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three pairs of lovers with space

THE EPIGRAMS OF MARTIAL
BOOK THREE

 

Marcus Valerius Martialis (AD 38/41-102/4) was a Roman poet born in Bilbilis in Hispania Tarraconensis (Tarragonese Spain) of Spanish stock. He lived in Rome from 64 to ca. 100, then returned home. His Epigrams, much his most celebrated and substantial work, were published in Rome in twelve books, and have since been very highly valued for both their wit and what they reveal about life in Rome. Presented here are all references to Greek love in Book III, published in late 87.

The translation, the first in English to include frank translation of passages considered obscene by modern people, is by D. R. Shackleton Bailey for the Loeb Classical Library volume 94, published by the Harvard University Press in 1993. Older translations either omitted the sexually most interesting epigrams or, much worse, misled as to their content by omitting or distorting critical phrases. The webpage editor would like to draw attention to the footnotes as being particularly important for this article, at least for readers not deeply familiar with Roman customs.

 

62

You buy boys at a hundred thousand each, often two hundred, you drink wine laid down under King Numa,[1] a modest spread of furniture costs you a million, a pound weight of silver snatches five thousand, a gilded coach is purchased for the price of a farm, your mule was bought for more than a house. Do you imagine that such acquisitions show a lofty mind, Quintus? You’re wrong. They are the purchases of a petty mind, Quintus.[2] Centenis quod emis pueros et saepe ducenis,
     quod sub rege Numa condita vina bibis,
quod constat decies tibi non spatiosa supellex,
     libra quod argenti milia quinque rapit,
aurea quod fundi pretio carruca paratur,
     quod pluris mula est quam domus empta tibi:
haec animo credis magno te, Quinte, parare?
     falleris: haec animus, Quinte, pusillus emit.
Quintus  puer del. d1

 

65

The scent of an apple as a young girl bites it, the fragrance that comes from Corycian saffron, the smell of a silvery vineyard flowering with the first clusters or grass that a sheep has freshly cropped, the odor of myrtle, of an Arabian harvester, of rubbed amber, of fire pallid with eastern incense, of turf lightly sprinkled with summer rain, of a garland that has rested on tresses wet with nard: such, Diadumenus[3], is the perfume of your kisses, cruel boy. What if you were to give them in their fulness, unstintingly?[4]  Quod spirat tenera malum mordente puella,
     quod de Corycio quae venit aura croco;
vinea quod primis floret cum cana racemis,
     gramina quod redolent, quae modo carpsit ovis;
quod myrtus, quod messor Arabs, quod sucina trita,
     pallidus Eoo ture quod ignis olet;
gleba quod aestivo leviter cum spargitur imbre,
     quod madidas nardo passa corona comas:
hoc tua, saeve puer Diadumene, basia fragrant.
     quid si tota dares illa sine invidia? 

 

 

73

You sleep with well-endowed boys, Phoebus, and what stands for them doesn’t stand for you. Phoebus, I ask you, what do you wish me to suspect? I wanted to believe you an effeminate, but rumor says you are no queen.[5]  Dormis cum pueris mutuniatis,
et non stat tibi, Phoebe, quod stat illis.
quid vis me, rogo, Phoebe, suspicari?
mollem credere te virum volebam,
sed rumor negat esse te cinaedum.

 

 

82

In a long epigram describing dinner with the debauched and ostentatiously wealthy Zoilus (described in other epigrams as a mean and depraved, nouveau-riche freedman akin to Trimalchio in Petronius’s Satyricon):

But himself, bending back toward the crowd at his feet, in the midst of lapdogs who are gnawing goose livers, divides a boar’s sweetbreads among his wrestling-coaches and bestows turtle rumps on his fancy-boy.  at ipse retro flexus ad pedum turbam
inter catellas anserum exta lambentis
partitur apri glandulas palaestritis
et concubino turturum natis donat; 
Zoilus w. puer del. d1

 

Continue to Book Four

 

[1] Numa Pompilius was the mythical second King of Rome, believed to have reigned 716-672 BC, so Martial is humourously exaggerating the “vintage” quality of  Quintus’s wine. [Website footnote]

[2] Quintus' extravagance does not proceed from a fine disregard for money but from a petty desire to flaunt his wealth. [Translator’s footnote]
     The only reason for including this epigram here is that slave-boys would generally only be bought for gigantic sums if they were exceptionally beautiful and wanted for sex. [Website footnote]

[3] Epigram V 46 implies Diadumenus was a slave, which is also suggested by his name: Diadumenos was a victorious athlete whose lost statue by the famous 5th century BC sculptor Polykleitos made him a canonical archetype of youthful beauty. It was fashionable to call pueri delicati after iconic figures with pederastic associations. [Website footnote]

[4] In Epigram III 68 soon after this, Martial says his “little book” has so far been written for matrons, and warns that henceforth he will be open and blunt about amorous matters, ie. what moderns call “obscene.” This demonstrates that to Roman thinking there was nothing indecent about the content of III 65: extolling the delights a beloved slave-boy’s kisses. [Website footnote]

[5] A man with the usual and socially acceptable Roman sexual interest in boys would want to pedicate them and would not be much interested in whether they were well-endowed or not. Hence Phoebus’s sleeping with ones with big cocks initially made Martial think he is a cinaedus, a sexual invert who wanted to be pedicated, but since rumour says he is not, he must have a different interest in big cocks (and an even worse one, as Martial had not wanted to believe it), implicitly to fellate them. Fellators are invariably looked down on in Roman literature as having disgustingly impure mouths. The main interest of this epigram is perhaps its revelation that in Roman thinking a man who enjoyed fellating well-endowed boys, however depraved that was, was not a cinaedus (or at least not necessarily so). [Website footnote]

 

 

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