THE APOPHORETA
BY MARTIAL

The Apophoreta, published in Rome for the festival of the Saturnalia (held every December) of 83, 84 or 85, is the third surviving work of the Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis (AD 38/41-102/4), who was born in Bilbilis in Hispania Tarraconensis (Tarragonese Spain) of Spanish stock and lived in Rome from 64 to ca. 100.

The title, meaning “to be carried away” refers to the left-overs (originally food, but later extended to cutlery, furniture and all sorts of other things associated with the feast) which guests were customarily allowed to carry away from dinner-parties. Accordingly, the independent poetic couplets of which the book is comprised are about these items and were written in a Saturnalian, ie. festive, spirit.

Presented here are the four couplets of Greek love interest. The translation is by D. R. Shackleton Bailey for the Loeb Classical Library volume 480, published by the Harvard University Press in 1993.^[1] 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.

158

171

173

205

^[1] In this book and in almost all modern publication it is also titled Epigrams Book XIV. This misnomer is purely modern editing. The poems predate the twelve books of epigrams by Martial that were titled as Epigrams Books I to XII, and are also distinct from them in being couplets. [Website footnote]

^[2] These inferior slaves with short hair (like most males) would appear on humdrum occasions, not the dinner-table, to which one would summon the pick of one’s corps of slaves, one’s pueri delicati, beautiful and frequently naked slave-boys kept for sex, whose hair was kept long for sensual reasons (Philo, On the Contemplative Life 50-53). So much did this distinction prevail that in many of his epigrams, Martial uses “long-haired boys” as a synonym for slave-boy catamites. [Website footnote]

^[3] This statue is also referred to in Martial’s Epigrams II 77 and IX 50. Evidently it was sufficiently understood what statue he was referring to that it must be that described by Pliny the elder around seven years earlier in his Natural History XXXIV 83 as “the figure [by Strongylion] rendered famous by Brutus under the name of Brutus’s Boy because it represented a favourite of the hero of the battles at Philippi.” It must have been the statue of the boy that Brutus loved rather than a living boy since Strongylion lived in the 5^th century BC, four centuries before Brutus. Presumably it was very popular to have so widely copied as to be a common Saturnalian gift. [Website footnote]

^[4] Oebalian means belonging to the family of the first mythological Kings of Sparta, one of whom was Oibalos. Hyakinthos of this family was a boy loved by the god Apollo but accidentally killed by him with a quiot, after which he was turned into a flower. See the article The Metamorphosis of Hyakinthos. The painting referred to may be a copy of the 4^th-century BC one by Nikias of Athens, “with which Caesar Augustus was so delighted that when he took Alexandria he brought it back with him - and consequently Tiberius Caesar dedicated this picture in the temple of Augustus” (Pliny the elder, Natural History XXXV 131. [Website footnote]

^[5] Romans, like others well before them, used pumice stone to remove body hair. Martial is saying that a boy who has done this is no substitute for one young enough to be naturally without body hair. [Website footnote]