THE EPIGRAMS OF MARTIAL
BOOK NINE
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 IX, published in 94.
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 95, 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.
IX 5
| To you, supreme subjugator of the Rhine and father of the world, virtuous prince,[1] cities offer thanks. They will have inhabitants; it is no longer a crime to give birth. No more do boys mutilated by the art of a greedy slave dealer grieve for the loss of their ravished manhood, nor does a wretched mother give a mite to her prostituted infant for the haughty pimp to calculate. Modesty, which before you in days gone by was not to be found even in the marriage bed, has through you come to exist even in the brothel.[2] | Tibi, summe Rheni domitor et parens orbis, pudice princeps, gratias agunt urbes: populos habebunt; parere iam scelus non est. non puer avari sectus arte mangonis virilitatis damna maeret ereptae, nec quam superbus computet stipem leno dat prostituto misera mater infanti. qui nec cubili fuerat ante te quondam, pudor esse per te coepit et lupanari. |
IX 7
| As though it were not outrage enough to our sex to have exposed males for the public to defile, the cradIe had become the pimp’s property, so that the boy snatched from his mother’s breast wailed for dirty coppers.[3] Bodies ungrown suffered unspeakable inflictions. The Ausonian Father did not brook such monstrosities, the same who lately succored tender youths to stop cruel lust from sterilizing males. Boys, young men, and old men loved you before, Caesar, but now infants too adore you.[4] | Tamquam parva foret sexus iniuria nostri foedandos populo prostituisse mares, iam cunae lenonis erant, ut ab ubere raptus sordida vagitu posceret aera puer. immatura dabant infandas corpora poenas. non tulit Ausonius talia monstra pater, idem qui teneris nuper succurrit ephebis, ne faceret steriles saeva libido viros. dilexere prius pueri iuvenesque senesque, at nunc infantes te quoque, Caesar, amant. |
IX 11-13 and 16-17
For these four epigrams about the emperor Domitian’s puer delicatus, Earinus, see the article Domitian and Earinus, ca. 82-94 AD.
| Artemidorus has a boy, but has sold his land; Calliodorus has land instead of a boy. Which of the two has made the better bargain, Auctus? Artemidorus plays, Calliodorus plows.[5] | Artemidorus habet puerum sed vendidit agrum; agrum pro puero Calliodorus habet. dic uter ex istis melius rem gesserit, Aucte: Artemidorus amat, Calliodorus arat. |
IX 22
| Perhaps you think I ask for wealth, Pastor, for the same purposes as the thick-witted, vulgar herd asks: […] that a tipsy dinner guest steam for my page, whom you would not wish to change for Ganymede; […] | Credis ob haec me, Pastor, opes fortasse rogare propter quae populus crassaque turba rogat, […] aestuet ut nostro madidus conviva ministro, quem permutatum nec Ganymede velis; […] |
IX 25
| Whenever we look at your Hyllus as he pours the wine, you mark us, Afer, with a troubled eye. What crime is there, I ask you, in gazing at a soft page? We gaze at the sun, the stars, temples, gods. Am I to avert my face as though the Gorgon were offering me a cup, and cover my eyes and countenance?[6] Alcides was fierce, yet Hylas could be looked at.[7] Mercury is allowed to play with Ganymede. If you don’t want your guests to look at tender pages, Afer, you should invite Phineuses and Oedipuses.[8] | Dantem vina tuum quotiens aspeximus Hyllum, lumine nos, Afer, turbidiore notas. quod, rogo, quod scelus est mollem spectare ministrum? aspicimus solem, sidera, templa, deos. avertam vultus, tamquam mihi pocula Gorgon porrigat, atque oculos oraque nostra tegam? trux erat Alcides, et Hylan spectare licebat; ludere Mercurio cum Ganymede licet. si non vis teneros spectet conviva ministros, Phineas invites, Afer, et Oedipodas. |
IX 36
For this epigram about the emperor Domitian’s puer delicatus, Earinus, see the article Domitian and Earinus, ca. 82-94 AD.
| Spendophorus heads for Libya’s cities as his master’s armour-bearer.[9] Cupid, prepare weapons to give the boy, those with which you pierce young men and soft girls. But let there be also a smooth spear in his tender hand. I don’t ask you for breastplate, shield, and helmet; so that he go into battle safely, let him go naked. Parthenopaeus took no harm from javelin or sword or arrow so long as he was free of a casque.[10] Whoever is pierced by this boy, will die of love. Happy he, whomsoever so good a death awaits! Come back while you are a boy, while your face is slippery-smooth; let not Libya but your native Rome make a man of you.[11] | Spendophoros Libycas domini petit armiger urbis: quae puero dones tela, Cupido, para, illa quibus iuvenes figis mollesque puellas: sit tamen in tenera levis et hasta manu. loricam clypeumque tibi galeamque remitto; tutus ut invadat proelia, nudus eat: non iaculo, non ense fuit laesusve sagitta, casside dum liber Parthenopaeus erat. quisquis ab hoc fuerit fixus, morietur amore. o felix, si quem tam bona fata manent! dum puer es, redeas, dum vultu lubricus, et te non Libye faciat, sed tua Roma virum. |
IX 59
| Wandering long and often in the Enclosure[12], where golden Rome rummages among her wealth, Mamurra inspected tender boys, devouring them with his eyes; not the ones exposed in the booths in front, but those kept in reserve on the boards of a privy platform, unseen of the public and common folk like me.[13] Sated therewith, [...] | In Saeptis Mamurra diu multumque vagatus, hic ubi Roma suas aurea vexat opes, inspexit molles pueros oculisque comedit, non hos quos primae prostituere casae, sed quos arcanae servant tabulata catastae et quos non populus nec mea turba videt. inde satur […] |
The rest of the epigram lists the other luxury goods Mamura inspected before buying two very cheap wine cups which he carried off himself][14]
IX 73
In an epigram expressing indignation at the undeserved good fortune of a common shoemaker who has inherited the estate of a rich patron:
| And in your liquor you burst crystal with hot Falernian[15] and lust with your master’s Ganymede.[16] | rumpis et ardenti madidus crystalla Falerno et pruris domini cum Ganymede tui. |
IX 90
On how Martial thinks Flaccus, to whom the epigram is addressed and who was apparently about to leave for Cyprus, perhaps to be praetorian prefect of it, should find a tolerable way of living in the infamous heat of the Cypiot summer:
| So, lying in flowery grass, where on either hand pebbles are stirred by winding waters in a sparkling brook, all worries banished afar, may you bore through ice with a black bumper, your brow ruddy with stitched garlands; so may your boy be wanton only to you and the purest of girls lust only for you:[17] […] | Sic in gramine florido reclinis, qua gemmantibus hine et inde rivis curva calculus excitatur unda, exclusis procul omnibus molestis, pertundas glaiem triente nigro, frontem sutilibus ruber coronis; sic uni tibi sit puer cinaedus et castissima pruriat puella: […] |
IX 103
| What new Leda bore for you servitors so like? What naked Laconian girl was caught by another swan? Pollux gives his features to Hierus, Castor his to Asylus;[18] and in both faces shines their sister, Tyndareus’ daughter.[19] If there had been such beauty in Therapnaean Amyclae when lesser gifts defeated two goddesses, you would have stayed behind, Helen, and Dardanian Paris would have gone back to Phrygian Ida with twin Ganymedes.[20] | Quae nova tam similis genuit tibi Leda ministros? quae capta est alio nuda Lacaena cycno? dat faciem Pollux Hiero, dat Castor Asylo, atque in utroque nitet Tyndaris ore soror. ista Therapnaeis si forma fuisset Amyclis, cum vicere duas dona minora deas, mansisses, Helene, Phrygiamque redisset in Iden Dardanius gemino cum Ganymede Paris. |
Continue to Book X
[1] The one thus addressed was the reigning Emperor Domitian, Martial’s patron.
[2] Both this and the following IX 7, where the reigning Domitian is addressed as The Ausonian Father” “Caesar”, are praising him for his moral legislation issued in his self-appointed capacity as perpetual censor. These included a revived law against adultery and, of greater Greek love interest, a ban on castration. “Castration was in Martial’s day obviously practised exclusively on slave boys” (Christer Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary, Uppsala, 1998, I p. 76). Apparently under Asiatic influence, there had been a growing trade in boys castrated to preserve their boyish appearance, not (as commonly in the East) for the sake of having males who could be trusted in women’s quarters, but as sexual playthings to be sold to rich men or brothels. Both Domitian’s predecessor and brother, Titus, and Domitian himself were keen on boy eunuchs. Martial is about to celebrate Domitian’s best known such boy, Earinus, in IX 11-13, 16-17 and 36. Though Domitian was hardly otherwise famous for his humanity, it could well be that it was Domitian’s sympathy for the past suffering of his beloved that inspired the legislation, which came after his acquisition of the boy (Statius, Silvae III 4 lxxiv-lxxvii). This epigrams and no. 7 below are the only source for Domitian also having in some form banned the prostitution of infants, hence removing the need for mothers to try to protect their infants by giving them mites.
It is noteworthy that Domitian apparently saw no conflict whatsoever between his love of slave-boys (which he publicly celebrated through Martial and Statius’s poems and through banquets where disinguished guests were served by his “thousand”(epigram IX 36) pueri delcati, and his evidently strong interest in promoting sexual morality, which his modern biographers have judged sincere (see, for example, B. W. Jones, The Emperor Domitian, London 1993, p. 99). [Website footnote]
[3] A slave mother could not stop her child being taken away for prostitution, and the poem is implying this is how an infant usually came to be prostituted. Presumably, however, a child prostitute could also have been kidnapped or sold by his own parents. Quntilian, Institutes of Oratory VII 1 lv, mentions as a horror story a father who had sold his son to a procuror.
[4] As in epigram 5 above, the reigning emperor Domitian, addressed as The Ausonian Father” “Caesar”, is praised him for his moral legislation issued in his self-appointed capacity as perpetual censor. The edict against castration is again mentioned and note how the description of it as stopping “cruel lust from sterilizing males” makes it clear the only purpose of castration was pederastic: to avert the physical effects of puberty and thus keep boys sexually desirable to men. However, most of this epigram is about Domitian’s apparently much more recent edict against the prostitution of infants, for which these two epigrams by Martial are the only source.
“A notable feature of the poem is the strong emphasis on males throughout. The pattern is set already in the first line, where Martial speaks of the iniuria sexus nostri, alluding to the prostitution of grown-up men; female prostitution would not have upset any contemporary Roman.1 The reference only to ephebi in line 7 is quite natural, as the subject there is castration, but it is worth noticing that Martial in line 3 f. speaks of the prostitution of children only as a contumely against his own sex, mentioning only the raptus puer. While Domitian’s prohibition would probably have concerned children in general, it was obviously only the prostitution of small boys (and not of girls, if it existed at all) which was a big enough problem to attract notice.” (Christer Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary, Uppsala, 1998, I p. 82)
[5] S. Gaselee, “Martial IX. 21” in the Classical Review, vol. 35 (1921), pp. 104 f. suggested emending amat (loves) to arat, in which case “Artemidorus plays, Calliodorus plows.” should be changed to “Artemidorus plows [ie. pedicates], Calliodorus plows [in the agricultural sense],”a much sharper point and very credible in view of Martial’s predilection for ambiguous puns.
Martial is playing ironically with the men’s names which are presumably therefore fictitious. Artemidoros in Greek means “the gift of Artemis”, ie. chastity, while Kalliodoros means “the gift of beauty”, ie. lust.
[6] The mythological Gorgons, three sisters, were so ugly that anyone who looked upon their faces was literally petrified (ie. turned to stone).
[7] Hylas was the paidika of the mythical hero Herakles, sometimes called Alcides.
[8] Phineus and Oedipus were blind. [Translator’s footnote].
[9] Note that this boy, whose face one could hope would still be “slippery-smooth” even when he returned from war, was old enough to go into battle as his master’s helper. This is in a long and global military tradition that includes Thebes’s Sacred Band (contra modern gay propagandists who pretend absurdly against the evidence that this was made up of couples of men), the squires of mediaeval European knights and the boys loved by Japanese samurai.
Nevertheless, it is humourously suggested that the service for which Spendophoros, a slave and implicitly a puer delicatus, is truly fitted is not conventional warfare: the arrows of Cupid are more suitable for him and the less he wears the more effective he will be, as this will inspire love and force others to fight about him. His role of armiger (armour-bearer) probably has a sexual double entendre, as arma (armour) was sometimes used as a metaphor for a man’s cock. Martial’s purpose was presumably to flatter Spendophoros’s unnamed master for having such an exquisite boy. [Website footnote]
[10] The Arcadian mythical hero Parthenopaios was one of the “Seven Against Thebes” and was described in detail by Statius in his Thebaid IX 844-876. Young and exceptionally beautiful, it is claimed here that he was never hurt when fighting naked, implicitly because when his would-be killers saw his full beauty, they fell in love with him; he was finally killed when wearing his armour. Dying, he acknowledged that he had been too young to go to war. [Website footnote]
[11] “Martial wishes that Spendophoros may grant the last of his boyhood not to Africa [=Libya], but to Rome. There is not only a physical contrast here, but also a sexual: as long as Spendophoros is a puer, he is morally permissible as a passive homosexual partner; having entered puberty and become a vir and thus apart of the heterosexual world, this is no longer the case.” (Christer Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary, Uppsala, 1998, II p. 38)
[12] The Enclosure was a fashionable market-place for luxury goods where one might expect to find the most desirable boys on sale in Rome.
[13] “Young and beautiful slave-boys could be very expensive; the sum of 100,000 sesterces is mentioned both in 1, 58, 1 […] and in 11, 70, 1. However, these prices would not be fetched by the boys in the front booths, the primae casae, as the more valuable slaves, to judge from this passage, were displayed on a platform (catasta) in a hidden back room […], open only to those likely to be able to pay for them.” (Christer Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary, Uppsala, 1998, II p. 46)
[14] Mamurra’s “intention was never to buy anything, only to make it look as if he intended to, eager to disguise his true poverty with a veil of alleged wealth. He satisfies his lusts by devouring with his eyes such slave-boys as are not displayed to the mob but are reserved for more wealthy customers; once back among the crowd, he scrutinizes all the most expensive wares, but, in order not to have to buy anything, he finds fault with every object: the dinner sofa is too small for his enormous citrus-table, the bronzes are not real Corinthian, there are too few gems inlaid in the golden cup. He even has complains about genuine statues of the Greek masters and varies his trickery by having put aside ten vessels of murrine ware, which, of course, he will never come back for. Having spent the day in this manner, he sneaks away at closing-time, having bought nothing but two cups of the cheapest kind.” (Christer Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary, Uppsala, 1998, II p. 44)
[15] Falernian was a fine white wine which would be drunk in crystal. Expensive crystal was fragile. “Wine was preferably mixed with hot water […]; the shoemaker shows his ignorace by adding water hot enough the break the fragile crystal.” (Christer Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary, Uppsala, 1998, II p. 89)
[16] Martial means a puer delicatus, a beautiful slave-boy who, like Jupiter’s Ganymede who would be his master’s catamite and cupbearer, presumably exquisite and very expensive and so, as far as Martial was concerned, much too good to be enjoyed by the likes of the shoemaker.
[17] Shackleton Bailey’s translation “may you have a boy queen to yourself” has been here replaced by Christer Henriksén’s “may your boy be wanton only to you”, as better expressing the unusual and apparently non-derogatory use of cinaedus.
“The word cinaedus, here used adjectivally (as in 6, 39, 12; […]), usually has a strong derogatory notion, but Martial uses it, with the same sense as here, of Ganymede in 2, 43, 13 Iliaco ... cinaedo and 10, 98, 2 Idaeo ... cinaedo. Of boy slaves, with emphasis on the sexual aspect of their service, also in 12, 16, 2 emisti, Labiene, tres cinaedos. The sexual allusion to Flaccus’ delicatus and to the girl in the following line are indications of his intimacy with Martial.” (Christer Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary, Uppsala, 1998, II p. 130)
[18] The master of the slave-boys mentioned here is unnamed (as with IX 56) and would never have been known without extraordinary archaeological discoveries. Two ancient inscriptions found in the ancient Via Portuensis in Rome in ca. 1660 and in the 1920s very strongly suggest that the boys Hierus and Asylus were slaves of the eques Tiberius Claudius Livianus, who was to be appointed Praetorian Prefect by the Emperor Trajan in 101. See Christer Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary, vol. 2, Uppsala, 1999, pp. 189–190, and A Commentary on Martial, Epigrams Book 9, Oxford, 2012, pp. 416–417 for details of the evidence. [Website footnote]
“As Livianus does not appear elsewhere in the Epigrams, nothing can be known of his relation to Martial. The circumstances under which this poem was written, or rather improvised, may however be guessed with a fair amount of certainty: very likely, Martial had been invited to a dinner-party, at which Hierus and Asylus, apparently their master’s favourites, served the wine. Martial’s witty comparison of his host’s cupbearers to the Dioscuri [=Pollux and Castor] may well have been made as a way of saying “Thank you for a nice evening”. (Christer Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary, Uppsala, 1998, p. 190)
[19] Jupiter, king of the gods, in the form of a swan ravished or seduced Leda, wife of Tyndareos King of Sparta in Lakonia. She subequently bore quadruplets, including the boys Castor and Pollux and a girl, Helen, the most beautiful in the world. Hierus and Asylus, perhaps real twins, are compared to Castor and Pollux both because of their beauty and because they look so alike. [Website footnote]
[20] The beautiful Dardanian (=Trojan) prince Paris was asked to settle the dispute of the three Olympian goddesses, Juno, Minerva and Venus, as to who was the most beautiful of them. Each made him promises of gifts if chosen. Paris chose Venus, whose gift of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, he was most tempted by.
Therapnaean here means Spartan or Laconian. Amyclae was a Laconian town where Castor and Pollux were born and resided. Paris landed there and was their guest there on his way to abducting Helen (his promised gift) from nearby Sparta. However, Asylus and Hierus are so beautiful that if they had been there at the time, he would have chosen them instead of her to take back to his home on Mount Ida (near Troy and in Phrygia). Ganymedes here is a synonym for a spectacularly beautiful boy. [Website footnote]
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