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three pairs of lovers with space

THE EPIGRAMS OF MARTIAL
BOOK SIX

 

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 VI, published in December 91.

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 (all this website's) as being particularly important for this article, at least for readers not deeply familiar with Roman customs.

 

16

You[1] that terrify men with your sickle and queens with your cock, protect these few acres of secluded soil. So may no elderly thieves enter your orchard, but a boy or a lovely long-tressed girl. Tu qui falce viros terres et pene cinaedos,
     iugera sepositi pauca tuere soli.
sic tua non intrent vetuli pomaria fures,
     sed puer aut longis pulchra puella comis.
Baltimore boy  Priapus holding cock

 

28-29

For these two epigrams consoling Martial’s patron Atedius Melior on the death of his puer delicatus, Glaucias, see the article Glaucias and Melior, AD 90.

 

34

Give me kisses, Diadumenus[2], tight-pressed. “How many?” you say. You bid me count the ocean waves, the shells scattered on the beaches of the Aegean sea, and the bees that wander over the Cecropian mountain,[3] and the voices and hands that sound in the crowded theater when the people suddenly see Caesar’s face. I don’t want the number that Lesbia gave in answer to clear-voiced Catullus’ prayer.[4] He wants but few who can count them.  Basia da nobis, Diadumene, pressa. ‘quot’ inquis?
     Oceani fluctus me numerare iubes
et maris Aegaei sparsas per litora conchas
     et quae Cecropio monte vagantur apes
quaeque sonant pleno vocesque manusque theatro,
     cum populus subiti Caesaris ora videt.
nolo quot arguto dedit exorata Catullo
     Lesbia: pauca cupit qui numerare potest. 

 

 

68

Naiads, weep for your crime, yes, weep all over Lucrine Lake, and let Thetis herself hear your wails. A boy has been snatched to his death in Baiae’s waters,[5] Eutychos, your sweet companion, Castricus.[6] He was the partner of your cares, your beguiling solace, the love, the Alexis of our poet.[7] Did a wanton Nymph see you[8] naked under the glassy water and send Hylas back to Alcides? Or does the goddess now neglect womanish Hermaphroditus,[9] stirred to passion by the embrace of a youthful man? Be that as it may, whatever the cause of the sudden rape, may both earth, I pray, and water be kind to you.  Flete nefas vestrum, sed toto flete Lucrino,
     Naides, et luctus sentiat ipsa Thetis.
inter Baianas raptus puer occidit undas,
     Eutychos ille, tuum, Castrice, dulce latus.
hic tibi curarum socius blandumque levamen,
     hic amor, hic nostri vatis Alexis erat.
numquid te vitreis nudum lasciva sub undis
     vidit et Alcidae Nympha remisit Hylan?
an dea femineum iam neglegit Hermaphroditum
     amplexu teneri sollicitata viri?
quidquid id est, subitae quaecumque est causa rapinae,
     sit, precor, et tellus mitis et unda tibi. 
14 drowned AD 80 d1

 

Continue to Book VII

 

[1] “You” means Priapus, a fertility god. Statues of him with a gigantic erection and a sickle of him in his right hand, presumably intended to threaten thieves with castration, were commonly found in gardens. Though cinaedi (sexual inverts, regularly translated by Bailey as “queens”) wanted, by defintion, to be pedicated, Martial thinks even they would have been frightened by the size of Priapus’s cock. Martial wishes Priapus more desirable visitors.

[2] Martial has already mentioned kissing Diadumenus, apparently a slave-boy, in two earlier epigrams presented on this website, III 65 and V 46.

[3] The Cecropian mountain was Hymettos near Athens, a city founded by Kekrops.

[4] In his poems 5 and 7, Catullus wanted from Lesbia thousands of kisses and as many as the grains of Libyan sand respectively.

[5] Baiae was a fashionable resort where rich Romans had villas in the north of the Gulf of Naples and near the Lucrine Lake. Thetis was a sea goddess.

[6] Castricus was a rich friend of Martial, and a poet himself. Eutychos, a Greek name meaning “fortunate” was a popular slave’s name in Rome, so it looks as though Castricus’s drowned beloved here was a puer delicatus.

[7] Alexis was a much loved slave-boy of Virgil, who made him a loved boy in his 2nd Eclogue. Martial is thus complimenting Castricus by comparing him to the great poet.

[8] The “you” is addressed to Eutychos, here compared to Hylas, a boy loved by the hero Herakles (sometimes called Alcides) who “had been sent to draw water and was ravished away by nymphs on account of his beauty” (Apollodoros, Library I 9), resulting in a frantic Herakles abandoning the expedition of the Argonauts to look for him.

[9] Hermaphroditos was a beautiful boy with whom a nymph fell in love and prayed to be united with forever. Her wish was granted, resulting in the hermaphrodite. 

 

 

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