Marcus Valerius Martialis

In almost 1,600 epigrams, written in styles ranging from the lyrical to the pornographic, Martial (c. 40-c. 103CE) painted a definitive picture of everyday life, society and sexuality in ancient Rome. His influence on English literature, both direct and indirect, has been immense. From Elizabethan times, writers like Jonson, Herrick, Cowley and Byron translated (or adapted to the London of their day) Martial's portraits of poseurs, prostitutes and philosophers, legacy hunters and social climbers. His urbanity and sharply polished wit helped inspire Pope's heroic couplets and Swift's savage irony. Although Romantics and Victorians tended to react against Martial's obscenity and fulsome flattery of his imperial masters, he always retained a reputation as an underground classic and then became an important model for Ezra Pound. Recent poets, as J.P. Sullivan and A.J. Boyle explain in their Introduction, have also found in his work 'a fully realized, if sometimes sombre world, which alternately fascinates and disquiets'.

The Roman poet Martial concentrated on the genre of epigram, which he brought to such perfection that he provided the model for subsequent epigrammatists. He is best known for his pungently witty poems, which gave the word 'epigram' its modern definition, but his range is much wider than this: he has an acute perception of human nature, and gives a fascinating insight into the Rome of the late first century A.D. His fifth book, which contains eighty-four poems, is dedicated to the emperor Domitian, and for that reason it avoids the obscenity of the other books. Nevertheless it includes a rich variety of subject matter and treatment.

The new edition of The Epigrams of Philodemos collects all the epigrams attributed to the Epicurean philosopher and poet Philodemos of Gadara (c.110-c.40 B.C.), and is the first to receive separate publication since the brief - and incomplete - Programmschrift of George Kaibel in 1885. The heart of this book consists of a newly edited text, the result of a reexamination of several manuscripts of the Greek Anthology. Thirty-eight epigrams (two only doubtfully Philodemean, and two spurious) are printed in the original Greek and in English translation, with full critical apparatus and commentary. Sider also includes the text of a recently edited papyrus containing fragments of many previously known and newly discovered epigrams by Philodemos. In addition to the usual issues involved in editing a classical poet - i.e. the poet's life, his use of meter, the epigrammatic tradition, and the place of the epigrams in the Greek Anthology - Sider's introduction considers the relationship between Philodemos' philosophy and poetry. He explains how the epigrams fit into the literary views expressed in Philodemos' On Poems and how they accord with the Epicurean stance against the writing of poetry. This edition is far more comprehensive than any other text and commentary on Philodemos' epigrams, and is the only one to assess his poetry in the light of his poetic theory. It will be of great use to students of Greek and Latin poetry, where echoes of Philodemos are found in works of Vergil, Catullus, Horace, Ovid, Marital, and Propertius.

Martial's name is a byword for caustic and often obscene wit. The fiercest Roman satirist after Juvenal, he was also a poet with a more reflective nature, whose acute observations of life are tinged with a keen awareness of death. Peter Whigham's selection from his enormous output represents both the serious and lighter aspects of a many-sided professional poet. His translations also convey, in their frequent homage to earlier translators and English followers of Martial, a sense of his enduring influence on the English poetic tradition. J.P. Sullivan's critical introduction sets Martial's life and poetry in the social and political context of his times, and accounts for his continuing popularity through the ages.

"The poet we call Martial, Marcus Valerius Martialis, lived by his wits in first-century Rome. Pounding the mean streets of the Empire's capital, he takes apart the pretensions, addictions, and cruelties of its inhabitants with perfect comic timing and killer punchlines. Social climbers and sex-offenders, rogue traders and two-faced preachers - all are subject to his forensic annihilations and often foul-mouthed verses. Packed with incident and detail, Martial's epigrams bring Rome vividly to life in all its variety; biting satire rubs alongside tender friendship, lust for life beside sorrow for loss. Gossipy, clever, and above all entertaining, they express amusement as much as indignation at the vices they expose."

Book digitized by Google from the library of the New York Public Library and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.