Martial really tickled me the other day...

Latin Learning Latin
1

1.38 in particular:

Quem recitas meus est, o Fidentine, libellus:
sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus.

I know, it’s silly, but having had to sit through a rather inept recitation of poetry earlier it nearly killed me when a friend whipped it out.

So, any funny bits of Martial anyone would like to share?

2

There has been a series of bits by Gideon Nisbet on Martial on the OUP’s blog:


http://blog.oup.com/2015/10/introducing-martial-epigrams/
http://blog.oup.com/2015/10/martial-epigrams-greek-genre
http://blog.oup.com/2015/10/oxford-worlds-classics-reading-group-season-4-martials-epigrams/
http://blog.oup.com/2015/11/martial-epigrams-love/
http://lectorstudiosus.blogspot.com/2015_10_01_archive.html

3

Here’s one I like. Title of a real book w/ Martial’s accompanying epigram.

Calvi de aquae frigidae usu
Haec tibi quae fontes et aquarum nomina dicit
Ipsa suas melius charta natabat aquas.

Geddit?

4

Is this something like the annales Volusi?

5

That’s precisely the poem that occurred to me, the infamous cacata charta of Catullus 36 (cf. 96). And this epigram of Martial’s is directly preceded by a laudatory one to Catullus. And/But Calvus—if it’s the same Calvus—was a buddy of Catullus (Cat.14, 53, 96). Whom Catullus joshes over a Saturnalia gift of bad poetry. And the books epigrammed by Martial in this book (bk.14, the αποφόρητα) are supposed also to be Saturnalia gifts. It’s complicated!

But what I like about it, of course, is the wickedly phrased conceit that the papyrus roll on which Calvus’ treatise on the use of cold water was written was better off in its original form as a papyrus plant growing in the waters of the Nile.

6

“the papyrus roll on which Calvus’ treatise on the use of cold water was written was better off in its original form as a papyrus plant growing in the waters of the Nile.”

That occurred to me too–the warm waters of the Nile.

7

My favorite poem of Martial is one of the first ones I learned. It should be familiar to all students of Wheelock:

Nuper erat medicus, nunc est vespillo Diaulus.
Quod vespillo facit, fecerat et medicus.

8

Salvete !

Carmina Paulus emit, recitat sua carmina Paulus.
Nam quod emas possis iure vocare tuum.

Paulus buys poems, Paulus recites them as his own.
After all, if you buy it, the law says it’s yours.

Reading through Craig Williams’s A Martial Reader these days, from the Bolchazy-Carducci series of Latin readers.

Si valeas, valeo.

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