“Porazenje pravednijeh mladjenaca” by Nikola Marija Antica

Abstract

Porazenje pravednijeh mladjenaca (Massacre of the Innocent) was known to the 18th-century biographers (Serafin Marija Črijević, Francesco Maria Appendini) as a work of Antun Gleđević. However, the poem by Nikola Maria Antica, a poetic translation of Giambattista Marino’s work (1569-1625), La strage degli Innocenti (Naples, 1632) has never been printed in a modern form. The first canto of the epic (119 octosyllabic quatrains) has been preserved as “Sumnja Jerudova” (The Doubt of Erode), in which, because of rumours of the Saviour’s birth, the rage of the rulers of hell was celebrated in verse. Since the transcript of Ivan Marija Matijašević ends with a custoda, which suggests a continuation, it cannot be decidedly said whether Antica completed or did not finish the poem for some reason.