This article seeks to identify and analyze classical elements in the Espejo de Paciencia by Silvestre de Balboa, a Spanish poet who was born on the Canary Islands in 1563. Balboa’s work was printed in Cuba in 1608 and is considered the first literary work published there. There will be particular emphasis on the influence of Horace’s poetic precepts and on the importance of Virgil’s Aeneid in the composition of the Espejo. Overall, the poem shows how traditional elements of classical learning could be deployed innovatively in a work of colonial literature.
