Selected Epigrams

by Martial

  3.76. Andromache was Hector’s beautiful wife in The Iliad and Hecuba was his ancient mother.

  3.79. Martial often takes an odd behavioral quirk, as here, and extends it to the point of absurdity.

  3.80. Apicius has a wicked tongue, Martial implies, because he performs oral sex.

  3.83. Chione is a Greek name that Martial often uses for prostitutes. In 3.87 he uses that name for a prostitute who performs fellatio. For a poet to be told to imitate a prostitute is insulting, but Martial replies that he can’t possibly match her for speed.

  3.84. Martial is punning on the fact that linguam (tongue) is a feminine noun when he implies not that Gongylion’s wife has a female lover, but that Gongylion’s own tongue is her lover.

  3.86. In poem 3.68 Martial had warned chaste matrons to read no further in book 3 because what followed would be openly obscene poems. Here he pretends to have caught the ladies still reading, but he argues that the mimes that ladies would see in the theater are just as obscene as anything in his book.

  3.87. Martial presents a paradox: Chione has never been fucked and wears a loincloth at the public baths in a show of excessive modesty, yet she is shameless. He implies that she performs fellatio, and therefore shouldn’t show her face in public.

  3.88. This poem is an example of Martial’s love of seeming contradictions.

  3.89. Soft mallows and lettuce, Martial suggests, were used as cures for constipation, but Martial is probably making fun of the facial expression of Phoebus, not offering helpful dietary hints.

  3.90. Shackleton Bailey points out that quid sibi velit can mean both “what she means” and “what she wants for herself ” (1:267n).

  3.94. Martial may be implying that the host is cheap, as well as irascible, and that he is using the undercooked hare as an excuse not to serve anything. The Latin name Rufus (which means “red”) would suit an angry man.

  3.96. Shackleton Bailey suggests that Gargilius would not be talking because he would be forced to perform fellatio on the speaker as a punishment (1:273n). Another possible explanation is that the speaker would cut out the tongue of Gargilius.

  3.100. Martial here seems to be indulging in self-deprecatory modesty in saying that his book deserves to be washed out, though that may be because of the obscenity that he has acknowledged in it.

  Book Four

  4.6. Stella, a patron of Martial’s, wrote elegiac poetry himself, so to recite the same kind of poetry while a guest in his house would be insulting to him (Shackleton Bailey 1:282n).

  4.7. Hyllus is here presumed to be a boy slave of Martial’s, and is trying to get out of having to have sex with him by claiming to have reached man-hood. Though sex with boys was customary and accepted, sex with grown men was frowned on (Moreno Soldevila 133).

  4.12. Thais is a name often used by Martial for prostitutes. The fact that she doesn’t draw the line at fellatio puts her among the most debased prostitutes.

  4.13. The addressee of this poem, Rufus, has not been identified, since there are several men named Rufus in Martial’s poems, some real and some apparently invented (Moreno Soldevila 167). Aulus Pudens was a friend of Martial’s (Shackleton Bailey 3:378). Hymen is the god of marriage, and torches were part of the wedding procession, accompanying the bride from her home to her husband’s (Moreno Soldevila 169). Nard and cinnamon were both used in perfumes, and honey was often mixed into wine. Martial refers to Massic wine as being one of the best wines, and the honey from the region around Athens, home of Theseus, was also renowned. Grape vines were often trained to grow up elms, so the elm and vine together were a symbol of marriage in Roman times (171–72).

  4.15. The platter and serving tools would have been made of silver and therefore worth more than the amount of the original loan request (Moreno Soldevila 188).

  4.16. M. Tullius Cicero was the famous orator and statesman of Republican times. M. Aquilius Regulus was a famed contemporary advocate and a patron of Martial’s (Shackleton Bailey 3:379). Romans defined incest as including relatives by marriage, not just by blood, so Martial is implying that the relationship between stepmother and stepson is incestuous and was probably adulterous when the father of Gallus was alive (Moreno Soldevila 190).

  4.17. Moreno Soldevila notes that the Greek name Lycisca suggests that its owner is a prostitute. Paulus is inciting Martial to write poems attacking her character in order to shame her and make her angry. Martial suggests, however, that Paulus wants to shame her not because he disapproves of her performing fellatio, but because he wants to make her lose other customers (including, possibly, Martial himself ) so that Paulus can have her to himself (Moreno Soldevila 195–96).

  4.20. Shackleton Bailey identifies the addressee, Collinus, as a poet who had won the Capitoline poetry contest (3:349), which was founded by Domitian and held every five years (1:276–77n). The contrast between a young woman who wants to pretend she’s older and the old woman who wants to pretend she’s younger is typical of Martial’s irony. Pupa literally means “doll,” but is used metaphorically for an attractive woman (Moreno Soldevila 212).

  4.21. Martial purports to take it as ironic confirmation of the atheistic views of Segius that such a wicked man is prospering.

  4.22. For the purposes of this erotic epigram, Martial pretends to be a newly married husband.

  4.24. There is no evidence that Martial ever married, but he sometimes speaks as if he were married, in order to exploit satirical humor about wives and marriage. Fabianus is the addressee of this poem; Shackleton Bailey assumes he is an invented figure, not an actual friend of Martial’s (3:354).

  4.26. Martial implies that Postumus is so stingy a patron that it is not worth the trouble to be his client. One would have to wear a toga to pay morning calls, so the rewards from Postumus in a year do not even cover the cost of the necessary wardrobe.

  4.27. One of the gifts Domitian (here referred to by his title Augustus) gave Martial was the Right of Three Children (Shackleton Bailey 1:299n). This poem is both a thanks to the Emperor and a graceful way to beg for more gifts.

  4.29. Aulus Pudens was a friend of Martial, who mentions him in sixteen epigrams (Howell, Commentary 172). As the number of his books increased, Martial seems to have worried that their frequency would lower their esteem and make them be taken for granted. I follow Shackleton Bailey’s hypothesis that Martial is ranking the satirist Persius, who wrote a book of satires under Nero (3:375), and Marsus the epigrammatist (3:366) as if their books were scoring points in a game (1:300n).

  4.32. Amber is called Phaethon’s drop because of the myth that after Phaethon was killed by a thunderbolt from Jupiter his grieving sisters were turned into poplar trees, whose weeping sap became amber (recounted in book two of Ovid’s Metamorphoses).

  4.33. What looks like a compliment to Sosibianus for his poetry is actually a sly way of wishing he were dead (Shackleton Bailey 1:305n).

  4.34. This riddling epigram implies that the toga is cold because it is threadbare (Shackleton Bailey 1:305n). Martial plays on the fact that snow may not be white, but is always cold.

  4.36. Shackleton Bailey hypothesizes that Olus can’t dye his beard because of a skin disease (1:305n).

  4.38. Galla is a name often used by Martial for prostitutes. Martial suggests that playing hard to get can make a woman more attractive, but can be carried too far.

  4.41. Presumably, the person about to recite has a cold and is trying to protect his throat by wrapping it in a scarf. But hoarseness is not desirable in a speaker (Moreno Soldevila 307). The poem also hints that the work to be recited is not worth hearing.

  4.43. According to Shackleton Bailey, Pontia and Metilius were wellknown poisoners (1:311n). Cybele, the Mother Goddess, was identified with the Syrian goddess Atargetis (1:312n) and was associated with Berecynthus, a region in Phrygia where she was worshiped (3:343). Cybele was thought to afflict wrongdoers with tumors (1:312n), and her priests castrated themselves in a fit of madness sent by the goddess (Moreno Soldevila 323).
In swearing by these tumors and frenzies, Martial is wishing them on himself if he is lying (319).

  4.44. Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, destroying Pompeii, whose patron goddess was Venus, and Herculaneum, which was dedicated to Hercules. There was also a famous temple to Venus in Sparta (Shackleton Bailey 1:313n). Nysa was the mountain where the god Bacchus was raised (Moreno Soldevila 329). Martial implies that the gods wish it had not been in their power to destroy places so dear to them. Since Martial reports visits of his to Baiae, a resort on the bay of Naples, he would have seen the volcano Vesuvius firsthand.

  4.47. Moreno Soldevila notes that encaustic painting was done using heated, pigmented wax on a tablet (350–51). Martial is joking that Phaethon, who burned up in lightning sent by Jupiter, didn’t deserve to be fired a second time. Shackleton Bailey suggests that there may be a pun as well on the name of a twicebaked bread (1:317n).

  4.49. Martial is annoyed that turgid retellings of myth were ranked higher in the literary canon than the satiric epigrams that he wrote, but he counters that his own poems are far more popular with readers. He focuses particularly on writers retelling sensational stories of fathers tricked into eating their own sons (Tereus and Thyestes) or filling in trivial background in stories whose real action happens later (Daedalus and Polyphemus). Martial alludes to the robes with trains that tragic actors wore and the ranting, exaggerated style of acting in tragedies, implicitly contrasting them with the more realistic style of his own work.

  4.50. Richlin points out that Martial here is alluding to the assumption that old men were the most likely to need oral sex in order to achieve an erection. Thais, a prostitute, insults Martial by calling him old, so he insults her by pointing out that she performs fellatio (Richlin, “Meaning of Irrumare” 44).

  4.51. Martial, while pretending to wish Caecilianus well, is actually hoping that he will lose his fortune.

  4.56. Gargilianus is angling for large legacies from the people to whom he gives. Martial invites him to learn the true meaning of generosity by giving a gift to Martial, from whom he will get nothing in return.

  4.58. Galla has presumably shut herself in a dark room to weep, but Martial suggests that she seeks privacy so that no one will see that she is not weeping.

  4.59. Since Cleopatra was killed by a viper, it is ironic that a viper should have a tomb more magnificent than hers. The snake described here would have been quite small (Shackleton Bailey 1:327n).

  4.63. Nero had tried to have his mother Agrippina drowned by a collapsing boat in the same vicinity (Shackleton Bailey 1:331n).

  4.65. This poem is a riddle: How can Philaenis weep from just one eye? The answer is that she has only one.

  4.69. The good wines that Martial mentions are Setine and Massic. Papylus is rumored to have poisoned his four wives with wine. Though Martial says he doesn’t believe the gossip, by saying he isn’t thirsty, he shows that he does.

  4.70. The addressee of this poem is Marullinus, presumably a friend of Martial’s, though not mentioned in other epigrams. Ammianus, who had been wishing for his father’s death, regrets it because he is disinherited. The rope he is left suggests that he is being urged to hang himself for some dreadful offense; epigram 2.4, also about an Ammianus, had implied that he was guilty of incest with his mother (Moreno Soldevila 471).

  4.71. Safronius Rufus, a friend of Martial’s, is described in 11.103 as being extremely modest, so he would be an ideal addressee for Martial’s complaint about the shamelessness of women. For no girl to say no sounds like a positive result for men seeking to sleep with them, but Martial points out that many also don’t say yes, but coyly keep the men in suspense (Moreno Soldevila 473).

  4.72. Quintus is interested only in free copies of Martial’s books. When Martial tells him where he can buy the books, Quintus shows how little interest in the books he actually has. This poem is both an advertisement for Martial’s bookseller and a warning to those who might ask Martial for free copies. Copies, which would be expensive to have made, might be given for free to friends and patrons, but Martial’s response implies that Quintus is neither (Moreno Soldevila 475–76).

  4.75. Moreno Soldevila notes that Mummia Nigrina is being praised for sharing her wealth with her husband Rusticus Antistius. Roman women had the right to inherit their father’s wealth, retain part of their dowry in the case of divorce, and make their own financial decisions. That Nigrina makes all of her wealth over to her husband is a sign of her extraordinary love for him, which Martial compares favorably to that of Evadne, who burned herself on the pyre of her husband Capaneus, and of Alcestis, who offered her own life to preserve the life of her husband Admetus when he was due to die (487–90).

  4.76. When disappointed by an unnamed stingy lender, Martial suggests that the way to get the amount he wants in the future is to double the amount he asks for.

  4.77. Martial jokes that he wants wealth not for his own sake, but to provoke suicide in an envious man.

  4.79. Matho is not one of Martial’s known friends, and Martial’s property outside of Rome is elsewhere said to be in Nomentum (see 2.38), so the incident described in this poem may be invented (Moreno Soldevila 503). The joke is partly that, as a guest, Matho would have had all the benefits of the property without the cost of buying it.

  4.81. The epigram mentioned is 4.71. Martial frequently comments in one epigram on the purported reactions of a reader to a previous epigram of his, as in 3.68 and 3.86 (Moreno Soldevila 509).

  4.83. Martial loves a paradox, here the irony that Naevolus is only considerate when he is worried.

  4.84. The answer to the riddle of how a woman who doesn’t fuck can be immodest is that she does something even worse: she performs fellatio.

  4.85. Ponticus drinks from a cup made of murrine, a semiprecious stone whose opacity would have hidden that he is drinking higher-quality wine than he is serving his guests. The name Ponticus (meaning “from Pontus,” a rich province in Asia Minor) would suit a man who flaunts his wealth.

  4.87. Moreno Soldevila notes that calling Bassa “your Bassa” suggests that she is the mistress of Fabullus (534). Bassa pretends to dote on infants and often keeps one near her, not because she likes babies, but so that when she farts she can blame the smell on the child.

  Book Five

  5.2. Howell notes that Martial presents this book as one that will contain only clean poems, as a tribute to Domitian in his role of censor, enforcer of public morality. Emperor Domitian added Germanicus to his name after his victory over the Chatti in Germany in 83 CE. Minerva is called “the Cecropian girl” after Cecrops, the first king of Athens (Howell, Martial: Epigrams V 79). Domitian considered Minerva, the virgin goddess of wisdom, to be his patron goddess (Shackleton Bailey 1:354n).

  5.4. Myrtale’s use of laurel to cover the odor of alcohol can’t disguise her other symptoms of inebriation. She drinks her wine unmixed with water, which would be typical only of heavy drinkers. Howell notes that the name Myrtale comes from the word for myrtle, a flower associated with Venus. She is therefore likely to be a prostitute (Howell, Martial: Epigrams V 80).

  5.9. Martial frequently jokes that doctors make their patients worse. Symmachus is a Greek name, as most doctors were Greek (Howell, Martial: Epigrams V 85). The number of students he brings with him is probably exaggerated for comic effect.

  5.17. Gellia brags of her illustrious ancestors and snubs Martial as a mere knight, saying that she wouldn’t marry less than a senator, but actually settles for a cistiber, a minor police officer (Shackleton Bailey 1:369n).

  5.20. Howell notes that the addressee of this poem, Julius Martialis, was one of Martial’s closest and oldest friends, to whom he refers in almost all of his books of epigrams (Howell, Martial: Epigrams V 99). The “proud busts” would be the wax images of ancestors that decorated the atrium of a great man’s house (100). The campus mentioned is the Campus Martius, where men went to exercise or swim in the Tiber (100). The colonnade would be one of several porticoes built to provide
shade on sunny days or shelter from the rain (86). The Virgo is the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct that brought water to the baths in the Campus Martius (101).

  5.32. Faustinus, the addressee of this poem, was a friend and patron of Martial’s (Shackleton Bailey 3:355). Quadrantem, the amount that here is translated as “a cent,” is a quarter of an as, a low-value bronze coin. Since it doesn’t make sense for someone to leave money to himself, Shackleton Bailey proposes that Crispus has spent all of his money before he dies (1:385n).

  5.33. Martial is threatening to satirize the lawyer if he learns which one is criticizing his verse.

  5.34. Martial writes several elegies for his little slave girl Erotion, whose shade he asks his dead parents to watch over in the underworld, so that she will not be frightened by Cerberus, the three-headed hound guarding Tartarus. She died six days short of her sixth birthday.

  5.36. Martial complains to his friend Faustinus about having been cheated by a man he flattered in the hope of reward, only to discover that the man had no sense of obligation to Martial in return. The humor lies in the implication that flattery creates a kind of contract between the flatterer and the flattered (Shackleton Bailey 1:387n).

  5.42. The flames are impious because they destroy the familial lares, the household gods here used to symbolize the family home (Howell, Martial: Epigrams V 128). The mistress is presumably despoiling the steward not by sleeping with him, but by demanding large sums of money that must come out of the estate of her lover. This poem, which argues that the only way to be sure to benefit from wealth is by giving it to friends and receiving their permanent gratitude, may be a graceful way to ask for money.

  5.43. Thais and Laecania are names used by Martial for prostitutes (Howell, Martial: Epigrams V 129).

  5.45. Martial implies that if Bassa were either young or beautiful, she wouldn’t need to say so.

  5.46. Martial states that the sexual unwillingness of his slave Diadumenus is part of the attraction, so he beats the boy to make him resistant, then begs him for sex. The frequent beatings cause resentment, so he loses the boy’s love, but the begging makes the boy aware of his power, so he ceases to fear Martial as well. Diadumenus is also mentioned in 3.65 and 6.34 and may be one of Martial’s actual slaves (Shackleton Bailey 3:352).