Memorabile factum. Une célébration de l'évergétisme des rois vandales dans l'Anthologie latine

摘要

The Anthologia latina retains a small corpus of poems composed in Africa in praise of the Vandal Kings, especially the last three, Huniric, Thrasamund and Hildiric. Though they have often been severely assessed by scholars, these poems, with their sophisticated style, alliterations, antitheses, symbolic use of the four elements, etc., are nevertheless, in our opinion, a very interesting testimony of the Kings' policy of building monuments which were not all intended for mere prestige : so, the poet Cato celebrates a helicoidal contraption used for pumping out water, and Felix writes five poems in tribute to the thermae of Alianas, a monument which unfortunately remains an archeological riddle as to its design and situation. All those poems have it in common that they are a praise of the evergetic behaviour of the sovereigns, a tradition which went back nearly a thousand years at that time. They give evidence of the faithfulness to the Roman cultural heritage (especially in the field of poetry) and of the continuity of the classical civilization that resisted the upheaval of the end of the antique world, as well in Africa as in other western countries.