Davidias

The Christian monumental historic-heroic epic Davidiad is the masterpiece of the prolific Croat Humanist Marko Marulic (Marcus Marulus, 1450-1524). The poem, comprising 6765 Latin hexameters, and divided into 14 books, was never published, and eventually even thought to be lost. Marulic's autograph resurfaced in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Turin, although it had been heavily damaged during the huge fire in January 1904. For the present edition the author has collated the original manuscript in Turin, made additional corrections, adopting the suggestions of Veljko Gortan, and reduced his first edition (1957, Mérida) to an absolutely necessary minimum. He has also enclosed a brief Vita Maruli, written by Marulic's contemporary Latin poet of Split, Franjo Bozičevic (Franciscus Natalis, 1469-1542).