Literature in Latin

The earliest and probably the best-known African poet who wrote in Latin was Juan Latino, who was born in west Africa and came to Spain in about 1530. Latino wrote mostly panegyrics containing mythological allusions and phrases from classical poetry. His major work, Austrias (1573), written in hexameters, commences with an invocation to Apollo, narrates the victory of Don Juan of Austria at the Battle of Lepanto, shows him addressing his troops in the supposed words of Julius Caesar ( alea iacta est, the die is cast), and compares the battle between the Turkish and Spanish fleets to a battle between the Greeks and Trojans. Miguel de Cervantes, a contemporary of Latino, paid the Austrias homage in Don Quixote (ch. 6) for the qualities of its verse. In Epigrammatum liber (Book of epigrams, 1573), written almost entirely in elegiac couplets based upon an Ovidian pattern, Latino celebrates the birth of Prince Ferdinand in 1571 and the victory of Don Juan over the Turkish forces.

Other well-known African writers who wrote in Latin include Anton Wilhelm Amo and Jacobus Eliza Johannes Capitein, who were educated in Holland. Amo wrote works on legal and philosophical subjects entitled De jure Maurorum in Europa (On the rights of the Moors in Europe, 1729), De humane mentisA'KaOeea (On the impassiveness of the human mind, 1734), and Tractatus de arte sobrie et accurate philosophandi (A treatise on the art of philosophizing soundly and truthfully, 1738). Capitein published some of his sermons and an oration entitled Dissertatio politico-theologica de servitute libertati Christianae non contraria (1742), which argues on theological grounds somewhat curiously, given that he was formerly a slave, that Christian freedom is compatible with slavery.

In South Africa, Latin was used in numerous historical and legal documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - namely, in accounts of the early Cape Hottentots and in South African law. South-African born Gysbert Hemmy, for instance, delivered a Latin oration entitled De Promontorio Bonae Spei (On the Cape of Good Hope, 1767) at the Hamburg Academy. He also composed De testimoniis Aethiopum, Chinensium aliorumquepaganorum in India Orientali (1770) as his doctoral thesis, which discusses the ability of non-Europeans to testify in legal proceedings.