Epigrams, Volume I: Spectacles, Books 1-5 (Loeb Classical Library 94)

Martial

ISBN 10: 0674995554 / ISBN 13: 9780674995550

Published by Harvard University Press, 2002

About this Item

Dust jacket has some shelf wear. Red cloth cover is clean and square. Pages have some pencil marks, good binding.

Seller Inventory # K005

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Epigrams, Volume I: Spectacles, Books 1-5 (Loeb Classical Library 94)
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674995554
• ISBN 13: 9780674995550
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

Poetic concision in abundance.

It was to celebrate the opening of the Roman Colosseum in AD 80 that Martial published his first book of poems, “On the Spectacles.” Written with satiric wit and a talent for the memorable phrase, the poems in this collection record the broad spectacle of shows in the new arena. The great Latin epigrammist’s twelve subsequent books capture the spirit of Roman life―both public and private―in vivid detail. Fortune hunters and busybodies, orators and lawyers, schoolmasters and street hawkers, jugglers and acrobats, doctors and plagiarists, beautiful slaves, and generous hosts are among the diverse characters who populate his verses.

Martial is a keen and sharp-tongued observer of Roman society. His pen brings into crisp relief a wide variety of scenes and events: the theater and public games, life in the countryside, a rich debauchee’s banquet, lions in the amphitheater, the eruption of Vesuvius. The epigrams are sometimes obscene, in the tradition of the genre, sometimes warmly affectionate or amusing, and always pointed. Like his contemporary Statius, though, Martial shamelessly flatters his patron Domitian, one of Rome’s worst-reputed emperors.

D. R. Shackleton Bailey’s translation of Martial’s often difficult Latin eliminates many misunderstandings in previous versions. The text is mainly that of his highly praised Teubner edition of 1990.

About the Author

D. R. Shackleton Bailey was Pope Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Harvard University.