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Martial: The World of the Epigram
Abstract
In this age of the sound bite, what sort of author could be more relevant than a master of the epigram? Martial, the most influential epigrammatist of classical antiquity, was just such a virtuoso of the form, but despite his pertinence to todayâs culture, his work has been largely neglected in contemporary scholarship. Arguing that Martial is a major author who deserves more sustained attention, William Fitzgerald provides an insightful tour of his works, shedding new and much-needed light on the Roman poetâs worldâand how it might speak to our own. Writing in the late first century CEâwhen the epigram was firmly embedded in the social life of the Roman eliteâMartial published his poems in a series of books that were widely read and enjoyed. Exploring what it means to read such a collection of epigrams, Fitzgerald examines the paradoxical relationship between the self-enclosed epigram and the book of poems that is more than the sum of its parts. And he goes on to show how Martial, by imagining these books being displayed in shops and shipped across the empire to admiring readers, prophetically behaved like a modern author. Chock-full of epigrams itselfâin both Latin and English versionsâFitzgeraldâs study will delight classicists, literary scholars, and anyone who appreciates an ingenious witticism.
... 4.9.34). 70 The repeated pairing of foods with antithetical features in both poems is reminiscent of the structural antithesis that defines Martial's Apophoreta, with its alternation of expensive and cheap gifts; 71 and while Fitzgerald sees this alternation as an expression of Martial's personal predilection for polarity as a rhetorical construct, 72 Seo argues that questions of reciprocity and asymmetry are embedded in the gift exchange of the Saturnalia; 73 and Rimell, in turn, sees Martial's poetics as themselves deriving from 'the mundus inversus of carnival'. 74 It may be, therefore, that we should stretch that idea of asymmetricality (whether in gift exchanges or in poetic pairings) slightly further to reflect the principle of inversion and reversal that underlies the Saturnalia as a whole. ...
This article proposes that untethering amerina at Stat. Silv. 1.6.18 from Pliny's mention of varieties of apples and pears called Amerina allows us to read the line as instead referring to a type of pastry originating in Umbrian Ameria, which is within ancient naming practices for pastries and fits better into the context of the catalogue in which the line occurs. In this case, the second half of the catalogue is closely akin to the crustulum et mulsum donative of wealthy Italian patrons in the early empire.
... 47 On Martial's reanimation of Ovid see notably Hinds 2007 andPitcher 2008;on Catullus, as earlier, Swann 1994. "With Martial, the exiled Ovid comes home and writes the poetry conceived in, but prevented by, his exile" : Fitzgerald 2007, 187. On plagiarius, see McGill 2012, including his n. 28, and on Fidentinus' role in helping Martial push the terminology forward, 88. no big payday: our poet will have to settle for worldwide fame instead. ...
... Other imperial authors signal interpretive practices to their readers, including Martial(Fitzgerald 2007.139-66, Fowler 1995 and Plutarch(König 2007). ...
Many scholars have recognized that Quintilian in the Institutio Oratoria employs the same techniques that he teaches. Few, however, have pursued the implications of this fact for our interpretation of the work: what can we learn from a text that is both didactic and persuasive? This paper argues that in Inst. 12.8 Quintilian addresses this problem, calls attention to its relevance to his treatise, and invites his readers to resist the persuasive dimension of his presentation. A fresh, resistant, examination of the concept of the vir bonus dicendi peritus illustrates how the traditional way of reading the Institutio Oratoria underestimates its sophistication.
The paper analyzes Latin literary references to the architecture of private baths in the Roman Empire. These sumptuous buildings in cities provoked a new type of reflection in a wide range of literary genres, both in the Imperial period and in Late Antiquity. The ekphrasis of both monumental and private baths took on a new character and were embedded in the central part of poetic and prose works of ancient authors. Mentions and descriptions of luxurious private baths celebrated not only the architecture itself, but also the builders and investors. The study argues that the Latin literary references demonstrate high emotional expectations of aesthetics and luxury in the architectural standards of private baths among wealthy aristocrats. Both public and private baths in imperial Rome became benchmarks of luxury architecture designed for enjoyment and entertainment. The article defines the main literary topoi, which, in connection with the description of private baths, appeared in both the poetry and prose of the imperial period. It is about light and its effects, marble and its beauty, water, and its pleasures.
Este artículo estudia las imágenes de la vejez femenina en algunas obras antiguas, principalmente los Epigramas de Marcial, las Sátiras de Juvenal y los autores de la Antología palatina. En la introducción se comparan brevemente los géneros epigramático y satírico y se intenta ofrecer una breve explicación acerca de las diferentes concepciones de la vejez en la Antigüedad. El núcleo del artículo consiste en un análisis en profundidad de los distintos estereotipos asociados a las ancianas, que contrastan con las imágenes comúnmente asociadas a las mujeres jóvenes. Su decadencia física, manifestada en la ausencia total o parcial de dientes, en sus problemas oculares, canas y/o alopecia y problemas de movilidad, motivó que estas mujeres desarrollaran una serie de prácticas que, como el uso del maquillaje y pelucas, fueron fuertemente criticadas por los autores antiguos. Dentro de los rasgos psicológicos atribuidos a las ancianas, se destacan su propensión al alcoholismo y, sobre todo, su búsqueda activa del placer. Las ancianas son, así, vistas como unos seres subversivos que no aceptan las convenciones sociales y que están dispuestas a todo con tal de dar satisfacción a sus deseos sexuales.
This article examines the interplay between the text and the physical format of the book in Martial’s Epigrams. I argue that he published his codex edition of the Epigrams towards the end of his career, and that this edition was not intended for a broad readership. Instead, I suggest that it was an expensive luxury edition, a literary gimmick. Finally, I argue that Martial uses the roll and the codex as poetic devices.
The Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Literature offers a critical overview of work on Latin literature. Where are we? How did we get here? Where to next? Fifteen commissioned chapters, along with an extensive introduction and Mary Beard's postscript, approach these questions from a range of angles. They aim not to codify the field, but to give snapshots of the discipline from different perspectives, and to offer provocations for future development. The Critical Guide aims to stimulate reflection on how we engage with Latin literature. Texts, tools and territories are the three areas of focus. The Guide situates the study of classical Latin literature within its global context from late antiquity to Neo-Latin, moving away from an exclusive focus on the pre-200 CE corpus. It recalibrates links with adjoining disciplines (history, philosophy, material culture, linguistics, political thought, Greek), and takes a fresh look at key tools (editing, reception, intertextuality, theory).
This chapter presents a case study based on two recent courses on media, material, and short literature taught at Bogazici University, in Istanbul, Turkey between 2018-2022. By introducing students to short literary genres such as aphorisms, maxims, epigrams, riddles, and dozens of other examples, students could turn their neighborhoods into anthologies by digitally mapping short literary forms in public locations. Rather than require students to buy readers, anthologies, or collections compiled by for-profit international publishers, students created, annotated, and edited their own collection of a particular short genre. The final evaluation emphasizes the importance of encouraging literary students to experiment with the categorization of literary objects rather than accept “literature” that has been judged, edited, collected, canonized by international publishing houses.
Victoria Moul's groundbreaking study uncovers one of the most important features of early modern English poetry: its bilingualism. The first guide to a forgotten literary landscape, this book considers the vast quantities of poetry that were written and read in both Latin and English from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Introducing readers to a host of new authors and drawing on hundreds of manuscript as well as print sources, it also reinterprets a series of landmarks in English poetry within a bilingual literary context. Ranging from Tottel's miscellany to the hymns of Isaac Watts, via Shakespeare, Jonson, Herbert, Marvell, Milton and Cowley, this revelatory survey shows how the forms and fashions of contemporary Latin verse informed key developments in English poetry. As the complex, highly creative interactions between the two languages are revealed, the work reshapes our understanding of what 'English' literary history means.
Carpe diem – 'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!' – is a prominent motif throughout ancient literature and beyond. This is the first book-length examination of its significance and demonstrates that close analysis can make a key contribution to a question that is central to literary studies in and beyond Classics: how can poetry give us the almost magical impression that something is happening here and now? In attempting an answer, Robert Rohland gives equal attention to Greek and Latin texts, as he offers new interpretations of well-known poems from Horace and tackles understudied epigrams. Pairing close readings of ancient texts along with interpretations of other forms of cultural production such as gems, cups, calendars, monuments, and Roman wine labels, this interdisciplinary study transforms our understanding of the motif of carpe diem.
The influence of Phaedrus the fabulist on Martial the epigrammatist has long been neglected by scholarship. Quite recently scholars have started to pay more attention to Phaedrus’ literary techniques and allusive art, thus also paving the way for a reassessment of the role which Phaedrus played as a model for Martial. This paper examines the question to what extent the Flavian epigrammatist was inspired by Phaedrus’ literary techniques and argues that Phaedrus served as an important link in the process of the reception of Neoteric and Augustan poetry. Although there are not many thematic parallels between Phaedrus and Martial, the later poet seems to have been inspired considerably by Phaedrus’ metapoetic techniques. Furthermore, the paper also investigates the epigrammatic potential of Phaedrus’ own poems, a potential which seems to have made the fabulist especially attractive as a model for Martial.
Originating from inscribed epigram, concerning itself with occasional and satirical matters, and being written during the Flavian period, a time marked by efforts to catalogue and reframe Roman thought and tradition, Martial’s Epigrams understandably so are obsessed with the material world. Material objects, animate or inanimate, are at the center of interest of Martial’s poetry so much, that this dissertation suggests materiality as a fruitful lens through which Martial’s oeuvre as a whole can be approached. To do so, this study is structured into three avenues of investigation: sense perception, the (imagined) transformations of objects that are evoked through word plays, and a play with the representation of books and poets in poetry. This study finds that Martial often calls the very concept of materiality into question. This can occur e.g., when the poet portrays things that are not material, such as a smell, as palpable within his poetry. Elsewhere, the poet implicitly suggests a transformation of the legs of an individual by juxtaposing them with similarly shaped objects. Finally, the poet imagines concepts such as the greatness of an author as a material presence that can take up an entire room. Likewise, Martial alludes to an ubiquitous, dematerialized presence when he claims that “all of Rome reads me” or “I am in everyone’s pocket,” imagining himself as one with his book. The three chapters of my dissertation in conjunction shed light on how Martial’s material worldmaking suggests a coexistence of physical and conceptual materials that can both be captured by literary epigram. Literary epigram, thus, is fruitful for a reflection on matters of materiality: originating from being inscribed in stone, turned into ephemeral entertainment-pieces which lack coherency with one another and can be fragmented by the reader at will, literary epigram comes across as an anti-genre in which the material and the abstract lie close together.
This article discusses the matter of the liability of professional slave-sellers for non-disclosure of a material defect to the buyer under Roman law. After first examining the professional sellers’ representation and image as reported in the relevant sources, the article reviews the material defects of slaves for sale through the lens of jurists’ and other relevant authors’ discussion on morbus et vitium, and how the two relate to the sellers’ claims in regard to the slaves they are selling. Next, the article provides an overview of the buyer’s legal protection in the event of a found defect or false advertising, specifically in the form of actio redhibitoria. By analyzing legal and other relevant ancient Roman sources, this article probes the fine line between allowable sales talks and legally binding sales promises on a number of peculiar slave sale contracts under Roman law. Lastly, the article argues which party to the sale contract had the less favorable position in terms of carrying the risk of the unintentionally undisclosed material defects in the classical Roman law and explores the point at which the limits to advertising end and the seller’s liablity begins.
Time is integral to human culture. Over the last two centuries people's relationship with time has been transformed through industrialisation, trade and technology. But the first such life-changing transformation – under Christianity's influence – happened in late antiquity. It was then that time began to be conceptualised in new ways, with discussion of eternity, life after death and the end of days. Individuals also began to experience time differently: from the seven-day week to the order of daily prayer and the festal calendar of Christmas and Easter. With trademark flair and versatility, world-renowned classicist Simon Goldhill uncovers this change in thinking. He explores how it took shape in the literary writing of late antiquity and how it resonates even today. His bold new cultural history will appeal to scholars and students of classics, cultural history, literary studies, and early Christianity alike.
Muchos son los estudios sobre la épica y la tragedia: estudios desde dentro, es decir, a partir de los eruditos y poetas. El poeta latino Marcial, en cambio, nos da en sus epigramas una razón humanista y realista de los escenarios, y así lo demuestra en epigramas programáticos como 1, 107; 4, 49; 5, 53; 8, 3; 8, 55; 9, 50; 10, 4; 11, 90 y 14, 1, entre otros. Un motivo de peso puede ser ensalzar el género del epigrama, en auge con el propio poeta, e intentar destacar; un segundo motivo puede ser que los géneros elevados colocan a dioses y héroes demasiado cerca del pueblo y se alejan de la realidad y de la vida cotidiana. Contra este tipo de poesía, Marcial nos enseña cuánta pedantería y vacuidad había en cada esquina donde se recitaba la épica. Se da, pues, en Marcial un rechazo programático contra la poesía elevada de gran formato, oscura erudición y temática mitológica. Lo verdaderamente notable de Marcial es que rechaza la materia misma de la que se nutría la poesía elevada, el relato mitológico, y lo hace desde unos presupuestos exclusivamente literarios, volviendo la mira de su poesía hacia el hombre: hominem nostra pagina sapit (10, 4, 10).
Digital information search tools are ubiquitous and more than ever
embedded in the activities of our everyday lives. Search engines, such as Google,
help us to find relevant information, solve problems, and support our decision-making.
This paper shows important trends in a wider framework of Fourth
Industrial Revolution and web generations. On a level of digital information
search tools, trends and emergent technologies are described in more detail and
accompanied by recent examples of tools.
It is of critical importance to recognize possible challenges of algorithmic
culture today and in the future. We describe some of the related problems and
underline that ethical norms and legal frameworks must be incorporated to
ensure that technologies will not become even more authoritative and powerful
as they are now.
Este livro reúne textos apresentados no evento internacional Quinta Semana de Estudos sobre o Período Helenístico: a Poética Calimaquiana e sua Influência na Poesia Epigramática, realizado na Faculdade de Filosofia Letras e Ciências Humanas e no Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia da Universidade de São Paulo, entre os dias 20 e 23 de setembro de 2017. Trata‐se de uma coleção de artigos que discutem aspectos do programa poético defendido na obra supérstite de Calímaco e a influência que exerceram na criação dos epigramas literários a partir do século III a.C. O livro, portanto, apresenta não somente reflexões voltadas à exposição da discussão metapoética empreendida por Calímaco em seus poemas, de modo a defender um estilo de composição, mas também aborda a recepção desse debate nas gerações de poetas subsequentes, incluindo, entre outros, Mnasalcas, Antípatro de Sídon, Meleagro, Marcial, Horácio e Gregório de Nazianzo.
The Spanish poet Martial, who moved to Rome ca. 64 ce, composed fifteen books of epigrams between the reigns of Titus and Trajan. His reflection of contemporary social life is both vivid and stridently opinionated; his purpose is wit, not impartiality. He expresses contemporary prejudices against foreigners and other minorities, and is notorious for his obscenity. He flatters his many influential patrons, most prominently the emperor Domitian, while simultaneously mocking the patronage system. His inconsistencies are best ascribed to poetic opportunism, and it is now generally recognized that he adopts an authorial persona, rather than speaking in his own voice.
This article is the first to consider book 8 of the Palatine Anthology as an integrated collection. Book 8 consists of funerary epigrams of Gregory of Nazianzus. We consider how the book is structured as a coherent collection, what its place in the Palatine Anthology is and, above all, how these underdiscussed poems contribute to the changing discourse of death in fourth-century Christianity. We also look at how the poems contribute to the Byzantine culture in which the Palatine Anthology was put together. The article reveals how Gregory rewrites both the positive values of death in a Christian community and negative descriptions of those who transgress such values.
Resumo. Neste artigo procuramos investigar a presença do poeta romano Mar-cial na literatura espanhola do século XVII. Escolhemos, como objeto de análise, os dois tratados escritos pelo jesuíta espanhol Baltasar Gracián, a Arte de ingenio, tratado de la agudeza (1642) e a Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1648). Em ambos, os epigramas de Marcial são amplamente citados como exemplos de agudezas e o poeta romano é considerado, pelo jesuíta espanhol, como primeiro grande empre-gador da figura. Dessa forma, ao analisarmos a presença de Marcial nos tratados de Gracián, buscamos compreender o caminho percorrido pelos livros de Epigra-mas e seu emprego no século XVII espanhol. Palavras-chave. Gracián; Marcial; Agudeza; Epigramas; Recepção. Abstract. In the present paper, we seek to investigate the presence of the roman poet Martial in the Spanish literature of the XVII century. We chose for the object of analysis the two treatises written by the Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián: Arte de ingenio, tratado de la agudeza (1642) and Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1648). In both, the Martial's epigrams are widely referred as examples of wits and the roman poet is considered, by the Spanish Jesuit, as the first great wit poet. Therefore, in analyz
Domitian's architecture was much denigrated, and nuanced readings of his buildings were closed off. His damnatio memoriae was remarkably complete. Buildings act as theoretically open spaces where meaning is constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed. Imperial buildings exist on a conceptual continuum with humbler structures. Domitianic architecture is read through the poetry of Martial and Statius, through elite writers such as Pliny, Suetonius, and Dio, and through Domitian's own coinage and inscriptions. Senatorial survivors justify their continued existence through denigration of Domitian's buildings, but Domitian himself becomes a kind of writer, constructing his own existence through his utterances on and in architecture.
This introductory chapter contextualizes the contributions of the various articles and their interdiscursive approach in combining material culture and literary evidence. It offers an overview of the difficulties of parsing a hostile historiographical tradition on the emperor Domitian, and the ideological as well as chronological fault-lines created by authors who very often straddled the Flavian and post-Flavian periods, turning from enthusiastic support of the emperor to damning critique; the particular challenges to the material evidence posed by Domitian's damnatio, and the physical as well as literary forms of oblivion that “erased” the last Flavian emperor; the gaps, absences, revisions, and overwritings that complicate accurate understanding of Domitian's character, achievements, and historical record.
This article reconsiders two of our most important literary sources on Domitian: Pliny the Younger's Letters and Tacitus's Agricola. Although historians have either accepted Pliny's and Tacitus's portrayal of Domitian as a bloodthirsty tyrant or dismissed it as the invention of two vengeful senators, I argue that their depiction of the last Flavian and his reign is much more complex than is usually assumed, for both men had in fact themselves served in the Domitianic administration. In their literary projects, they thus strove not only to condemn the former emperor, but also to un-damn themselves.
This dissertation investigates homo- and bisexuality in the Roman world, by focusing primarily on Pompeii’s graffiti. Scratched on walls, street facades, public buildings, within the domus and often inserted in paintings or frescoes, Pompeian graffiti differ in topic, structure and kind: they vary from insults to dedications, from political notices to salutations, from jokes to love poems. The quantity of homoerotic graffiti is, in particular, worthy of note, since they offer an important contribution to the study of homo- and bisexual attitudes in the Roman world. If today sexuality is divided into distinct categories and homo- and bisexuality are seen as “unnatural” and “against nature” in some countries, Pompeii’s homoerotic graffiti help us overturn this view: not only do they show that homo- and bisexual behaviours were widespread among the Romans but also that our modern conception of sexuality can be applied only in part to the Roman world, since it was not present in the same form. The graffiti from Pompeii demonstrate that sexuality is a transient concept, which varies according to time, society and culture, and they also invite us to think afresh about our modern way of considering of homo- and bisexual attitudes.
Résumé
Cet article vise à repenser, à la lumière des textes poétiques comme les Épigrammes de Martial, la relation que ceux qu’on a nommé captatores (captateurs d’héritages) entretenaient avec des femmes seules, (souvent) âgées et riches. En rapprochant les dispositions du droit privé en matière successorale et les formes courantes d’acquisition des richesses dans la société romaine des deux premiers siècles de notre ère, d’une part, et les comportements récurrents dans les textes poétiques, d’autre part, on montre que, loin d’être un topos littéraire, le thème de la captation d’héritage éclaire des rôles sociaux réels liés au genre et à l’âge, et les valeurs morales qui y sont rattachées. Les femmes de l’élite sans mari et sans enfants pouvaient apparaître comme riches, et comme puissantes par leur capacité à établir un réseau de relations personnelles grâce à la transmission légale de leurs biens. La perception chez Martial des modes de communications et d’interactions entre les femmes testatrices et les hommes captateurs d’héritages peut être interprétée comme une réflexion sur les expériences masculines de rabaissement.
Ancient literary theorists rarely included epigrammatic poetry in their discussions. Epigrammatic poets themselves, however, show a high degree of literary self‐awareness and repeatedly reflect on various aspects of their chosen genre: the length, language, and content of their poems, the inscriptional origin of epigram, the role of literary predecessors, the interaction with other genres, the act of reading and writing, and the problem of status within a literary hierarchy.
Martial's 12 Books of Epigrams are no arbitrary collections of pre‐existent poems. They display various patterns of arrangement (e.g., epigrammatic cycles) and there are also thematic or verbal links between poems that even go beyond the boundaries of the individual books. Martial's short poems thus constitute a 12‐book opus that has the capacity to (jokingly) rival grand literary forms, such as epic poetry.
Certain notices and critical discussions of the Georgics in Latin authors and commentators have not been collectively studied in the context of ancient reception and influence; nor, more importantly, are they even widely known. The purpose of this article is to assemble these passages and discover what they can tell us about how the poem was understood in antiquity. The collected testimony includes the earliest notices of the Georgics by key words, praise for its poetic elegance, and evaluations of the finales in ancient commentary (Servius, the Scholia Bernensia, the Georgicorum Brevis Expositio, and Macrobius’ Saturnalia).
What is satire? How can we define it? Is it a weapon for radical change or fundamentally conservative? Is satire funny or cruel? Does it always need a target or victim? Combining thematic, theoretical and historical approaches, John T. Gilmore introduces and investigates the tradition of satire from classical models through to the present day. In a lucid and engaging style, Gilmore explores: the moral politics of satire whether satire is universal, historically or geographically limited how satire translates across genres and media the boundaries of free speech and legitimacy. Using examples from ancient Egypt to Charlie Hebdo, from European traditions of formal verse satire to imaginary voyages and alternative universes, newspaper cartoons and YouTube clips, from the Caribbean to China, this comprehensive volume should be of interest to students and scholars of literature, media and cultural studies as well as politics and philosophy.
This chapter undertakes a more broadly conceived comparison of Martial's and Statius’ representations of Roman social life, values, and attitudes. Martial's Epigrams and Statius’ Silvae divulge much about the social life and climate of the Flavian age, especially during the reign of Domitian. Statius features real individuals and events in his Silvae, but in contrast to Martial he avoids the shadowy side of life in Rome and Naples and instead focuses on the more dignified and uplifting aspects of elite culture. The similarities and differences in their approaches emerge from an examination of their respective depictions of social classes, patronage and exchange, the social function and symbolic value of Roman architecture and decorative arts, sex and gender, and death and life. Statius’ Silvae celebrate major events in life such as marriage, recovery from illness, birthday, departure on a journey, and the birth of a child.
Gladiatorial games, circus games, theatrical performances, parades, including triumphs, athletic games, musical, and poetic contests were part of public spectacles which represented imperial power and created identity in the Roman empire. This chapter explores the significance of spectacle in the Flavian period, and the contribution of Flavian emperors and writers to the buildings, performance and discourse of spectacle. The epigrams in Liber Spectaculorum of Martial presents a snapshot of the discourse of spectacle in the Flavian period. The chapter talks about a vivid and detailed description of a lavish and significant Flavian parade: the triumph of Vespasian and Titus over Judea in 71 CE. It also examines three passages from Flavian epic: Valerius Flaccus’ description of the boxing match of Amycus and Pollux at Arg. 4.99-343, the triumph of Scipio at Silius’ Pun. 17.625-54, and that of Theseus at Statius’ Theb. 12.519-42.
While the Flavians broadly sought to distance themselves from the reign of Nero, there were continuities in practices related to cultural patronage, as seen in the promotion of literary activity under Nero and Domitian. Domitian's painstaking efforts to restore library collections and in securing authoritative replacement copies are noteworthy. The institution of public or semi-public recitationes dates back to Asinius Pollio in the Augustan age, and by the Flavian period it had become an indispensable medium for the dissemination of texts. The road to publication was not without obstacles. Circulation of someone's work under the name of a famous author, and plagiarism were common during the Roman imperial period. While most prominent writers tended to live in Rome and often held posts inside the imperial system, literature could and did flourish elsewhere, such as in the Greco-Roman city of Neapolis.
This article examines the historical value of poetical texts, such as the Roman poet Martial’s Epigrams , with regard to the relationship between captatores (legacy hunters) and wealthy, often elderly single women. By comparing the provisions and limits of private law, common practices of acquisition, and wealth management in Roman society during the first and second centuries AD with the behavioral patterns elaborated in poetic texts, this article demonstrates that the theme of legacy hunting was not a mere literary topos , but a scenario based on models of gender and age in addition to the values associated with them. Unmarried and childless women of the elite could be depicted as very wealthy and powerful due to their ability to establish personal relationships through the transmission of their wealth. Martial’s perception of the modes of communication and interaction between female testari-ces and male legacy hunters are interpreted as reflections of male experiences of belittlement.
Martial, perhaps the best-known author of Latin epigram, has enjoyed a resurgence of scholarly attention over the past two decades, and much has been made of his self-professed debt to earlier Latin epigrammatists, especially Catullus. Less prevalent, however, has been discussion of how he relates to authors of Greek epigram, which may not be surprising given that Martial passes over the Greek epigrammatic tradition in nearly total silence. This dissertation seeks to explain the silence. Through close readings of specific poems by Martial, both in themselves and alongside epigrams by his Greek predecessors, I argue that he has fashioned an intentionally ambivalent attitude toward the Greek tradition. Martial contends with a fundamentally Roman literary condundrum – he must negotiate the inevitable and irreconcilable tension between acknowledging the importance of his Greek predecessors and asserting his own claim to superiority over them. But Martial, I suggest, relishes such tensions, depicting Greece and Greek epigram as inconsistent and even bipolar entities which he can then exploit as sources of humor or self-aggrandizement. I claim that Martial’s suppression of the Greeks is willful; it in part offers a playful challenge to his educated audience to hunt for allusions, and in part contributes to his invention of a purely Roman epigrammatic tradition over which he himself reigns. Martial’s engagement with the Greek tradition spans hundreds of years and several subgenres of Greek epigram, three of which I have examined more or less chronologically in this study. My four chapters offer an overview of Martial’s treatment of Greek language, art, and literature within the Epigrams, and discuss how he interacts with Greek inscribed, erotic, and skoptic epigram. I ultimately reveal how Martial imagines for his audience a bipolar Greek epigrammatic tradition, deftly balancing himself between the two poles: at times he respectfully embraces his participation in the rich and varied history of Greek epigram, and at times he irreverently attempts to invert, subvert, or erase this history altogether, all for the entertainment of his well-educated readers, for whom his engagement with the Greek tradition would no doubt have been hidden in plain sight.
Die aus byz. Zeit stammende Suda (10. Jh.) nennt als Achilleus’ Geburtsort Alexandria. Auch weiB sie von seiner Bekehrung zum Christentum und sogar von seiner Bischofsweihe (beides gilt als unhistor. und wird zumeistebenso wie bei Heliodor - als Rechtfertigungsversuch fur A.’ Popularitat beim christl. Publikum gesehen). A. wird in der Suda auch als Verfasser etymologischer, bruchstuckhaft überlieferter astronomischer und polygraphischer Abhandlungen genannt (ob es sich um die fehlerhafte Gleichsetzung zweier Autoren mit demselben Namen handelt, ist unklar).
The new, anti-Callimachean "poetics of impromptu" that inspires Flavian occasional poetry is in many ways indebted to Ovid's poetics of exile, and to his addressee, that "general reader" who opened the door to cultural consumption available to all rather than to an educated, exclusive elite. The image of the emperor as a super-human power, a "Jupiter on earth," is a further Ovidian innovation that becomes the standard representation of absolute power in the encomiastic poetry of Martial and Statius' Silvae. Also important is Ovid's role as "poet of modernity," as celebrator of aesthetic principles and of social and cultural values that provide the frame in which Martial's and Statius' wealthy, leisured patrons lived.
Keeping in mind Emily Gowers's dictum that ‘food, for the Roman writer who chose to discuss it, was simultaneously important and trivial’, let us go on a mushroom hunt through the fragmented habitat of Latin literature, with some preliminary nosing about in the Greek. We are looking for μύκαι and μύκητες in Greek, and fungi in Latin, and we are keeping an eye open for one kind in particular, the boletus , although we also will stumble upon the occasional interesting fungus suillus (‘pig fungus’). We are not truffle hunting: tubera (Greek ὕδνα) are a topic for another day. Although no survey, however comprehensive, of the appearances of one foodstuff in Latin literature can do full justice to the individual sources, we can still gain something from an overview of the tradition; and although what we learn may be trivial, even the trivial can make its own small contribution to our understanding of a larger matter, in this case the representation of time and change in the Roman world.
Ahead of us with knife and collecting basket roams the ghost of the Reverend William Houghton M.A., F.L.S., Victorian parson, Rector of Wellington parish in Preston township, Shropshire, a man with time on his hands—and at least two cats—who in 1885 compiled a list titled, ‘Notices of Fungi in Greek and Latin Authors’. Dr Denis Benjamin, author of Mushrooms: Poisons and Panaceas , says that ‘it would take the persistence of another classical scholar to discover if he [Houghton] missed or misrepresented anything’. Persistence, in the form of the TLL —in its infancy when Houghton was doing his research—the RE entry ‘Pilze’, Maggiulli's Nomenclatura Micologica Latina , and the PHI database, has indeed added to the good Rector's basket a few more specimens on the Latin side, some of which are useful for our inquiry.
Of all the Roman poets, Martial is perhaps the most concerned with his material medium; the physical book itself is a major character in the Epigrams . In the context of epigram-writing, this is not so unusual; as a genre, epigram is traditionally self-conscious of its development from ‘stone to book’. As recent scholarly work has shown, however, Martial's concern with the materiality of his poetry goes to the heart of his poetic project, as he reworks images inherited from Greek epigram as well as from Catullus, Horace and Ovid to fashion a new poetics of Flavian epigram and a correspondingly unique concept of the poetry book.
It has become a scholarly commonplace to remark that the ancient Roman city had, at least after the time of Augustus, a wide, varied, and almost omni-present regime of writing in public. This regime included texts of many different types, commercial, political, dedicatory; written with charcoal, paint, stylus or chisel; on stone, wood, plaster and mortar; on private houses, public monuments, temples, shops, baths, fountains and tombs. In part, this is due to what has come to be known as the ‘epigraphic habit’, the characteristically Roman practice of recording acts and events on stone. From the late Republic onwards, both public and private individuals who had even marginal means to hire a stonecutter left behind inscriptions—honorific, commemorative, funerary—which document multiple aspects of social life, from birth to death. Many of these texts have direct ties to civic authority: decrees of the Senate or the Emperor; dedicatory texts on buildings by consuls, tribunes or other magistrates; milestones, boundary markers, altars, statue bases and the like, all of which record the names of the officials responsible for their placement. The production of such publicly-readable texts, however, was not simply the purview of the state: wealthy private individuals also could and did erect monumental inscriptions, which often recorded some act of public beneficence like the construction of a building or the presentation of gladiatorial games. Other writing was less formal: thus, in Pompeii, the famous caue canem (‘beware of the dog’) mosaic which marked the threshold of the House of the Tragic Poet; the bakery which featured a terracotta plaque with a phallus and the perhaps aspirational legend hic habitat felicitas (‘here dwells good fortune’); or the cookshop of Euxinus whose front sign announces phoenix felix et tu (‘the phoenix is lucky, and so may you be!’). As William Harris once noted, ‘Roman cities…were full of things to read’.
The literary genres considered in this chapter extend across a chronological sweep of some seven centuries and were composed for different audiences, in different poetic forms and for different performance occasions. This chapter focuses on two poets, Archilochus of Paros (seventh century BCE) and Hipponax of Ephesus (sixth century BCE), who were the best representatives of the Greek iambos in antiquity and from whom, as a consequence of their ancient reputation, the greatest part of the surviving poetry comes. The god of the Priapea recognizes that poetry about sex engages readers' own desires and impulses. The book, like the garden, is a special zone characterized by the god's license and self-display. The very utility of sexual language and imagery allows these poets to construct such imaginative satire, and allows readers to consume it with even a slight sense of moral purpose.
Unlike what is usually thought, Martial’s view of the Greeks as ‘the others’ does not share the xenophobia expressed by Juvenal in III 58-125, but is rather much more complex. The reason for this can be found, above all, in that whereas Juvenal’s point of view with respect to the Greeks is one of a strict nationalist born in the heart of the Empire, Martial’s perspective is that of a Roman citizen born on the periphery, for whom romanitas is identified with a universal and multicultural Empire. Thus for him an ethnocentric nationalism that fosters a scornful view of the ‘other’ has no meaning, and therefore Hellenophobia has a negligible presence in his work: it is limited to small flippant attacks on specific individuals, never encompassing the graeca natio as a whole like Juvenal.