Martial and negotiable boundaries of authorship and friendship
1. You keep asking me, Priscus, what sort of person I’d turn into if I suddenly got rich and powerful. Do you really think anyone can tell you how they’d behave then? Tell me, Priscus, if you turned into a lion, what kind of lion would you be? – 12.92
2. I’ve been hard at work writing these last few days, so that I may captivate your ears (ones I know so well) with the welcome feast they deserve. Yours are the only company in which these poems are in no danger, and I hope you won’t find it an imposition to weigh them carefully... It’s the most difficult thing for you, but please set aside your kindness when you form a judgement of my trashy efforts... – from the preface to Book 12
3. My page, both large and small, brings you frolicking hares and playful lions. If it’s too much for you that I do the same thing twice, Stella, you can always dish up hare for me twice at dinner. – 1.44
4. The person who reads a hundred epigrams and still wants more, Caedicianus – now that’s a glutton for punishment (nil illi satis est...mali). – 1.118
5. Idiot! Why do you you mingle your verses with mine? Wretch! What use to you is a book at odds with itself? Why are you trying to slip foxes into a pride of lions, and make little owls resemble eagles? Moron! Even if one of your feet belongs to Ladas, you won’t run far with a wooden leg. – 10.100
6. You’re afraid I’ll write lines with you as your target, Ligurra – some poem as vigorous as it’s short. And you’re keen for people to think you’re right to be afraid. But your fear is pointless, and so’s your desire. Lions of Libya aim their roars at bulls; they don’t maul butterflies. My advice to you is, if you’re so desperate to be read about, find some drunken poet in a soot-darkened archway, one who writes his poems with a lump of charcoal and crumbling chalk – the kind of poem people read while they’re shitting. This brow hasn’t earned a branding from my iron. – 12.61
7. The things slaves say; squalid snark; the filthy slanders of a street-vendor’s tongue; stuff that a dealer in broken novelty drinking-cups wouldn’t trade a sulphur match for. Some undercover poet is broadcasting these and making out they’re mine. Can you believe it, Priscus?... – from 10.3
8. The man you read, the man you want, – here he is: Martial, famous all round the world for his gossipy little books of epigrams. While he still lives and breathes, Avid Fan, you have conferred on him distinction such as few poets achieve when dead and gone. – 1.1
9. All the poems I used to scribble as a young man, a boy even – the hick stuff, the junk, the ones I don’t even recognise these days (quas nec ipse iam noui) – if you’re set on turning good hours into a bad investment and carry a grudge against your own leisure time, reader, you can get them from Valerius Pollius Quintus, who simply will not let my juvenilia (meis nugis) die. – 1.113
10. hinc septem dominos uidere montis
et totam licet aestimare Romam,
Albanos quoque Tusculosque colles
et quodcumque iacet sub urbe frigus,
Fidenas ueteres breuesque Rubras...
...
hoc rus, seu potius domus uocanda est,
commendat dominus: tuam putabis... – 4.64.11-15, 25-6
11. Look, my sixth book is out, Rufus Camonius, but you are not here to see it, my friend, and it cannot hope for you as its reader. Cappadocia, a cruel land you were unlucky to lay eyes on, returns your ashes and bones to your father. Gush with tears, Bononia, on the loss of your Rufus, and let lamentation resound along the whole Aemilian Way. Alas! What a good son he was! Alas! How short a lifespan has fallen into darkness! He had just now seen Alpheius’ prizes for the fifth time. You used to recite my jokes from memory, Rufus; you had them by heart. Take now this short poem, and the tears of a sorrowful friend. Reckon this the incense I should have burned. – 6.85
12. Accept these presents, meant for rich man and poor man by turns. May each reader give the right one to the right guest... ‘They’re junk (apinae)! Rubbish!...’ We all know that...
You can make this little book end whenever you like; each of my productions is over and done with in two lines. If you’re wondering why the poems have titles (lemmata), I’ll tell you: if you prefer, you can just read the titles. – from Apophoreta 1-2
13. Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plura | quae legis hic: aliter non fit, Auite, liber. – 1.16
Gideon Nisbet g.nisbet@bham.ac.uk
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