A small calf escaping from its warm, safe stable, a voracious wolf claiming to have fasted for seven years, a cunning fox making the wolf's life miserable for generations, a hedgehog, an otter, a lion, and a handful of birds. These are the main characters in an eleventh-century animal epic known only to a small group of specialists. "Ecbasis cuiusdam captivi per tropologiam," or "The Escape of a Certain Captive," has gone virtually unnoticed in the Netherlands. Those unfamiliar with Latin have had to rely on the hard-to-find German or English translations from the 1960s. What kind of work is "Ecbasis captivi"? What is it about, and what is the poem's place in Late Latin literary history? The following article addresses these questions. - [Author]

Language: Dutch