Figural reading establishes a connection between two events or persons in such a way that the first signifies not only itself but also the second, while the second involves or fulfills the first. Kluge focuses on the enigmatic ordinal number of the title: who is the second Scipio? Kluge claims that the first Scipio is the one who tyrannizes over Micipsa, Masinissa and Sophonisba in 203 B.C. in the Carthaginian war (Livy 30.12.11–30.15.11), while the second is the one who was something of the perfect gentleman, a just warrior (Scipio the magnanimous), the ladies’ saviour, outside the city walls of the second Carthage, Carthago Nova (Cartagena) in Spain in 209 B.C. (Livy 26.42–26.50) This interpretation makes room for inventing a “second Sophonisba”, too. Scipio saves an “African” princess, Arminda, in the war in Spain. She can be seen as a prefiguration of Sophonisba, claims Kluge, who writes herself that her overall interpretation may appear somewhat fanciful and speculative. The present reviewer cannot but agree.
Daniel Casper von Lohenstein was a playwright of the Baroque Silesian school. The central characters of four of his plays are women, Cleopatra (first version in 1661), Agrippina and Epicharis (both published in 1665), and Sophonisbe (performed in 1669). “All these dramatic figures demand close analysis”, writes Ritchie Robertson. He focuses on Sophonisba, explaining that his task is to analyze “a variety of Machiavellian ruses” that make Sophonisba’s conduct appear highly reprehensible. However, if one considers that Sophonisba is driven by patriotism to defend the liberty of her native Carthage, the same types of arguments should be used to explain her actions as those used to defend the methods of other patriots and freedom-fighters. Exoticism is another method the learned Lohenstein uses to make the Phoenician’s conduct intelligible to an early modern audience. The Phoenicians were very different and have to be understood on their own premises. Robertson is undoubtedly successful in vindicating the heroine.
In Venice in the period from 1620 to 1723 Sophonisba was painted in dark colours in plays and novels. For instance, in Gaudenzio Brunacci’s novel Sofonisba, o vero le vicende del fato (Sophonisba, or rather the events of Fate) she is portrayed as a fickle, lustful, power-crazy seductress, totally different from the brave and just character who had previously embodied the struggle for liberty of the Carthaginian/Venetian republic. In his article Enrico Zucchi analyzes the political and aesthetical developments that gave rise to this transformation. An important role was played by the Accademia degli Incogniti which took a particular interest in the novel genre. True to Baroque poetics the academy aimed to amaze and confuse the reader. Brunacci’s novel was meant to overturn received classical history by transforming Sophonisba into a lustful woman. This was in line with the widespread misogyny of the academy. Several novels roughly coeval with Brunacci’s Sofonisba introduced wicked female characters and depicted women as heartless.
As Cortese rightly points out, Sophonisba’s story “has signified different things to different nations at different times”. It is an intriguing challenge to disentangle these significations, a task that fires the imagination. In the epilogue the editors introduce unexpectedly two well-known literary historians and critics, ‘the founding father of Danish comparative literature, Georg Brandes (1842-1927)’ and the German Walter Benjamin. They are both famous for applying a comparative methodology to their pioneer studies of Danish Realism and Baroque drama respectively. Comparativism allows the reader to see things in their true perspective and avoid cultural myopia, claims Brandes. Both claim also that we can grasp a historical epoch (its Zeitgeist) through its literature. For those who require clear-cut answers the epilogue is probably something of a disappointment. The editors did not “attempt to lay out any unitary design”, but instead the volume “presents so many pieces of a large puzzle for the reader to assemble.” The editors are not of much help in the assembling but be that as it may: they provide us with a varied contribution to our understanding of the neglected Sophonisba character and the book will certainly be welcome to scholars and students of the classical tradition and early modern literature, particularly those focusing on the Nachleben of great ancient women, such as Dido, Sophonisba and Cleopatra.
Postscript. No Northern European examples of the use of the Sophonisba character are mentioned in the volume so I feel obliged to add one. In his polemical dialogue Orthographia Svecana (from ca 1717), the learned and versatile Swedish bishop Urban Hierne calls attention to the well-known poet Sophia Elisabet Brenner (1659-1730), famous for her poetry in Swedish, German and Latin. In so doing he calls her “the learned Sophonisbe”, possibly deriving the name from sopho- and alluding to her first name.
Authors and Titles
Anastasia Ladefoged Larn & David Hasberg Zirak-Schmidt, Introduction: Rediscovering Sophonisba in Early Modern Europe
Samuel Agbamu, Petrarch’s Sophonisba between Antiquity and Modernity
Nina Hugot, L’éloquence de Sophonisbe, de Saint-Gelais à Montreux (1556-1601)
Christian Høgel, Erofili – an Egyptian Sofonisba from Crete
Jan Bloemendal and James A. Parente, Jr., The Historicization of Desire: Sophonisba in Early Modern Dutch Drama
Guðrún Kristinsdóttir-Urfalino, La Fierté d’Empire: Sophonisbe (1663) de Pierre Corneille
Beth Cortese, Love and War: Court Politics in Nathaniel Lee’s Sophonisba, or Hannibal’s Overthrow (1676)
Sofie Kluge, The Second Sophonisba: Figurality and Counterfactuality in Calderón’s The Second Scipio
Ritchie Robertson, Lohenstein’s Sophonisbe: A Vindication of the Heroine
Enrico Zucchi, A Fickle Power-crazed Seductress: Misogyny and Republicanism in Late Seventeenth-century Venetian Representation of Sophonisba
David Hasberg Zirak-Schmidt, Sofie Kluge, Anastasia Ladefoged Larn & Rasmus Vangshardt, Epilogue. Reflections on Historical Comparativism Prompted by the Case of Sophonisba