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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Martial presents a critical problem. On the one hand, there was his undeniable popularity and literary influence on European literature from the Renaissance to at least the end of the seventeenth century. On the other hand, there is the obvious embarrassment he presents to modern literary historians.
The two viewpoints are easily contrasted. Pliny the Younger in the famous letter written about 102 had expressed doubts about Martial's literary survival, but gave him generous credit for his talent, sharp wit, candour, and mordancy. (Erat homo ingeniosus acutus acer, et qui plurimum inscribendo et satis haberet etfellis, nec candoris minus, Ep. 3.21.1.) Nevertheless Martial's work survived the wreck of late Antiquity and the Middle Ages handsomely, and with the Renaissance, he came into his own as a poet. Angelo Poliziano described him as ingeniosissimus, ‘very talented’, and argutissimus, ‘clever’ (Miscellan. 6); such judgements were echoed by Jovianus Pontanus (De sermone 3.18) and Julius Caesar Scaliger, who claimed that many of his epigrams were divina, praising their sermonis castitas, ‘purity of speech’ (Poet. 3.126). Festivissimus, ‘most witty’, and lepidissimus, ‘charming’, were the adjectives used by Adrianus Turnebus (Advers. 8.4; 13.19). Only a few critics, such as the censorious Andrea Navigero and Raffaele Maffei (Volaterranus), objected to him on moral grounds. His reception among English poets was equally enthusiastic. Sir John Harington stated firmly ‘that of all poems, the Epigram is the pleasantest, and of all that write epigram, Martial is counted the wittiest.’
1. An earlier Spanish version of this essay was presented at the Simposio sobre Marco Valerio Marcial in Calatayud, 9–10 May, 1986.
2. A History of the Roman World from 30 B.C. to A.D. 138 (London 1959) 266 Google Scholar.
3. The Cambridge History of Classical Literature II: Latin Literature (Cambridge, UK 1982) 21, 611, 600fGoogle Scholar.
4. As we know from Pliny (Ep. 4.14.9) who offers alternative words such as poematium, idyllium, ecloga.
5. The semiotic intricacies of the imperial cult are discussed by Weinreich, O., Studien zu Martial: literarhistorische und religionsgeschichte Untersuchungen (Stuttgart 1928) 90 Google Scholar; see also Sauter, F., Der römische Kaiserkult bei Martial u. Statius (Stuttgart 1934 Google Scholar), and Scott, K., The Imperial Cult Under the Flavians (Stuttgart 1934 Google Scholar). On the question of Domitian as dominus et deus, see Wardman, A., Religion and Statecraft among the Romans (London 1982) 93 Google Scholar.
6. See Sailer, R. P., Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge, UK 1982) 7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Marcel Mauss has pointed out, giving and giving back constitute a most important and complex system of communication, transforming nearly every human relationship into an exchange of gifts; see ‘ Essai sur le don’, Année Sociologique 2.1 (1923-24) 30 Google Scholar.
7. See Malnati, T. P., The Nature of Martial’s Humour (Diss. Johannesburg 1984) 98 Google Scholar.
8. Malnati (n.7 above) 23, 56.
9. See Hopkins, Keith, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, UK 1978) 115 Google Scholar; Croix, G. E. M. de Ste., The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek Wbrld (Ithaca 1981) 175 Google Scholar. Five freedmen, one of these non-imperial, are listed among the twenty-three richest men of the Principate by Duncan-Jones, R., The Economy of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, UK 1974) 343 Google Scholar.
10. Two hundred and sixty in all; for an analysis, see Garrido-Hory, M., Martial et l’esclavage (Paris 1981) 37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11. On the evidence for adultery in Rome, see further, Richlin, A., The Garden of Priapus (New Haven 1983) 215 Google Scholar.
12. For the details, see my ‘Martial’s Sexual Attitudes’, Philologus 123 (1979) 288 Google Scholar.
13. For a more detailed sketch of this view, see my ‘The Roots of Anti-feminism in Greece and Rome’, Helix 19 (1984) 71 Google Scholar; for comments on the change under Christianity, see de Ste. Croix (n.9 above) 103.
14. There is some evidence that Bilbilis was romanised and therefore pro-Roman from an earlier period than most cities in Northern Spain; see Martin-Bueno, M. A., Bilbilis: Estudio historico-arqueologico (Saragossa 1975) 309 Google Scholar.
15. For a fuller list, see White, P., ‘The Friends of Martial, Statius, and Pliny, and the Dispersal of Patronage’, HSCP 79 (1975) 265 Google Scholar.
16. See Gerlach, O., De Martialis figurae aprosdoketon quae vocatur usu (Diss. Jena 1911 Google Scholar); Siedschlag, E., Zur Form von Martials Epigrammen (Berlin 1977) 35 Google Scholar; Freud, S., Jokes and their Relationship to the Unconscious, trs. Strachey, James (London 1960) ch.3Google Scholar. The Roman reader, however, would have put a higher value on paronomasia than we do. Lucretius, Varro and others believed that even primitive words, rather than being arbitrary signs, expressed or described the nature or origin of things sometimes by the contrary of their meaning (e.g. ignis from lignis; lucus a non lucendo; in effect, there is verum in the verbum); see in general Ahl, F., Metaformations (Ithaca 1985) 22ff.Google Scholar The calembour as a method of serious investigation has now been revived in the work of Jacques Derrida; see in particular Glas (Paris 1974 Google Scholar).
17. ‘His merit seems to me to lie, not in wit, but in the rapid succession of vivid images.’ The whole letter in which this remark occurs deserves consultation for Macaulay’s general strictures; see Trevelyan, G. O., The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (London 1878) vol. II, 458f Google Scholar.
