title: The mythological epics of Dracontius in their socio-political context
abstract: The poet Blossius Aemilius Dracontius was active at Carthage during the late 5th century AD, a period when that part of the Roman Empire had long since fallen to the Vandals. Given his position of being a Roman and Catholic <em>vir clarissimus</em> under Germanic and Arian overlords, as well as his imprisonment by the Vandal king Gunthamund (r. 484-496) for reasons related to his poetry, he was likely to have been involved, willingly or unwillingly, in the political world of Vandal Carthage. Wit