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Martialis Redivivus: Evaluating the Unexpected Classic The First J.P. Sullivan Annual Lecture in Classics, UCSB March 10, 1994

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

A.J. Boyle
A.J. Boyle*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
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Extract

Pignus Amoris

I begin with a pre-text. It is a short poem about intellectual hypocrisy which might have been written by Martial had he lived in southern California in the 1990's. Its author is in fact John Sullivan. The title of the poem is ‘Pop Sociologist’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , 1995 , pp. 82 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1995

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References

I am indebted in the above to the following translators: Anon. British Library Egerton Ms. 2982 (for Ep. 6.93), the late Brian Hill (for Ep. 1.24, 11.8), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (for Ep. 10.47), James Michie (for Ep. 2.11, 8.12), Olive Pitt-Kethley (for Ep. 1.37), Anthony Reid (for Ep. 1.23), Peter Whigham (for Ep. 10.4). The versions (in some cases modernised) may be found in Sullivan, J. P. and Whigham, Peter (edd.), Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1987)Google Scholar. A large anthology of translations and imitations from the Tudor period to the present day, edited by the late J.P. Sullivan and myself, is to be published by Penguin early in 1996.

1. The poem may be found in Sullivan, J.P., The Jaundiced Eye: Satires and Poems (Buffalo NY 1976).Google Scholar

2. The most recent edition: Martyn, J.R.C. (ed.), Ioannis Audoeni Epigrammatum Libri I-III (Leiden 1976)Google Scholar, Libri 1V-X (Leiden 1978).Google Scholar

3. For further details of the works by J.P. Sullivan mentioned in this paragraph see the bibliography earlier in this volume.

4. Times Literary Supplement June 26 1992.

5. Holzberg, N., Martial (Heidelberg 1988).Google Scholar

6. See Bramble, J.C., ‘Martial and Juvenal’, in Kenney, E.J. and Clausen, W.V. (edd.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, Vol II (Cambridge 1982), 597–623, esp. 611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Citroni, M., ‘Motivo di polemica letteraria negli epigrammi di Marziale’, DArch 2 (1968), 259ff.Google Scholar

8. See Mason, H., ‘Is Martial a Classic?’, The Cambridge Quarterly 17 (1988), 297–368, esp. 304,331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Cassity, T., ‘The Undeceived’, Chicago Review 37 (1990), 42ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. MUC throughout is Sullivan, J.P., Martial: The Unexpected Classic (Cambridge 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Housman, A.E., ‘Draucus and Martial XI 8’, CR 44 (1930), 114–16.Google Scholar

12. Cf. esp. Ov. Tr. 4.10.If., 121f., 127–32. For details see Howell, P., A Commentary on Book One of the Epigrams of Martial (London 1980)Google Scholar, ad loc. For Howell (101), ‘Ovid Tristia IV.10…has so many similarities with M.’s epigram that this can be no coincidence.’ No interpretation is offered, however, of either Martial’s intention or the likely effect of this rewriting of Ovid on Martial’s readers.

13. Cf. the similar pun at Ep. 1.101.10, discussed by Fowler above.

14. For a discussion of this rewriting see Richlin, A., The Garden of Priapus 2 (Oxford 1992), 5–7.Google Scholar

15. Seel, O., ‘An Approach to Martial’, in Sullivan, J.P. (ed.), The Classical Heritage: Martial (New York & London 1993), 180–202Google Scholar, esp. 200. On Martial’s sophisticated use of the book-form see now Fowler above.

16. Kay, N.M., Martial Book XI: A Commentary (London 1985), 6.Google Scholar

17. See esp. now Garthwaite, J., ‘The Panegyrics of Domitian in Martial Book 9’, Ramus 22 (1993), 78–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Cf. uera deum suboles, Ep. 6.3.2 and cara deum suboles, Ec. 4.49; magne puer, Ep. 6.3.2, and parue puer, Ec. 4.60; pater…regas orbem cum seniore senex, Ep. 6.3.3f., and reget patriis uirtutibus orbem, Ec. 4.17; aurea…fila, Ep. 6.3.5, and gens aurea, Ec. 4.9. For the urgent repeated imperative of nascere, Ep. 6.3.If., see incipe, Ec. 4.60, 62; for the fate motif of Ep. 6.3.5f., see Ec. 4.46f.

19. Ahl, F., ‘The Rider and the Horse; Politics and Power in Roman Poetry from Horace to Smius’, ANRW 11.32.1 (1984), 40–124Google Scholar, esp. 101; Jones, B.W., The Emperor Domitian (London & New York 1992), 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Suet. Dom. 10.

20. Especially that marked by the rhetorical figure of emphasis, the figure (so Quintilian) ‘whereby we want something we do not say understood through a kind of suspicion’ (in quo per quondam suspicionem quod non dicimus accipi uolumus, Inst. Or. 9.2.65), and ‘something hidden is dug out from something said’ (ex aliquo dicto latens aliquid eruitur, Inst. Or. 9.2.64). Importantly Quintilian nominates as a primary occasion for the use of this figure: when ‘it is not safe enough to speak openly’ (si dicere palam parum tutum est, Inst. Or. 9.2.66). The relevance of emphasis to Juvenal is discussed by Winkler above; its relevance to Martial’s epigrams needs no elucidation. For an example of ‘recuperative pressure’ on Martial’s ‘figured writing’, see Ahl (n.19 above), 85ff., on the lion and hare cycle.

21. Holzberg (n.5 above), 92.

22. Cassity (n.9 above), 42.

23. See, for example, my Seneca’s Troades (Leeds 1994), 34–37.Google Scholar

24. E.J. Kenney and J.C. Bramble in Kenney and Clausen (n.6 above), 21, 600f., 611; esp. Bramble (600): ‘Martial…never makes us think’.