Martial's Epigrams Book Two

316 Pages·2004·1.46 MB·English

by  Craig A. Williams

Martial Epigrams
Book Two
Craig A. Williams,
Editor
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
martial
Epigrams
Book Two
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MARTIAL
Epigrams
Book Two
Edited with
Introduction, Translation, and Commentary
by
Craig A. Williams
1
2004
3
Oxford New York
Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai
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Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martial.
[Epigrammata. Liber 2. English & Latin]
Epigrams. Book two / Martial ; edited with introduction, translation,
and commentary by Craig A. Williams.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-515531-9
1. Martial—Translations into English. 2. Epigrams,
Latin—Translations into English. 3. Epigrams, Latin. I. Williams,
Craig A. (Craig Arthur), 1965– II. Title.
PA6502.W55 2003
878'.0102—dc21 2003004244
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
P R E F A C E
lector, opes nostrae: quem cum mihi Roma dedisset,
“nil tibi quod demus maius habemus” ait.
(10.2.5–6)
O reader, my treasure! When Rome gave you to me,
she said, “I have nothing greater to give you.”
“illa tamen laudant omnes, mirantur, adorant.”
confiteor: laudant illa sed ista legunt.
(4.49.9–10)
“But everyone praises, admires, and reveres that [mythological]
poetry!” Yes, I admit it, they praise that kind of poetry. But
what they read is this.
Martial’s epigrams display a remarkable interest in what we would now call
their own reception by readers. But while this poet self-consciously distances
himself from arcane mythological poetry and boasts that his readers should
have no need of learned commentary (10.21.5–6: “mea carmina, Sexte, /
grammaticis placeant, ut sine grammaticis”), it is precisely because he so
firmly anchors his epigrams in the Rome of his day that readers of the early
twenty-first century need assistance. The central goal of this commentary is
vi Preface
to help contemporary readers, both those who have previous experience
reading Martial and those who do not, deepen their understanding of the
text in front of them by locating the epigrams in the cultural and literary
contexts in which they arose and by drawing attention to specific features
that are characteristic of author and genre.
Thus, in this commentary, the first specifically dedicated to Martial’s
second book, I have offered grammatical discussion, lists of ancient paral-
lels, and references to scholarship less in the interests of compiling and
epitomizing per seand more in hopes of contributing to a greater apprecia-
tion of a given epigram or of the corpus as a whole, or where there has
been disagreement or controversy. I have presented fairly generous lists of
parallels within Martial, and especially within Book II, in order to give a
sense of the techniques characteristic of this poet, who frequently reuses
and recasts linguistic and thematic material. My references to other ancient
texts are selective and representative, but the prominence of Juvenal will be
clear: working in a closely related genre, Martial’s younger contemporary
sometimes takes on similar topics in a strikingly different manner.
My emphasis on certain interpretive aspects will be most noticeable in
the introductory analyses of each epigram’s themes and structure. These
discussions make no claim to offer an “exhaustive reading,” especially elu-
sive in the case of short poems that emphasize irony, wit, and double mean-
ing; with respect to these aspects of Martial’s work I have been mindful of
Freud’s warning that analysis and enjoyment of a joke may necessarily be
mutually exclusive. I am also interested in the implications of a sequential
reading of the book, and thus, at the beginning of each of my thematic dis-
cussions I offer brief remarks regarding each epigram’s relationship with the
poems that have preceded it in the collection. It must be emphasized that
these remarks are meant to be suggestive rather than definitive and that this
is hardly the only way to read Martial’s book. Indeed, such a collection of
independent poems raises complex questions of reading in general, but a
commentary does not seem the most effective context in which to make a
sustained contribution to that theoretical debate.
My translations—in prose because I can make no claim to being a poet—
attempt above all to reflect the tone of the original, as expressed, for ex-
ample, in word choice, which ranges from the poetic and elevated to the
prosaic and chatty to the earthy and obscene. I have stayed as close as En-
glish permits to Martial’s syntactic structures and word order, paying atten-
tion to such things as the positioning of the nearly ubiquitous vocative
addressee, the repetition of key terms, and variations in sentence length and
complexity, since these are often important for certain effects. My transla-
tions are intended to be accessible to Latinless readers, but I have generally
left unchanged names of people and places, units of currency, and the like,
Preface vii
as well as certain terms so laden with specifically Roman ideology as to be
untranslatable (e.g., cinaedus). I have explained such terms in the accom-
panying notes, where I have also indicated significant variations among
modern translations. For the text printed in this edition, see the Introduc-
tion, section 5.
For their concrete help and suggestions or more general support I wish to
thank Widu-Wolfgang Ehlers, Marco Formisano, Ralph Hexter, and Elena Merli.
I owe special thanks to the anonymous readers for Oxford University Press,
whose comments and criticism were extremely helpful; one in particular was
quite rigorous, and I am grateful for it. I was able to bring this project to comple-
tion thanks to two generous research fellowships, one from the Ethyle R. Wolfe
Institute for the Humanities of Brooklyn College and another from the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn), which allowed me to take advantage of
the considerable resources and pleasant atmosphere of the Seminar für
Klassische Philologie at the Freie Universität Berlin.
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C O N T E N T S
ABBREVIATIONS xi
INTRODUCTION 3
1. Martial’s Life and Works 3
2. Epigram before Martial 5
3. Characteristics of Martial’s Epigrams 6
3.1. Themes 7
3.2. Characters 8
3.3. Formal Features: Point, Bipartite Structure, Length, and Meter 9
3.4. Book Structure 10
4. Nachleben and Reception 11
5. Manuscript Tradition 12
TEXT, TRANSLATION, AND COMMENTARY 15
BIBLIOGRAPHY 283
INDICES 297