IX. MARTIAL.
43-104 A.D.
He was a man of genius, of quick intelligence and vivacity, with a great deal of wit and pungency in his writings, and at the same time great candour.—Pliny, Epistula 3. 21 (Sellar's translation).
Martial was born at Bilbilis in Spain. At twenty-three years of age he came to Rome, where he resided for thirty-five years in limited circumstances, returning to his birthplace three years before his death. He composed fourteen books of Epigrams.
As a man he was social and popular. As a writer he was eminently sincere (except when playing the courtier), natural, and witty. He had no equal among the poets of his time as a lifelike painter of the actual world of his day.
For Reference: Sellar and Ramsay, Extracts from Martial (Edinburgh,
1884), Introduction; Teuffel, Schwabe, and Warr, History of Roman
Literature, vol. 2, p. 121 ff.; Friedländer, Martialis Epigrammaton
Libri (Leipzig, 1886); Paley and Stone, Select Epigrams from Martial
(London, 1881).
Metres: Choliambic, A. & G. 618, a, b, c. Selections 4, 12.
Phalaecian, A. & G. 623, 624,625. 11: Selections 1, 5, 7, 11. Elegiac,
B. 369, 1, 2; A. & G. 616: Selections 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 13.
1. 5. tu: the attorney who is conducting Martial's case. 6. periuria ff.: to a Roman the name of Carthaginian (Punicus) was a synonym for treachery. 7. Muciosque: Mucius, when captured in an attempt to assassinate King Porsena, showed his insensibility to threats by voluntarily holding his hand in the flame of an altar. Livy, 2. 12. The plurals in this line may be rendered by Sullas, Mariuses, etc.
4. Bassus is met at various points on the Appian Way farther and farther out from Rome. 1. pluit: because of the leaky aqueduct above. 2. Phrygium…ferrum: the priests of Cybele washed their knives in the Almo, a branch of the Tiber near Kome. 3. Horatiorum…campus: the traditional scene of the combat between the Horatii and Curiatii. 4. pusilli: the statue is small. fervet: is alive with worshippers. 10. coronam: hoop. 12. nondum victa faba: too young yet to crunch the bean. 15. Immo: No indeed!
5. 2. sed…fenestra: window-gardens were common in Rome. 4. nemus Dianae: i.e. a forest of 'big timber.' 7. corona: not understood. 16. sus Calydonius: the type of a huge and ferocious wild animal. 17. ungue Prognes: the talon of Progne, i.e. of the swallow. For myth see Harper's Classical Dictionary, 'Tereus.' 20. et…picata: a nut will take the place of the pitch-bedaubed dolium. 22, 23. praedium…prandium: lands…a lunch.
6. To a friend who has long been saying that to-morrow he will change it all and really live. 4. In the Orient, the region of the sunrise, is where that happy to-morrow is hiding, if anywhere. 5. These two are types of longevity.
7. 4. focus perennis: a kitchen fire never idle. 5. toga rara: a dress suit seldom. The toga was connected with burdensome duties, as with the service of client to patron. 6. vires ingenuae: a gentleman's measure of strength. 10. torus: wife. 12. quod…malis: Martial's principle in life, 'to be yourself and not strive to be somebody else.'
8. The eruption is that of 79 A.D., which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. Epistles 6. 16 and 6. 20 of the younger Pliny, and the final chapters of Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii may be read in this connection. 1. modo: but now. 2. presserat lacus: had filled the vats. 3. Nysae: a mountain in India where, according to the myth, Bacchus was born. 5. Veneris sedes: Venus was the protecting deity of Pompeii. 6. Herculaneum was named from and protected by Hercules. 7. mersa favilla: Pliny, writing of the eruption, says, Epistula 6. 20. 18, 'Everything was covered with deep ashes as with snow.' 8. nec…sibi: and the gods could wish they had not been permitted this.
9. When Brutus, the slayer of Caesar, committed suicide after the defeat at Philippi, his wife Porcia also took her own life. The common story was that her friends, suspecting her design, removed all weapons out of her way, and that she thereupon destroyed herself by swallowing live coals. The real fact may have been that she suffocated herself by the vapor of a charcoal stove,—a common method of suicide with the Romans. 4. fatis: by his death. patrem: Cato the Younger, who slew himself at Utica after the disastrous battle at Thapsus. 6. ferrum: emphatic.
10. 1. Arria: the wife of Caecina Paetus. In 42 A.D., on the charge of conspiracy against the government, Paetus was ordered by the Emperor Claudius to put an end to his own life. When he hesitated, Arria stabbed herself and handed him the dagger, saying, Paete, non dolet.
Pliny, Epistula 3. 16. 6, says of her conduct on another occasion when, fearing the effect of the news on her husband, then dangerously ill, she concealed from him the death of their son:
Glorious indeed that act of hers, to bare the steel, to thrust her bosom through, to draw the dagger forth, to hand it to her husband, to add words immortal and almost divine, 'Paetus, I feel no pain!' But, doing this and saying this, glory and eternal fame were in her thought. How much greater is it, without the prize of fame, without the prize of glory, to hide the tears, conceal the grief, and, bereaved of a son, still to act the mother! 4. sed…dolet: i.e. it is your wound that will give me pain.
11. 1. Flaminiam: sc. viam. 2. noli…marmor: the roads leading out from Rome were lined with tombs. 3. salesque Nili: Paris appears to have been an Egyptian. 6. omnea Veneres Cupidinesque: imitation of Catullus, 3. 1 (Selection 3. 1). 7. Paris: a popular Roman actor, put to death by Domitian.
12. This and the following selection are in memory of a child whose parents were slaves on Martial's estate. 1. senibus cygnis: 'swans sing sweetest when they die.' Notice that all the objects with which Erotion is compared in lines 1-6 are white. Martial is thinking of the whiteness of her complexion, a quality admired by the Romans. 2. The Tarentine wool was highly prized. 4. lapillos: pearls. 5. dentem: tusk. 7. Baetici gregis: the flocks on the Guadalquivir whose wool was naturally of a yellowish color. 8. Rhenique nodos: the hair of the Germans gathered into a club. Erotion's hair was the light flaxen of the Teutonic type. 9. Paesti: a city in Lucania, celebrated for its twice-blowing roses,— Vergil, Georgics, 4. 119, biferi rosaria Paesti. 10. Atticarum cerarum: Attica—and particularly Mt. Hymettus—was famous for its honey. 11. Martial several times refers to the agreeable odor of amber when warmed by holding or rubbing with the hand. 13. sciurus: derived from Greek [Greek: skia] and [Greek: oura], lit. 'the shadow-tail.' Our word 'squirrel' comes through the Late Latin diminutive forms, scuriolus, squirolus, squirelus. 19. pariter: in like manner with myself. 20. vernulae: contrasted with nobilem of line 22. 23. Quid esse fortius potest: Can any one display more fortitude? 24. Ducenties: lit. 20,000,000 sesterces, here of indefinite value.
13. Martial at the tomb which has just received Erotion's ashes appeals to his dead parents to keep the child from fear at sight of the 'black spectres' and monstrous Cerberus. 2. oscula: in apposition to puellam. 5. modo:, just. In six days she would have been six years old. 7. patronos: protectors, i.e. Fronto and Flacilla. 9, 10. nec…fueris: sit tibi terra levis, of ten found as S. T. T. L., is a phrase common upon Roman tombstones.
In another epigram (10. 61), a translation of which by Leigh Hunt follows, the poet, about to depart finally from the estate where Erotion is buried, thus beautifully commends to his successors the care of her tomb:
Underneath this greedy stone
Lies little sweet Erotion;
Whom the Fates, with hearts as cold,
Nipped away at six years old.
Thou, whoever thou mayest be,
That hast this small field after me,
Let the yearly rites be paid
To her little slender shade;
So shall no disease or jar
Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar;
But this tomb be here alone
The only melancholy stone.