Sophonisba and the norm in Petrarch's Africa

The setting for Petrarch’s Latin epic is the Second Punic War (218-201 BC), and most of the characters are men. An exception is Sophonisba, the daughter of a Carthaginian general; the so-called Sophonisba episode fills the central Book 5, and in the end she takes her own life. Sophonisba has been described as an evil character; the paper discusses whether such an interpretation has a basis in Petrarch’s text. Should Sophonisba’s death be seen instead as heroic? A presupposition for the conclusion is to establish the norm of the epic. The actantial model provides a structure and is the main method for the analysis.