Tom's Reviews > Africa

First of all, if you are one of the apparently fifteen people or so who've even heard of this book, let alone read it, thumbs up. This particular translation has been out of print for decades, and is difficult to track down.

The translators (Thomas G. Bergin and Alice S. Wilson) were well respected Renaissance scholars, and I have no qualms with their output here. Some people think they were 'loose' with the Latin, but unless you're a pedantic scholar of obscure Latin poems, you'll do just fine picking this version up. The endnotes are copious and almost overbearing, but very informative and relevant. However, there is no critical apparatus.

As for the text itself - well, I picked this up because I wanted to read some Petrarch, but I wasn't too excited about digging into his love poetry just yet. I'd read Dante and Boccaccio years ago, so I've always felt there was a leg missing in the stool that is the great Italian humanist literary school. So when I'd found out he wrote an epic poem, and that it was about the Punic War and Scipio Africanus, I was hooked. I've always been really interested in Roman history, but more on the Empire-side of things and less the Repubican. So here was an opportunity to learn a little about one of the great generals, while reading a great poet. I was set.

So was it worth it? Eh. The topic itself is fine, and I definitely learned a lot about the basic events of the Punic War's latter half. Like the translators' note, the character of Scipio is, well, boring. Petrarch wrote him like a bad fan fiction Mary Sue. He literally cannot do anything wrong. Everything he does is perfect, and described in such sickly sweet terms and similes that you'll start to wonder why Jove even bothers being King of the Gods when Scipio is around being all great. The real Scipio was certainly a 'great man of history' and it's extraordinary that he won every battle he conducted, but he's just sort of, well, boring-and-always-awesome here.

To extend the fan fiction comparison, there's also a pretty cringe-inducing self-insert near the end of the text, where Petrarch has Homer (you know, that Homer) use his magic powers to look far in the future and show another Roman who will someday be the GREATEST Italian poet of all time. And who is that handsome genius? Why, none other than Petrarch!

Other then that, nothing much happens throughout the poem. There's a huge gap in the narrative between books 4 and 5, and the only battle scene (the Battle of Zama), after much set-up, is more-or-less a deflating balloon. Oh yeah, and Scipio forgives (almost) everyone and is just so great and don't you think he's great?

So why the three stars? Well, the Punic War is still a pretty awesome story, and I think the translators did a good job. And overall readability is great, which isn't always easy when translating an early Renaissance epic poem. Also, the story of how the Africa came to be is almost more interesting than the narrative itself. Petrarch basically never got around to finishing it, and freaked out when one of his friends leaked a few lines of it to the world. After reading it firsthand, it's no surprise that he died before publishing it.

Should you read Petrarch's Africa? Meh. It's up to you.