Cipriano e l'epidemia: dottrina, pastorale, letteratura

De mortalitate was written by Cyprian on the occasion of a terrible plague that struck the communities of northern Africa in the middle of the third century. The bishop of Carthage uses various means of expression, such as when he describes the symptoms and explains the phenomenology of the disease; he also takes up the clichés of the classic consolatio genre to help readers by making their faith firm. This article aims to examine the writer’s narrative and argumentative techniques by documenting the ways in which certain themes present in the ancient literary tradition emerge and by noting the literary in tent that writing reveals in particular in the representation of the plague and its consequences.