Mankovsky Arkadiy Vladimirovich – Candidate in Philology, Senior Researcher of the Department of Literary Studies, Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Who has not written about the persecution of Christians under Nero, relying on Tacitus and the evidence of early Christian literature! Russian poets also made their contribution: Lev Mey in Servilia (1854), Apollon Maikov in The Death of Lucius (1863) and Two Worlds (1872; 1881). Their plays were published mainly before the appearance of Ernest Renan’s books [Antéchrist (1873), etc.], which presented the same plot and received a wide response. But Henryk Siemiradzki’s paintings (1870–1890s) and Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel Quo vadis? (1893–1896) were already influenced by the books of the French historian. Unlike Maikov’s plays, which were never staged (Mei was a little luckier), dramatizations of Sienkiewicz’s novel became a common occurrence on the stage of Russian theater already at the very beginning of the twentieth century. The author also brings some of these dramatizations into consideration, in particular the play by Sergei (?) F. Mikhailov, published under the same title as Maikov’s play: Two Worlds (1901).
Tacitus; Renan; A. Maikov; L. Mey; S.F. Mikhailov; H. Sienkiewicz; H. Siemiradzki; early Christianity; era of persecution; Russian drama