Responsabilità e (de)merito negli epilli di Draconzio

This paper deals with the themes of responsibility and demerit in three short poems (epyllia) of Blossius Aemilius Dracontius, the most important poet and writer in the Vandal Africa between V and VI centuries. The three mythological epyllia (De raptu Helenae, Medea and Orestis tragoedia) have a gloomy, dark and pessimistic character, and their principal personages (Paris and Helena, Medea and Jason, Clitemnestra, Egisthus and Orestes) are depicted as guilty and wicked, responsibles of crimes as adultery, uxoricide, matricide and child-murder. In his negative presentation of his personages, Dracontius often moves away from the foregoing classical tradition.