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Martial and the Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

D.P. Fowler
D.P. Fowler*
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Oxford
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Extract

Alongside Catullus and Ovid, Martial is the Latin writer who tells us most about the ancient book, and he receives detailed treatment in most histories of ancient book production: he has a chapter to himself, for instance, in Roberts and Skeats' The Birth of the Codex. Books and reading are a central concern of his poetry from his very first publications: around 10-15% of the epigrams deal with this theme. The topic has received, however, much less attention from literary critics than from scholars interested in the Realien of ancient book production, and those who have paid attention to it have tended to play down the importance of the published books compared to the ‘occasional’ reception of the epigrams either through recitation or through informal pamphlets (the so-called ‘libelli’ prominent in the important work of Peter White). Even John Sullivan, who was more aware than many of the importance of the book in Martial, sees the published books as ‘open-ended collections, to which material could be added as it became available or necessary’ and declares that ‘Martial is less careful about the endings of his books…than about their beginnings and general structure’. I have suggested elsewhere that, on the contrary, the endings of Martial's books may be seen as possessing particularly ingenious effects of closure, and in general it seems to me that the engagement with reception in book-form shown by Martial's epigrams is extremely sophisticated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , 1995 , pp. 31 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1995

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References

Versions of this piece have been given in Oxford, Pisa and Princeton: I am grateful to all the participants on those occasions. I hope to expand on some of the themes in a forthcoming study of books and reading in Roman literature, research on which was conducted while I held a Research Lectureship of the British Academy, for which I am most grateful.

1. Roberts, C.H. and Skeat, T.C., The Birth of the Codex (London 1983), 24–29.Google Scholar

2. Note especially Spect. 31; Xenia 1–3; Apophoreta 1–11, 20, 21, 37, 38, 84, 183–196, 208, 209; 1. praef, 1–5, 16, 25, 29, 35, 38, 44, 45, 52, 53, 61, 63, 66, 70, 72, 91, 101, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113, 117, 118; 2.1, 6, 8, 23, 77, 86, 91, 93; 3.1, 2, 4, 5, 68, 69, 86, 97, 99, 100; 4.6, 8, 10, 14, 27, 29, 31, 33, 49, 72, 81, 82, 86, 89; 5.2, 5, 6, 10, 13, 15, 16, 26, 30, 36, 60, 63, 73, 80; 6.1, 60, 61, 64, 65, 85; 7.3, 11, 12, 17, 26, 44, 46, 51, 52, 68, 72, 77, 80, 81, 85, 88, 90, 97, 99; 8. praef. 1, 3, 18, 20, 24, 29, 61, 62, 72, 76, 82; 9. praef., 49, 58, 81, 99; 10.1–4, 20, 33, 45, 59, 64, 70, 74, 78, 87, 104; 11.1–3, 15–17, 20, 24, 42, 94, 106–108; 12. praef, 1–5, 11,63.

3. There is no discussion of the role of the book, for instance, in P. Laurens’ otherwise detailed examination of Martial’s poetics in L‘Abeille dans Vambre (Paris 1989), 215–372.Google Scholar

4. White, P., ‘The Presentation and Dedication of the Silvae and Epigrams’, JRS 64 (1974), 40–61Google Scholar. The idea that Martial’s works before the published books appeared in ’Büchelchen…die von Hand zu Hand gingen’ (Friediänder i.53) is of course much older: cf. e.g. R. Helm RE ‘Valerius (233) Martialis’ (1955), 79f.

5. Sullivan, J. P., Martial: The Unexpected Classic (Cambridge 1991), 23 n.38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Fowler, D.P., ‘First Thoughts on Closure’, MD 22 (1989), 75–122, at 107f.Google Scholar

7. Citroni, M., ‘Pubblicazione e dediche dei libri di Marziale’, Maia 40 (1988), 3–39Google Scholar; cf. Merli, E., ‘Ordinamento degli epigrammi e strategie cortegiane negli esordi dei libri I-XII di Marziale’, Maia 45 (1993), 229–56.Google Scholar Citroni’s important series of articles on various aspects of literary reception at Rome will shortly appear in a collected volume: see especially the survey by him in Cavallo, G., Fedeli, P. and Giardina, A. (eds.), Lo spazio letterario di Roma antica Ill: La ricezione del testo (Rome 1991), 53–116.Google Scholar 8. So even Garthwaite, J., ‘The Panegyrics of Domitian in Martial Book 9’, Ramus 22 (1993), 78–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in a sympathetic account of the effects of contextualisation within the book, nevertheless accepts the libellus hypothesis.

9. On the origins and development of the epigram, see Laurens (n.3 above), 33–64.

10. For brevity as a generic rather than literal requirement, see Lausberg, M., Das Einzeldistichon (Munich 1982), 29–63Google Scholar (with a good discussion of the complexities of Martial’s actual practice). For ‘rapid response’ cf. e.g. Spect. 31 Da ueniam subitis…(though the textual status of that poem is a little uncertain), and see below. The frequent reference to sudden events and the use of words like subitus in the epigrams (24x) perhaps represent a thematisation of this aspect of them.

11. I am indebted here to a forthcoming study of this phenomenon in the Odes by Michèle Lowrie.

12. Except where noted, all translations are from the Loeb of D.R. Shackleton Bailey (Cambridge MA and London 1993), though I do not follow his numeration.

13. On the numeration, cf. 2.93, and see below.

14. Cf. Sullivan (n.5 above), 6–55.

15. Cf. Citroni, M., ‘Marziale e la letteratura per i Saturnali (poetica dell’ intrattenimento e cronologia della pubblicazione dei libri)’, ICS 14 (1989), 201–26.Google Scholar

16. For the question, see Citroni, M. (ed.), M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton Liber I (Florence 1975), 17f.Google Scholar

17. For more possibilities, see Citroni (n.16 above), xv-xviii.

18. There are excellent remarks on the complexities of ‘readers’ and ‘Readers’ in Sharrock, A., Seduction and Repetition in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria 2 (Oxford 1994).Google Scholar

19. Cf. e.g. Quinn, K., ‘The Poet and his Audience in the Augustan Age’, ANRW 30.1 (Berlin and New York 1982), 75–180Google Scholar, with bibliography; specifically on W. Burnikel, Martial, ‘Zur Bedeutung der Mündlichkeit in Martials Epigrammbüchern I-XII’, in Vogt-Spira, G. (ed.), Strukturen der Mündlichkeit in der römischen Literatur (Tübingen 1990), 221–33.Google Scholar

20. See esp. 1.29, with Citroni (n.16 above) ad loc.

21. Contra Burnikel (n.19 above), 222, but his examples (2.1.9f., 7.29.5f. and the preface to 12) do not establish public recitation of published work as a norm.

22. Cf. Burnikel (n.19 above).

23. The question of ‘reading aloud’ in antiquity is a complex one that I intend to discuss elsewhere, but M. Burnyeat (letter, TLS 19th April 1991) has pointed out that Ptolemy On the Criterion 5 (Huby, P. and Neal, G. [eds.], The Criterion of Truth [Liverpool 1989], 191)Google Scholar establishes conclusively that silent reading was a perfectly normal practice in antiquity.

24. Cf. Citroni (n.7 above), Merli (n.7 above). As will be obvious, in general on ‘patronage’ I find the approach of Zetzel, J.G., ‘The Poetics of Patronage in the Late First Century BC’, in Gold, B.K. (ed.), Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome (Austin 1982), 87–102Google Scholar more productive than that of White, recently restated in his Promised Verse (1994): cf. the review of the latter by D. Feeney in BMCR 94.6.16.

25. Goetsch, P., ‘Fingierte Mündlichkeit in der Erzählkunst entwickelter Schriftkulturen’, Poetica 17 (1985), 202–18Google Scholar; cf. Erzgräber, W. and Goetsch, P., Mündliches Erzählen im Alltag, fingiertes Mündliches Erzählen in der Literatur (Tübingen 1987)Google Scholar, and Meyer, D., ‘Der Einbeziehung des Lesers in den Epigrammen des Kallimachos’, in Harder, M.A., Regtuit, R. and Walker, G. C. (eds.), Callimachus (Groningen 1993), 161–75.Google Scholar

26. Oxford 1957: see esp. 26. Cf. Fowler, D.P., ‘Images of Horace in Twentieth-Century Scholarship’, in Martindale, C. and Hopkins, D. (eds.), Horace Made New (Cambridge 1993), 268–76, at 273f.Google Scholar

27. Cf Albert, W., Das mimetische Gedicht in der Antike (Frankfurt 1988).Google Scholar

28. Another possible sense is simply that Book 12 is shorter than the earlier books. This is literally true, albeit only by a small margin: more importantly, it is consonant with Martial’s remark to Priscus in 12.1, otia, Prisce, breui poteris donare libello (‘you will be able to give your leisure, Priscus, to a short volume’). Alternatively, it has been suggested that Books Ten and Eleven were published together, and jointly constitute the larger volume with which 12 is contrasted.

29. Cf. Citroni (n.7 above), 30.

30. Cf Merli (n.7 above), 245 n.43.

31. The model is obviously Horace Epist. 1.13: there the use of the plural libellis (4) and the term carmina (17) suggests that the volumes being presented are the Odes (cf. R. Mayer [Cambridge 1994] ad loc. and p.4), but the many attempts to make the reference be to the Epistles themselves shows how natural such a reading is.

32. 1.6, 14,22,48,51,60, 104.

33. Cf. O. Weinreich’s review of Helm, O., Studien zu Martial (Stuttgart 1928)Google Scholar, Phil. Woch. 49 (1929), 807–10 at 808f.; cf. also Lustrum 2 (1957), 190f.Google Scholar

34. Shackleton Bailey follows Bentley here in altering to the feminine Hedyli, but the change has nothing to recommend it, and his statement against Sullivan’s point that Hedylus is a bottom in 5.52 and 9.57 that ‘M. does not as a rule carry over name associations from book to book’ stretches the sense of ‘as a rule’ to breaking point: see his own list (n.12 above, iii.324).

35. Cf. Bramble, J., Persius and the Programmatic Satire (Cambridge 1974), 41–45, 59–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Shackleton Bailey, D.R., ‘Corrections and Explanations of Martial’, CPh 73 (1978), 273–96Google Scholar, emended to collecta (‘collected’), referring to previous brochure publications, because he did not believe that Martial could boast of the emperor’s reading his poems in this way and because he did not see how totiens tibi lecta could cohere with detinuere oculos tuos: he later (CPh 75 [1980], 69f.) withdrew the first argument in the light of 4.27.1 saepe meos laudare soles, Auguste, libellos (‘often, Augustus, you are wont to praise my little books’). That poem refers back to 2.91 in that it also alludes to the grant of the ius trium liberorum: the meos…libellos there too are surely the published books, since Martial envisages the envious denying that the emperor praises Martial’s books. This is a weaker argument if the reference is to unpublished pamphlets rather than to public works to whose deficiences the envious may personally attest.

37. Citroni (n.7 above), 5.

38. Cf. Friedländer ad loc.

39. Fowler (n.6 above).

40. White (n.4 above), 47; cf. (surprisingly) also Citroni (n.7 above), 36, and Merli (n.7 above), 253 n.58.

41. If one takes the reference in 3.1.3 to a single librum…priorem (‘previous book’) to mean that Books One and Two form a unit, then one may want to make more of the idea that Books Three and Four form another pair. But the reference in 3.1 may merely be to the preceding book in the sequence, i.e. Book Two: Martial makes much of the serial ordering of his books, not least through his explicit use of numbers rather than titles for them.

42. Cf. Sen. Ep. 95.2, a reciter’s text minutissime scriptam, artissime plicatam (though a codex notebook would be possible), Aul. Gell. 17.10.1 (of the Spartan skutalē) and especially Vulg. Luc. 4.20 cum plicuisset librum, where the context of Jewish worship makes a reference to a scroll certain but the Greek has the equally unusual ptuxas. At the end of the Torah reading, the scroll would presumably not have been rolled to the end, but the two ends would be ‘folded’ together.

43. White (n.4 above), 48.

44. FLP fr. 2 Courtney: see especially Nisbet, R.G.M. in the editio princeps, JRS 69 (1979), I49f.Google Scholar

45. ‘Proems in the Middle’, in Dunn, F. and Cole, T. (eds.), Beginnings in Classical Literature (YCS 29, Cambridge 1992), 147–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar