Martial: Epigrams, Volume I: Spectacles, Books 1-5 (Loeb Classical Library No. 94)

434 Pages·1993·12.8 MB·English

by  Martial

It was to celebrate the opening of the
Roman Colosseum in 80 that Martial
A.D.
published his first book of poems, "On the
Speetaeles." Written with satirie wit and a
talent for the memorable phrase, the
poems in this eolleetion reeord the broad
speetaele of shows in the new arena. The
great Latin epigrammist's twelve subse
quent books eapture the spirit of Roman
life-both publie and private-in vivid
detail. Fortune hunters and busybodies,
J
orators and Ia vvyers, sehoolmasters and
J
street hawkers, jugglers and aerobats, doe-
tors and plagiarists, beautiful slaves, and
generous hosts are among the diverse
eharaeters who populate his verses.
Martial is a keen and sharp-tongued obser
ver of Roman soeiety. His pen brings into
erisp relief a wide variety of seenes and
events: the theater and publie games, life
in the eountryside, a rieh debauehee's
banquet, lions in the amphitheater, the
eruption of Vesuvius. The epigrams are
sometimes obseene, in the tradition of the
genre, sometimes warmly affeetionate or
amusing, and always pointed. Like his
contemporary Statius, though, Martial
shamelessly flatters his patron Domitian,
one of Rome's worst-reputed emperors.
D. R. Shaekleton Bailey now gives us, in
three volumes, a reliable modern transla
tion of Martial's often diffieult Latin,
eliminating many misunderstandings in
THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY
FOUNDED BY JAMES LOEB
EDITED BY
G. P. GOOLD
PREVIOUS EDITORS
T. E. PAGE E. CAPPS
W. H. D. ROUSE L. A. POST
E. H. WARMINGTON
MARTIAL
I
LCL 94
MARTIAL
EPIGRAMS
EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY
D. R. SHACKLETON BAILEY
VOLUME I
Illl!Jl!!JllUU Illli!
J~Jl~
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDO~, ENGLA~D
1993
Copyright © 1993 by the President and Fellows
of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Libra11j of Congress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data
Martial.
Epigrams / edited and translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey.
p. cm. - (Loeb classicallibrary)
Translation of: EpigramInata.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-99555-4 (v. 1). ISBN 0-674-995,56-2 (v. 2).
ISBN 0-674-99529-,5 (v. 3).
1. Martial-Translations into English.
2. Epigrams. Latin-Translations into English.
3. Occasional verse, Latin-Translations into English.
I. Shackleton Bailey, D. R. (David Roy), 1917-.
11. Title. 111. Series: Loeb classicallibrary; L094, L095, L480
PA6502.B3,5 1993 92-8234
878'.0102-dc20 CIP
Typeset by Chiron, Ine, Cambridge, Massaehusetts.
Printed in· Great Britain by St Edmundsbu11j Press Ltd,
BU11j St Edn~unds, Suffolk, on acid-free paper.
Bound by Hunter & Foulis Ltd, Edinburgh, Seotland.
CONTENTS
1
INTRODUCTION
10
ABBREVIATIONS
EPIGRAMS
12
ON THE SPECTACLES
40
BOOK I
132
BOOK II
200
BOOK III
276
BOOKIV
BOOK v 352
CONTENTS OF VOLUME 11
BOOK VI
BOOK VII
BOOK VIII
BOOKIX
BOOK X
CONTENTS· OF VOLUME 111
BOOK XI
BOOK XII
BOOK XIII
BOOK XIV
APPENDIX A: ADDITIONAL NOTES
APPENDIX B: THE FICTITIOUS NAMES
INDEX
PREFACE
This edition replaces W. C. A. Ker's of 1925. I
have repeated some ofhis notes where there seemed
no reason to change the wording. Those in Books
XIII and XIV containing botanical, zoologieal, and
other information which I take on trust are dis
tinguished by bracketed "K."
The text is that ofmy Tet:Ibner edition of1990, by
permission of its publisher, with a few misprints
corrected and second thoughts,l and some changes
in punctuation, spelling, and typography. Critical
notes re cord conjectures adopted in the text, unless
they are old and gener ally accepted. Most of my
own had been advanced in articles, as specified in
the Teubner apparatus. Other departures from the
modern consensus, signalized in the Teubner, are
generally tacit .
As translator I have been especially concerned
with fidelity, which of course does not have to be
litera l. Readability would have been served if what
I may call mythological aliases had been replaced by
See Spect. 26.1; 1.76.11; 2.44.11; 3.47.7; 4.26.3;
1
5.22.13, 58.7; 8. epist. tit; 9.73.3; 11.2.2, 50.4, 99.6;
12.15.5; 13.72 tit., 87.1,118.2; 14.184 tit., 185.2,197.2.
..
Vll
PREFACE
familiar equivalents (e.g. "Athenian" instead of
"Ceeropian"), but that would have removed a major
stylistie feature. Like other Latin poets, Martial
liked sueh variations, partly no doubt as giving the
versifier more room for maneuver, but also for diver
sity and a eultural eaehet. They are explained in
the notes or the index.
Ker put the pornographie epigrams into Italian,
for whieh plain English was substituted taeitly in
reprints, I believe by the then general editor, E. H.
Warmington. I have followed the preeedent, though
not the wording.
I am grateful to Professor G. P. Goold for adviee
and numerous of detail.
improvem~nts
D. R. Shaekleton Bailey
Harvard University
July 1993
Vlll
INTRODUCTION
MARCUS Valerius Martialis was born in Bilbilis, an
ancient hill-town in northeast Spain. The year was
A.D. 40 or thereabouts, the month March.! His
parents' names were Fronto and Flaccilla.2 We hear
of no other family, except a relative, one Unicus,
also a poet (12.44). Add that Martial almost cer
tainly never married, the wife whom he occasionally
addresses or mentions being' an evident fiction.
He was given a good education (9.73) and in 64
(10.103) left to seek fame and fortune in Rome,
where his family probably had connections, notably
the Spanish Annaeus Seneca. But disaster overtook
Seneca and his circle in 65 following an unsuccess
ful plot against Nero. So much the worse for Mar
tial, though the widow of one of the casualties, the
poet Lucan, remained a patroness.
For a young man of small means with literary
Not March the first, as formerly supposed. At this
1
period Romans often preferred to celebrate their anniver
saries on the Kalends of the birth month rather than the
actual day: see H. Lucas, Cl. Quart. 32 (1938), 5f.
Mentioned 5.34. (Erotion in this epigram could be a
2
figment, but that Martial would have falsified his parents'
names is hard to believe.)
1