Some of Ariosto's contemporaries also attempted the epic style,
including Trissino, who in his "Italia Liberata" relates the victories
of Belisarius over the Goths in blank verse. His fame, however, rests
on "Sofonisba," the first Italian tragedy, in fact "the first regular
tragedy in all modern literature."

Although no epics of great note were written thereafter, Alamanni
composed "Girone il Cortese" and the "Avarchide," which are
intolerably long and wearisome.

"The poet who set the fashion of fantastic ingenuity" was Marinus,
whose epic "Adone," in twenty cantos, dilates on the tale of Venus and
Adonis. He also wrote "Gerusalemme Distrutta" and "La Strage degl'
Innocenti," and his poetry is said to have much of the charm of
Spenser's.

The last Italian poet to produce a long epic poem was Fortiguerra,
whose "Ricciardetto" has many merits, although we are told the poet
wagered to complete it in as many days as it has cantos, and won his
bet.

The greatest of the Italian prose epics is Manzoni's novel "I Promessi
Sposi," which appeared in 1830. Since then Italian poets have not
written in the epic vein, save to give their contemporaries excellent
metrical translations of Milton's Paradise Lost, of the Iliad, the
Odyssey, the Argonautica, the Lusiad, etc.