THE EPIGRAMS OF MARTIAL
BOOK TWELVE
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 XII, published towards the end of his life, in about 103..
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 volumes 480, 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.
XII 18
Martial addresses his fellow-poet Juvenal from the Spanish homeland to which he has returned and contrasts Juvenal's miserable urban existence with his own rediscovery of idyllic country life, concluding:
| […] The smooth-skinned bailiff gives my boys their rations and asks me to let him cut his long hair.[1] So fain would I live, so fain would I die. | […] dispensat pueris rogatque longos [25] levis ponere vilicus capillos. sic me vivere, sic iuvat perire. |
XII 75
| Polytimus is hurrying to the girls, Hymnus doesn’t like admitting that he’s a boy, Secundus has buttocks acornsated,[2] Dindymus is effeminate but doesn’t want to be, Amphion could have been born a girl.[3] Avitus, I would rather have their whims and haughtiness and querulous disdains than five times two hundred thousand sesterces of dowry.[4] | Festinat Polytimus ad puellas; invitus puerum fatetur Hymnus; pastas glande natis habet Secundus; mollis Dindymus est, sed esse non vult; Amphion potuit puella nasci. horum delicias superbiamque et fastus querulos, Avite, malo quam dotis mihi quinquies ducena. |
XII 86
| You have thirty boys and as many girls; you have one cock, and it doesn’t rise. What will you do? | Triginta tibi sunt pueri totidemque puellae: una est nec surgit mentula. quid facies? |
XII 96
| Since your husband’s life and fidelity is known to you and no other woman presses or threatens your marriage bed, why do you foolishly torture yourself because of pages, as though they were your rivals? Such affairs are short and fleeting. I shall show you that the boys do more for you than for their master. Thanks to them you are the only woman for your husband. They give him what you his wife don’t want to give. “But I will give it,” you say, “so that my spouse’s love doesn’t go gadding from our bedroom.” That is not the same thing. I want a Chian fig, not one of the big sort.[5] And in case you are in any doubt as to which is the Chian, the big one is yours. A married lady and a woman ought to know her limitations. Leave their part[6] to the boys and use yours. | Cum tibi nota tui sit vita fidesque mariti nec premat ulla tuos sollicitetve toros, quid quasi paelicibus torqueris inepta ministris, in quibus et brevis est et fugitiva Venus? plus tibi quam domino pueros praestare probabo: hi faciunt ut sis femina sola viro; hi dant quod non vis uxor dare. ‘do tamen,’ inquis, ‘ne vagus a thalamis coniugis erret amor.’ non eadem res est: Chiam volo, nolo mariscam: ne dubites quae sit Chia, marisca tua est. scire suos fines matrona et femina debet: cede sua pueris, utere parte tua. |
XII 97
| Your wife is a girl such as a husband would hardly ask for in his most extravagant prayers, rich, noble, cultivated, virtuous. You burst your loins, Bassus, but you do it with long-haired boys[7] whom you have procured for yourself with your wife’s dowry. And your cock, which she bought for many thousands, returns to your lady so languid that, whether excited by coaxing words or requested with a soft thumb, it won’t rise. Have some shame, for a change; or let us go to law. It’s not yours, Bassus. You sold it. | Uxor cum tibi sit puella qualem votis vix petat improbis maritus, dives, nobilis, erudita, casta, rumpis, Basse, latus, sed in comatis, uxoris tibi dote quos parasti. et sic ad dominam reversa languet multis mentula milibus redempta ut nec vocibus excitata blandis molli pollice nec rogata surgat. sit tandem pudor aut eamus in ius. non est haec tua, Basse: vendidisti. |
[1] The meaning is not quite clear, but apparently the vilicus (bailiff or steward), who may be presumed to have been a slave, is only a youth. His cutting his long hair would be a coming-of-age ceremony . If he had also been Martial’s paidika, likely in view of Martial’s tast for liaisons with slave-boys, it might also symbolise the end of that and the beginning of his life as an adult heterosexual, which Martial presumably does not mind in this case, as he has mentions having other boys, presumably of a suitably younger age.
It might be considered odd that such a young slave should hold the position of vilicus, but it is strongly reminiscent of pseudo-Lucian’s description of the exclusively boysexual Athenian Kallikratidas, who “was well provided with handsome slave boys and all of his servants were pretty well beardless. They remained with him till the down first appeared on their faces, but, once any growth cast a shadow on their cheeks, they would be sent away to be stewards and overseers of his properties at Athens.” (Forms of Love X). As with the Ottoman Sultans who made their trusted former loved boys officers of state and governors of province, it would have made good sense for the landowners of antiquity to appoint to positions of responsibility slaves whom they had learned to trust through intimacy, so perhaps Kallikratidas’s system was common amongst men who kept slave-boys for love-making. [Website footnote]
[2] There is a play in the Latin on glans, which can mean either an acorn or the similarly-shaped glans of a cock. In other words, Secundus’s buttocks have had their fill of cock. [Website footnote]
[3] So loath is he to oblige more puerili [=the boyish way]. [Translator’s footnote]
[4] All these boys except Secundus have Greek names and were presumably pueri delicati. Note that Martial was back in his native Spain when he wrote Book XII and may here be looking back fondly on boys he had loved in the past. [Website footnote]
[5] Chian figs were a strong-flavoured delicacy, whereas marisca (here translated as “the big sort”) was a cheap local fig. In other words, pedicating a woman is not the same as or a satisfactory substitute for the pleasure of pedicating a boy. [Website footnote]
[6] With a double sense, “role” and “part (of body)” [Translator’s footnote]
[7] Long hair for the sake of sensuality was a distinctive featuure of pueri delicati, beautiful slave-boys kept for sex (Philo, On the Contemplative Life 50-53), as opposed to ordinary boy slaves (described as “cropped” in Martial’s Apophoreta 158). [Website footnote]
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