Other Western Writerswriter
Who he was
- A Latin poet and advocate.
- Trained in classical rhetoric at Carthage at the School of Felicianus (the rhetor).
- Dracontius was imprisoned after the invasion of the Vandals for a poem he had composed in honor of the Roman emperor.
- After the death of Gunthamund, the Vandal king, he was freed, ca. 496, by his successor and resumed his legal work.
What he wrote
- He wrote numerous secular poems, epithalamia, and epyllia on mythological figures.
- He is the author of the Satisfactio (484-490)¸ a confession of guilt and request for pardon addressed to the Vandal king.
- He wrote the De laudibus Dei, a verse in praise of God’s goodness, the first book of which circulated separately in the Middle Ages as a Hexaemeron, or account of creation.