Johannida, or On the Libyan War

«Johannida» by the North African early Byzantine poet Flavius Cresconius Corippus (or Gorippus, ca. 510 — ca. 580) is considered the last poetic epic of Antiquity. The poem, written in hexameters, tells of the uprising of Berber tribes against the Byzantines in North Africa in the second half of the 540s, of which Corippus was a direct witness, as well as recounting earlier events leading to this conflict. The poem has survived in Italy in a single manuscript (although at least three were known during the Renaissance), published for the first time in 1820, but it remains practically unknown to the Russian reader.