Everything about Sophonisba totally explained
» For the Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola (ca. 1532-1625), see Sofonisba Anguissola. For the American activist Sophonisba Breckinridge (1866-1948), see Sophonisba Breckinridge.
Sophonisba (also
Sophonisbe,
Sophoniba; in
Punic,
Saphanba'al) (fl.
203 BC) was a
Carthaginian noblewoman who lived during the
Second Punic War, and the daughter of
Hasdrubal Gisco Gisgonis (son of Gisco).
Life
A celebrated beauty, until 206, she'd been betrothed to
Massinissa, the leader of the
Massylian (or eastern)
Numidians. But in 206 Massinissa allied himself to Rome. Hasdrubal having lost the alliance with Massinissa started to look for another ally, which he found in Syphax, King of the
Masaeisylian (or western Numidians). As was normal in those days, Hasdrubal used his daughter to conclude the diplomatic alliances with Syphax who had previously been allied to
Rome.
When
Syphax was defeated in
203 BC by
Masinissa, King of Numidia, and the Romans, Masinissa fell in love with Sophonisba and married her.
Scipio Africanus 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. 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 couldn't free her from capitivity 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 that he offered her. The outrage that Sophonisba escaped through suicide may not have been
rape or physical violence, but from being led in a triumphal parade at
Rome, with its accompanying degradations and humiliations.
Her story, probably much embellished, is told indirectly in
Polybius (14.4ff.); and more concretely in
Livy (30.12.11-15.11),
Diodorus (27.7),
Appian (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.
(External Link
) 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."
Plays and Operas
Her story became the subject of tragedies (and later operas) from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The first tragedy is credited to the Italian
Gian Giorgio Trissino (1524). In France, Trissino's version was adapted by
Mellin de Saint-Gelais (performed in 1556), and may have served as the primary model for versions by
Antoine de Montchrestien (1596) and
Nicolas de Montreux (1601). The tragedy by
Jean Mairet (1634) is one of the first monuments of French "classicism", and was followed by a version from
Pierre Corneille (1663). The story of Sophonisbe also served as subject for works by
John Marston (1606),
Nathaniel Lee (1676),
James Thomson(1730),
Voltaire,
Vittorio Alfieri (1789),
Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein,
Emanuel Geibel,
Antonio Caldara,
Henry Purcell,
Christopher Gluck, and others. Sophonisba also appears in Carmine Gallone's 1937 epic movie
Scipio the African: The Defeat of Carthage, about Roman commander
Scipio Africanus's victory over Hannibal.
Some years after writing a play called
The Tragedy of Sophonisba, the aforementioned
James Thomson authored the still-current patriotic British song "
Rule, Britannia!"; 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
heroic
high fantasy novel The Worm Ouroboros by
Eric Rücker Eddison there's a character named "Queen Sophonisba", though her role in the book has little in common with the historic Sophonisba.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Sophonisba'.
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