DRACONZIO, BLOSSIO EMILIO. — Born in Africa, perhaps at Carthage; he composed most of his works between 484 and 496.
The information known about his life comes from what he himself relates: he studied under the guidance of the rhetorician Felicianus, acquiring a broad education that enabled him to pursue a successful career. But because of a poem in praise of the emperor Zeno, and especially through the machinations of envious people, he fell under suspicion of the Vandal king, Gontamondo, who had him imprisoned.
In the desolation of prison the poet heard God’s voice more clearly; from his suffering there emerged, in fact, the two works of Christian inspiration that possess considerable poetic beauty: the Satisfactio, in which he asks the king’s forgiveness, and the De laudibus Dei, in which the poet turns to the Eternal.
These works are less obscured by the rhetorical artifices that weigh down the poems of pagan inspiration, which are expansive and notable for their variety and richness of themes. There remain: Romulea, in ten poems, of which three are mythological epyllia (II, VIII, X), three rhetorical declamations (IV, V, IX), two epithalamia (VI, VII), and two prefaces (I, III); the Orestis tragoedia, in 974 hexameters; the De mensibus, in 24 hexameters; and the De origine rosarum, in 7 elegiac couplets. There are doubts regarding the authenticity of the Aegritudo Perdicae.
D. is of interest for his complex personality, in which human and divine, pagan and Christian feelings and aspirations, as well as biblical and classical influences, alternate as in Augustine.