Martial: Epigrams, Books VIII-XIV

by Marcus Valerius Martialis, Walter Charles Alan Ker (Translator)

Martial, the father of the epigram, was one of the brilliant provincial poets who made their literary mark on first-century Rome. His Epigrams can be affectionate or cruel, elegiac or playful; they target every element of Roman society, from slaves to schoolmasters to, above all, the aristocratic elite. With wit and wisdom, Martial evokes not “the grandeur that was Rome,” but rather the timeless themes of urban life and society.

About the Author: James Michie studied classics at Trinity College, Oxford. His other translations include The Poems of Catullus and Horace’s Odes (available as a Modern Library Paperback Classic). His Collected Poems was awarded the Hawthornden Prize.

Shadi Bartsch is Chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago, the editor in chief of Classical Philology, and the author of Decoding the Ancient Novel; Ideology in Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucan’s “Civil War”; and Actors in the Audi-ence: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian.

573 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 103

About the author

Born: March 1, 40 AD, in Augusta Bilbilis (now Calatayud, Spain); Died: ca. 102 AD--Marcus Valerius Martialis, known in English as Martial, was a Latin poet from Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these short, witty poems he cheerfully satirises city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances, and romanticises his provincial upbringing. Considered the creator of the modern epigram, Martial wrote a total of 1,561 - 1,235 of which are in elegiac couplets.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recall that Don Juan's mother referred to them as "the nauseous epigrams of Martial," in Byron. She's probably thinking in particular of Book XI.* They are a delight: crude, base, insulting, very funny satire on different sexual crimes and misdemeanors. Martial wrote that his verse was "lasciva," but his life was upright, "proba"; Robert Herrick, a fine epigrammaticist, adapts, "Jocund his Muse was,/ But his life was chaste." The recent English verse that comes close is JV Cunningham, such as: "Lip is a man who used his head, / He used it when he went to bed / With his friend's wife, or with his friend/" which ends double double, "With either sex at either end."
M. Valerius Martialis, born in Bilbilis, Hispania (near Zaragoza) published his first book of epigrams the same year the Colosseum was completed, 80 A.D (at age 40). He advises readers who hold the book can pick one up at Secunda's stall in the Forum of Pallas, back of the Gate of Peace. He considers the losing soldier's fame cheap, just falling on his sword: "I'd prefer to be famous still alive." And he's acerbic on the man who proposes to a rich woman: Why does he propose? She has a bad cough...(so she'll die and leave him her dowry).
One Lupercus asks to borrow his epigrams; Martial directs him to his bookseller, because he's closer. He parodies Catullus, who calls his girl Lesbea a "pet, a sparrow"--Martial calls his Stella a dove (maybe renowned for screwing). Martial also has many epigrams about his book, "Go--if you must, you'd be safer at home."
My favorite may be Book XI, lxvi, in hendecasyllables, like Catullus's "Vivamus mea Lesbea atque amemus":
Et delator es at calumniator,
et fraudator es et negotiator,
et fellator es et lanista, miror
quare non habeas, Vacerra, nummos. (Loeb vol II, 286)
I adapt this to a university leader:
You're a stoolie, you fraud, you backbiter,
you pimp, ass-kisser, cock-sucker.
Yes, you, you damned politician.
You know, you've got every qualification
For-- for a-- for a promotion.
(my "Westport Soundings," 1994, p.50)
But some epigrams are longer than our idea of the form. I believe late 16C writers debated whether the sonnet was a lyric or an epigram.
The one great poet in English who writes epigrams is Emily Dickinson, but her epigrams are entirely uninfluenced by Martial. ED, "What soft, cherubic creatures / These gentlewomen are--/ One would as soon assault a Plush, / Or violate--a Star./ Such Dimity convictions, / A horror so refined / Of Freckled human Nature--/ Of Deity--Ashamed."
*(See my Goodreads writings for Martial epigrams I published in Westport Soundings. Here's
one not sexual or indecent, Bk V.xliii.
"Gramp's got no teeth; Grama's got
The better dentist: hers just rot." )

By the way, I read five Moliere plays in French to cheer me after my grad school defeat; and I read Martial's Latin epigrams to laugh after being fired from my first teaching job--partly for reading too much and making the pretentious president feel dumb. (Partly for being vain and obnoxious.)
Martial's epigrams form the essential source of Pietro Aretino in 16C Venice, whom wikipedia calls "poet, playwright, satirist, and blackmailer."

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martial writing about the death of his illegitimate daughter made me sob in the back of my GCSE Latin class repeatedly. The imagery is incredibly vivid and tender. His use of Latin dactylic hexameter, namely the golden line, is beautiful and full of immense grief and the completely overwhelming heartache of loss. All in honour of her and her short life. It will forever be one of the most beautiful pieces of writing humankind will ever know.