Another oldie: Martial 1.90 (NSFW)

A translation I first posted in 2015.

I never used to see you in company with men, Bassa; the gossip never gave you a lover. Instead you were always surrounded by women, a mob of them. They did everything for you; no man got close. And so, I admit, I took you for a Lucretia: but — shock, horror — Bassa, you’re a fucker. You dare set cunt to cunt, and your mega-clit fakes manliness. You've invented a crime against nature worthy of a Theban riddle: ‘There’s no man here — and yet, adultery.’

(Lucretia is famous from the exemplary early Roman history of Livy as preferring death to sexual dishonour; Thebes was terrorised by the Sphinx till Oedipus answered its riddle.)

AP 1.11, on a Church of the Holy Anargyri

On the Holy Anargyri in the district of Basiliscus

Unto your servants I, your servant too,

Sophia, make this gift. Accept your own,

Christ, and repay Justinian my lord

In victories piled upon victories

Against the plagues and the barbarians.

Justinian I 'the Great', Eastern Roman emperor from 525-561, was an aggressive and successful conqueror, but an outbreak of bubonic plague devastated Byzantium during his reign. The Anargyri, ‘Unmercenary Physicians’, were Saints Cosmas and Damian, two brothers martyred in Cilicia in the late third century. They won many converts by charging no fee for their services. Their story was too good to use just once: tradition attests the martyrdom near Rome a couple of years earlier of a separate Cosmas and Damian, who were also brothers and Unmercenary Physicians.

An oldie: Martial 1.41

A translation I originally posted early in this blog’s history (2015) and not included in the selection published by The World’s Classics.

You think you’re smart, Caecilius. Trust me: you’re not. So what are you? A troll. A bridge-and-tunnel hawker who barters yellow sulphur matches for broken glassware — that’s what you are. The bloke who sells soggy chickpeas to the tourists — that’s what you are. 

That’s you — the jumped-up snake-charmer, 

That’s you — the vile spawn of the salt-vendors,

That’s you — the bawling cook who touts charred sausages round the cheap tavernas, 

That’s you — a pasquinader, and second-rate at that,  

That’s you — a Cadiz whoremonger, 

That’s you — the big mouth of a clapped-out poof. 

So stop thinking you’re something, Caecilius: no-one else does. Reckon your jokes outperform Gabba, even Tettius Caballus? It’s not just anyone who gets to have style. The man whose ‘jokes’ are stupid smut doesn’t have sass; he’s just an ass.

Reddit AMA on Martial

This is from a few years back, when the World's Classics translation was freshly out. Newer readers might find it interesting background.
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/41uff1/i_am_gideon_nisbet_classics_professor_and_editor/

An elephant at Rome

9.285

Philip of Thessalonica, anthologist and poet of the first century AD, witnesses an imperial triumph or pageant:

No longer, tower-girt and phalanx-bred,

The elephant with its prodigious tusk

Charges unchecked and eagerly to fight.

He sets his stout neck fearful to the yoke,

And draws the car of Caesar deified.

Even a beast can see the fruits of peace:

He casts aside the gear of bloody war,

Escorts the father of good governance.

The Greek Anthology at Thinktank, Birmingham

A couple of weeks ago I took a selection from my selection from the Greek Anthology to this:

https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/thinktank/whats-on/thinktank-lates-with-the-university-of-birmingham

It was great fun! I walked people round a couple of the rooms, repurposing modern science exhibits as ancient sites and structures on which to pin the Anthology's little texts. I'd had the opportunity to plan some routes before hand (thanks, Thinktank!) and though I didn't use all of them, it gave me enough structure that I could improvise for the particular twos and threes of people I was catering for. Almost all the other University of Birmingham contributors were from the sciences (and were amazing) and I was pleased to have the chance to represent literature and the arts.

Taking these poems to an interested, non-specialist public with no educational background in classics, and seeing and hearing them 'get it', was a wonderful experience. It has filled me with enthusiasm for finding new audiences for this amazing ancient material.

Epigrams at Cyzicus

Book 3 of the Anthology is a weird one, as the early books so often are (Christodorus of Thebes, anyone?). It's short -- a mere nineteen epigrams -- and contains genuinely inscriptional epigrams from a single, lost location:

At Cyzicus, inside the Temple of Apollonis, mother of Attalus and Eumenes: epigrams which were inscribed on the tablets set into the columns. These tablets contained narrative scenes, carved in low relief, as is set out below.

Cues within the book tell us when we are turning a corner within this temple and invite reconstruction, though the fragmentary state of some of the poems does not inspire confidence in any such scheme. After all, the temple is lost. And "tablets set into the columns" already sounds peculiar.

Attalus and Eumenes would have wanted to be remembered as dutiful sons, and the narrative scenes preponderantly depicted tales of filial piety. Here for instance is the epigram for the eighteenth column, showing the tale of Cleobis and Biton. Each of the epigrams comes with its own caption, which presumably is editorial intervention (a chopped-up guide's spiel?) rather than transcription of anything found in the temple itself:

On the eighteenth are Cleobis and Biton. Their mother was the priestess of Hera at Argos; they put their own necks beneath the yoke (because the team of oxen was too slow) and so enabled her to perform the sacred rites. According to the story, she was so pleased by this that she prayed to the goddess that her sons should meet with whatever was finest among mortals; and after she had made this prayer, the boys died that same night.

This story of Cydippe and her sons,

And of their holy reverence, is not false;

Its truth is ample. For their toil was sweet,

And in due season for their manly youth:

For holy love of mother, they performed

A famous labour. In the world below

May you rejoice, men famed for piety,

And may your tale alone endure all time.

Some of the legends are described in offbeat and otherwise unattested variants. As I said, it's a weird one, and I suggest it would repay serious study one day.

A church restored

1.2

On the apse at Blachernae

Sophia’s husband Justin, man of god,

Whom Christ ordained to settle all aright

And granted glory on the battlefield,

Seeing the Virgin Mother’s house unsound,

Redressed its flaws and wrought it sturdily.

1.3

On the same, in the same place

The Elder Justin to God’s Mother raised

This beauteous shrine ablaze with loveliness;

The Younger Justin, ruling after him,

Granted it splendour greater than before.

The Panagia or Theotokos (Church of Saint Mary) in the Blachernae suburb of Byzantium housed some of Byzantium’s most powerful relics. Justin I and his nephew Justinian I restored it in the early sixth century and an imperial palace grew up around it, eventually replacing the Great Palace as the main seat of the Imperial court.