Bernardino Stefonio Flavia Tragoedia

In the year 1600, during the celebrations for the Jubilee of Pope Clement VIII, Bernardino Stefonio staged a grandiose play at the Roman Jesuit College, where he was professor of rhetoric. The Flavia, a tragedy centered around the gens Flavia, specifically the principate of Domitian’s last, most tyrannical years, comprises five acts of Latin poetry in the style of Seneca, whose plays Thyestes and Medea provide the main models. Stefonio’s learning, however, embraces the entire Latin canon, with a special predilection for the poets Horace, Virgil, Ovid, and Lucan, but also classical prose and Christian authors.