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HOW'S YOUR FATHER? A RECURRENT BILINGUAL WORDPLAY IN MARTIAL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2015

Robert Cowan
Robert Cowan*
Affiliation:
The University of Sydney
*
bob.cowan@sydney.edu.au
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Extract

The primary obscenity futuo (‘the male part in sexual intercourse with a woman’) is unsurprisingly rare in literary Latin. Apart from a single occurrence in Horace's Satires (1.2.127, in a passage evoking the adultery mime), its usage is limited to the even lower genre of scoptic epigram, as represented by Catullus, Octavian, Martial and the Priapeia, though it frequently occurs in graffiti. Adams has shown how it tends to be a neutral and even affectionate term, lacking any sense of aggression, though not of the assertion of conventional virility. Nevertheless, it is used almost exclusively of recreational, extramarital and/or illicit sex. This may be in part a function of the way in which its obscenity and low linguistic register (closely equivalent to its English equivalent ‘fuck’) restrict it to the low genres which tend to deal with such subject matter, but this is a potentially circular argument and, whether chicken or egg came first, the undeniable result is an association of the verb with intercourse which is not primarily or even in any way aimed at procreation. It is striking and anomalous, therefore, when Martial uses futuo, on five occasions, in contexts relating to the production (or avoidance of the production) of children. Of course, on a purely logical and biological level, the connection between futuo (specifically the penetration of the vagina by the penis, carefully differentiated by Martial in particular from sexual practices involving other orifices and/or members, such as pedicatio, fellatio and cunnilingus) and the engendering of children is an obvious one. Nevertheless, the aforementioned strong associations of the verb with sex aimed at everything but procreation renders its use in this context jarring. This incongruity and clash of registers is, of course, characteristic of Martial's technique, and the obscenity gains an added spice from being applied to respectable marital relations. The jarring quality is an end in itself and accounts for itself. Yet I wish to argue that there is a further dimension to this discordant association of ‘fucking’ and ‘begetting’, based on a bilingual wordplay between futuo and its near-homonym, the Greek verb φυτεύω. By means of this pun, Martial mischievously suggests not only that ‘fucking’ can be mentioned in the context of ‘begetting’, but also that the two are—in accordance with biology but against all decorum—identical.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 736 - 746
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

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References

1 On distribution and usage, see J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982), 118–22 (definition quoted from 118), and A. Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (Oxford, 19922 [orig. New Haven, 1983]), index verborum s.vv. futuo/fututor/fututrix.

2 Adams (n. 1), 119–20. On the use of futuo and other obscenities in brothel graffiti as an ‘interactive discourse in which masculinity was proclaimed and contested’, see Levin-Richardson, S., ‘ Facilis hic futuit: graffiti and masculinity in Pompeii's “purpose-built” brothel’, Helios 38 (2011), 59–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 74.

3 The case of Philaenis, who ‘rightly calls the girl she fucks her “friend/girlfriend”’ (recte, quam futuis, uocas amicam, 7.70.1), using the tribad's fabled oversized clitoris, proves the rule, since being the subject of the verb futuo is one of her many transgressively masculine traits. The same figure performs the other quintessentially masculine sexual act of pedicatio when she ‘buggers boys’ (pueros pedicat, incidentally with bilingual wordplay on puer/παῖς) at 7.67.1.

4 ‘To beget’ is listed as a metaphorical usage by LSJ s.v. φυτεύω, with the literal sense being ‘to plant a tree’, and even the lexicon's own earliest instance of the procreative meaning, Hes. Op. 812, is taken as meaning ‘plant’ by M.L. West, Hesiod Works and Days (Oxford, 1978), ad loc. Yet the sense ‘beget’ is extremely common from the fifth century onwards in drama, lyric and prose, sufficiently so for it to come immediately to mind when φυτεύω is punningly evoked.

5 U. Joepgen, Wortspiele bei Martial (Bonn, 1967), 57–163; E. Siedschlag, Zur Form von Martials Epigrammen (Berlin, 1977), 86–92; J.P. Sullivan, Martial, The Unexpected Classic (Cambridge, 1991), 244–8; F. Grewing, ‘Etymologie und etymologische Wortspiele in den Epigrammen Martials’, in id. (ed.), Toto Notus in Orbe: Perspektiven der Martial-Interpretation (Stuttgart, 1998), 315–56; Schneider, W.J., ‘Ein Sprachspiel Martials’, Philologus 144 (2000), 339–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D. Vallat, ‘Bilingual word-play on personal names in Martial’, in J. Booth and R. Maltby (edd.), What's in a Name? The Significance of Proper Names in Classical Latin Literature (Swansea, 2006), 121–43; Mulligan, B., ‘Bad scorpion: cacemphaton and poetics in Martial's Ligurinus-cycle’, CW 106 (2013), 365–95Google Scholar.

6 On Martial's Greek in general: Adamik, T., ‘The function of words of Greek origin in the poetry of Martial’, AUB(ling) 5–7 (1975), 169–76Google Scholar; A. Canobbio, ‘Parole greche in Marziale: tipologie di utilizzo e tre problemi filologici (3, 20, 5; 3, 77, 10; 9, 44, 6)’, in A. Bonadeo, A. Canobbio and F. Gasti (edd.), Filellenismo e identità romana in età flavia (Como, 2011), 58–89. On bilingual wordplay, see esp. Vallat (n. 5) and Mulligan (n. 5), though all the studies listed in the previous note include examples.

7 On this sub-category, see esp. Joepgen (n. 5), 116–40 and Grewing (n. 5).

8 Adams (n. 1), 118.

9 The ‘natural’, as opposed to ‘conventional’, theory of language and the attendant importance of etymology is, of course, particularly associated with the Stoics, though it also had a much wider diffusion. See D.M. Schenkeveld and J. Barnes, ‘Language’, in K. Algra, J. Barnes, J. Mansfeld and M. Schofield (edd.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1999), 177–224, at 180–7.

10 Mulligan (n. 5), esp. 370–4.

11 Suppression: J.J. O'Hara, True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, 1996), 79–82. Flamingo: Grewing (n. 5), 331.

12 On ‘markers’ or ‘signposts’, see Maltby, R., ‘The limits of etymologizing’, Aevum(ant) 6 (1993), 257–75Google Scholar, at 268–70; O'Hara (n. 11), 75–9; in Martial: Grewing (n. 5), 327–33.

13 Vallat (n. 5), 128–30. It must be added that names, esp. Greek names—in Martial at least—already carry some expectation of added etymological or punning significance, in a way that verbs and common nouns do not.

14 This is closer to what Vallat (n. 5), 125–7 calls ‘lexical activation’. For ‘transcoding’ of a bilingual wordplay (here involving juxtaposition), see Vallat (n. 5), 134–5 on Horatius as ‘the man who watches’ (ὁρατός) in 4.2.6 albis spectat Horatius lacernis.

15 Note the tenth principle of Varronian ‘etymology’, according to F. Ahl, Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets (Ithaca 1985), 59: ‘Greek “y” may be treated, in Latin, as akin to either “u” or “i”’, though he admits that ‘Varro does not help a great deal here.’ W.S. Allen, Vox Latina (Cambridge, 1965), 52–3 notes the play on Λυδός in non omnis aetas, Lude, ludo conuenit at Plaut. Bacch. 129 and the persistence of Roman identification of υ and u, at least in colloquial speech, even after the adoption of letter y and of a more Hellenizing pronunciation.

16 Taking the Latin perfects as equivalent to Greek aorists would lessen the dissimilarity a little: futuit/ἐφύτευσε and futuisse/φυτεύσαι. I omit the present passive infinitive futui and its lack of resemblance to φυτεύεσθαι, since 6.67.2 is a marginal case on other grounds, as I discuss below.

17 Ahl (n. 15), esp. 54–60.

18 J.N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language (Cambridge, 2003), 27; cf. ibid., 28, 419–22.

19 Enn. Ann. fr. 120 Skutsch, Ov. fr. 15 Courtney apud Quint. Inst. 8.6.33, Cic. Att. 1.16.13 = SB 16.

20 J. Morreal, Taking Laughter Seriously (Albany, 1983), 71.

21 Richlin (n. 1), 134 emphasizes the element of misogynistic invective: ‘her wish to avoid having children marks her as a bad woman, the opposite of the traditional matrona’.

22 Pace F.M. Sapsford, ‘The “Epic” of Martial’ (PhD Thesis, Birmingham, 2012), 121–2, the eunuchs must be copulating with Caelia rather than performing cunnilingus on her, since futuo cannot be used of the latter activity (though it does occasionally equate to pedicatio in graffiti: Adams [n. 1], 121), and the ability of some eunuchs, esp. those castrated after puberty, to perform the former was acknowledged in antiquity as well as by modern science (N.M. Kay, Martial Book XI: A Commentary [London, 1985], 239–40 on 11.81.3, with further references).

23 The paradox might be softened by the normative antithesis between male begetting and female bearing in Greek and Latin, and indeed φυτεύω specifically refers to the father and τίκτω to the mother at Lys. 11.4, τὴν τεκοῦσαν ἢ τὸν φυτεύσαντα τύπτειν, glossing πατραλοίαν ἢ μητραλοίαν in the previous clause, though τίκτω, unlike pario, is frequently used of begetting.

24 Both M. Citroni (ed.), M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton Liber Primus (Florence, 1975), ad loc. and P. Howell, A Commentary on Book One of the Epigrams of Martial (London, 1980), ad loc. consider the pun the point as well as the climax of the whole epigram. V. Rimell, ‘The good, the bad, and the in-between: touching and mixing in Martial Epigrams 1’, Ordia Prima 5 (2006), 91–119, at 92 detects a further play on implet (4) as ‘fill up’ and ‘impregnate’.

25 It might be added that Martial specifies that Quirinalis’ innovative method is aimed at producing sons (cum uelit habere filios, 2), thus eliminating even the potential double entendre that a new generation of maids is being ‘begotten’ among uernae of both genders.

26 The principal implied object is presumably Philinus’ wife, since he paradoxically ‘became a father’, doubtless of her illegitimate children, without ‘fucking’ her. Indeed, the translation in S. McGill, Plagiarism in Latin Literature (Cambridge, 2012), 100 supplies the understood object ‘his wife’. The omission of an explicit object is enough to facilitate the wordplay, but the verb should also be taken in part absolutely, since the extreme paradox is the implication that he became a father without ‘fucking’ anyone, perhaps hinting at impotence, or anal or cunnilingual preferences, as well as cuckoldry, as discussed further below.

27 Williams, C.A., ‘ Sit nequior omnibus libellis: text, poet, and reader in the epigrams of Martial’, Philologus 146 (2002), 150–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 168: ‘The activity of engaging in sexual intercourse so as to produce a child is analogous to engaging in an act of poetic composition so as to produce a text’; M. Neger, Martials Dichtergedichte: das Epigramm als Medium der poetischen Selbstreflexion (Tübingen, 2012), 120–2: ‘stellt Martial nun ganz explizit eine Paralelle zwischen futuere und scribere her’ (120). Cf. J.P. Hallett, ‘Nec castrare uelis meos libellos: sexual and poetic lusus in Catullus, Martial and the Carmina Priapea’, in C. Klodt (ed.), Satura Lanx: Festschrift für Werner A. Krenkel zum 70. Geburtstag (Hildesheim, 1996), 321–44.

28 Williams (n. 27), 168 assumes that Philinus is a cuckold. Neger (n. 27), 121 similarly places him in the role of passive victim, but ingeniously suggests that the answer to Avitus’ question is furtum, playing on its erotic (‘adultery’) and literary (‘plagiarism’) senses while connecting both to the juridical concept which underpins the metaphors. She does not raise the issue that Philinus is the victim, Gaditanus the perpetrator of the respective furta.

29 Sullivan, J.P., ‘Martial's “witty conceits”: some technical observations’, ICS 14 (1989), 185–99Google Scholar, at 191–2 argues for a different sort of mismatch, curiously citing this as an instance of Martial's ‘misuse of analogical argument … To claim to be a poet without proof may be pretentious, but it is in the realm of the conceivable; Philinus’ paternity, however, is quite impossible and the analogy discredits Gaditanus’ claims.’ Yet if, in accordance with the fantastic extremes of epigrammatic humour, Gaditanus literally writes nothing, then his being a poet is quite as impossible as Philinus’ paternity. One might add that, since both acts were primarily private, their non-performance, which Martial authoritatively asserts, would be a particularly difficult negative to prove.

30 Neger (n. 27), 121 attractively suggests that the unstated near-homonyms liberi and libri lie behind the children/books, which are illegitimately claimed. The metaphor of poem-as-child in the context of plagiarism is a notable variation on that of poem-as-commodity, which dominates Martial's treatment of the subject. On the latter, see Seo, J.M., ‘Plagiarism and poetic identity in Martial’, AJPh 130 (2009), 567–93Google Scholar.

31 See McGill (n. 26), 100, though he does not develop the analogical implications for Philinus.

32 Although Cinna in 6.39 was cited above as an instance of a cuckold unwittingly or unwillingly bringing up other men's children, L. Watson and P. Watson (edd.), Martial Select Epigrams (Cambridge, 2003), 234 suggest, among the numerous alternatives which they offer as equally possible, that he too might be either impotent or more attracted to men.

33 e.g. 2.45, 3.73, 3.75, 11.25, 11.46, 11.71, 12.86; Xen. 34. The specific connection between impotence and the failure to beget children is made in 9.66, in 8.31, which adds (as in 10.102) the risk of the target's wife bearing illegitimate children, and in 10.91, where (as in 6.39) the issue of slaves fathering bastards is raised, though with the twist that the slaves are eunuchs and the husband impotent, so that the wife does not conceive at all. On impotence in Martial, see H.P. Obermayer, Martial und der Diskurs über männliche ‘Homosexualität’ in der Literatur der frühen Kaiserzeit (Tübingen, 1998), 255–330; J.M. McMahon, Paralysin Cave: Impotence, Perception, and Text in the Satyrica of Petronius (Leiden, 1998), 41–4.

34 Ov. Tr. 1.1.115–16, 3.1.57, 3.14.14, Pont. 4.5.29; Mart. 10.104.

35 On 9.41 and Ov. Am. 2.14.9–18, see C. Henriksén, A Commentary on Martial, Epigrams Book 9 (Oxford, 2010), 179 on 9.41.5–6.

36 Hyperbaton: Henriksén (n. 35), 179 ad loc. comments that ‘the inversion of the conjunction ut serves to emphasize the two most important words in the clause … viz. generaret and tres’. Counting: V.E. Rimell, Martial's Rome: Empire and the Ideology of Epigram (Cambridge, 2008), 109–11.

37 Henriksén (n. 35), 179 asserts that ‘[t]his moralizing outburst and the hypocritical argumentation in particular is hard to explain unless Ponticus is taken to be a would-be moral philosopher’, but, while attractive, this added dimension is not necessary and indeed made less probable by the absence of any reference to hypocrisy. It is perfectly in Martial's manner to revel in the paradox of making ‘fucking’ a moral duty without any added motivation.

38 Richlin (n. 1), 132.

39 sancta ducis summi prohibet censura uetatque | moechari. gaude, Zoile, non futuis, 6.91. Critics who posit a politically subversive Martial see a criticism of the laws’ ineffectuality here (J. Garthwaite, ‘Martial, Book 6, on Domitian's moral censorship’, Prudentia 22 [1990], 12–22, at 16; C. McNelis, ‘Ovidian strategies in early imperial literature’, in P.E. Knox [ed.], A Companion to Ovid [Malden, MA, 2009], 395–410, at 402–3), but the emphasis is surely on the invective against Zoilus. Indeed, Johnson, M., ‘Martial and Domitian's moral reforms’, Prudentia 29 (1997), 24–70 Google Scholar, at 53 yokes invective and panegyric, claiming that ‘[t]he ridicule of Zoilus is juxtaposed with Martial's siding with Domitian’.

40 D.R. Shackleton Bailey's emendation in line 4, leuis pectore (‘Corrections and explanations of Martial’, CPh 73 [1978], 273–96Google Scholar, at 293, crediting G.W. Bowersock), fits the stereotype of the effeminate male far better than the MS reading latus.

41 See Watson and Watson (n. 32), 188–90 for full discussion.

42 12.26: a latronibus esse te fututam | dicis, Saenia: sed negant latrones.

43 I am grateful to my Intermediate Latin students at the University of Sydney in 2012 and 2013, whose determination to detect filthy doubles entendres everywhere in Martial made me sensitive to this clean pun on a dirty word. My thanks also to CQ's anonymous reader and especially to CQ editor Bruce Gibson for their helpful comments.