M. Valerius Martialis

An extensive commentary on each poem from Book 9, placing them in their literary, social, and historical context
Includes a comprehensive introduction which establishes Book 9 in Martial's work as a whole
Contains the Latin text of each eprigram, which takes manuscript variants and suggested emendations into account
In this volume, Henriksén offers the first extensive commentary on Book 9 of the Epigrams of M. Valerius Martialis (ca. AD 40-104), who published fifteen books of Epigrams during the last two decades of the 1st century AD. Firmly established in a literary tradition that had begun in Greece more than half a millennium earlier, Martial's work represents the height of the development of ancient epigram. Conscious of his own times and society, Martial often engages current genres and his great Roman predecessors, such as Catullus, Vergil, and Ovid, in an intertextual dialogue.

First published in AD 94/95, Book 9 is the last book in the corpus of Martial to have been published in the reign of the emperor Domitian. While it presents the reader with the epigrammatist's characteristic variety of subjects drawn from contemporary Roman society and everyday life, it also contains a patently higher number of poems focusing on and eulogizing Domitian than any other book in the Epigrams. Unlike those of Book 8, the panegyrics in Book 9 are mixed with satirical and obscene epigrams, and the panegyrical tone is intensified. Book 9 also provides a conclusion to the large cycle on Domitian's Second Pannonian War that extends over Books 7, 8, and 9, the three books that have been termed Martial's 'Kaisertriade'.

A thoroughly revised and expanded edition of Henriksén's published thesis, the book consists of an introduction discussing the date, characteristics, structure, and themes of Book 9, followed by a detailed commentary on each of the 105 poems, which places them in their literary, social, and historical context.
Readership: For scholars and students of classical studies, Latin literature, ancient history, and Roman studies.

In this paper I will discuss how an epigram by Martial (Mart. 9.20) can be connected to a passage of Theocritus’ Encomium to Ptolemy Philadelphus (Theoc. Id. 17.58 – 76): the analysis will be developed in detail in order to enable the reader to perceive all the intertextual links existing between the two texts and will lead to a wider consideration of the literary background of the encomiastic epigram.

This article presents ancient Roman texts dealing with the topic of same-sex weddings with the purpose of examining the reliability of these sources and contributing to the understanding of this element of the ancient tradition. In order to do so, this paper takes literary and historiographical sources and legal aspects into consideration, making use of research by Craig Williams, Bruce Frier, and Michael Fontaine. Apart from a Late Imperial constitutio, our most important sources are historiographical works on two emperors of scandalous reign, namely Nero and Elagabalus; Juvenal’s Satire 2; and two epigrams by Martial: 1, 24 and 12, 42. In the closing section of the paper, I suggest a new interpretation for the punchline of the latter poem.

Apuleius certainly quotes some epigrammatic texts and fragments in his Apology on secondary points of the argumentation, but these quotations remain misleading, because they hide the real presence of the epigrammatic genre in this speech: a both silent and efficient intertext. We shall show how we can discern allusions to the satiric epigram (especially that of Martial), which eventually create an alternative speech in some passages of the text, used for polemical purposes and intended to distract the learned public. But while requesting the cultural memory of the public and manipulating epigrammatic techniques and themes (often scandalous and contrary to the ethos that Apuleius explicitly creates in his own defense), the author has to find a just balance between caution and hidden knowledge.

Los niños que vivían en tiempo de los césares de Roma ¿jugaban a ser generales, gladiadores o aurigas del circo? ¿Cómo eran las muñecas a las que cuidaban las niñas? ¿Qué solían hacer, tanto niños como niñas, con un puñado de nueces? ¿Ayudaban a sus padres en el trabajo, fuera y dentro de casa? ¿Qué aprendían en la escuela? ¿A partir de qué momento se consideraba que dejaban de ser niños?
En La edad de las nueces, José María Sánchez Galera nos da a conocer, a través de la literatura, el arte y la arqueología, lo diferentes o parecidos que eran los niños de la Antigüedad clásica y los de nuestro tiempo. Describe cómo eran sus juguetes, qué significaba su nacimiento, a qué tipo de escuela iban. Desentraña los procesos sociales e históricos, señala los cambios, continuidades y alteraciones que supuso para la infancia el surgimiento del cristianismo dentro del Imperio romano.
Se trata, pues, de un ensayo en el que se da voz a los niños de la Antigüedad. Como asegura en el prólogo Gregorio Luri, «quizás los lectores jóvenes puedan creer que este libro trata de tiempos remotos; pero eso solo indicaría lo lejos que están de la infancia de sus abuelos».

In 1.35 Martial deals with the crucial theme of the relationship between epigram and obscenity, relating to Catullus (c. 16), who is from his first book mentioned by the epigrammatist as his main model. The epigram’s addressee, Cornelius, who complains about the impossibility to read at school Martial’s poems, could be a teacher. This hypothesis would allow to see in the original metaphor of the libelli’s castration a real censorship’s intervention, suggested or already carried out, like the one witnessed by the carolingian manuscripts of the poet.

The XII Book of Martial’s Epigrams is a complex and problematic text for many philological and historical reasons. Traditionally seen by scholars as a collection of poems made by a librarius in its longer edition, this book reveals some clues of unitariety to a more careful reading. The contrast between spaces and times (basically Roman past and Spanish present) is a good way to enlighten the authorial will and his choice of poems. Studying semantic webs with a relevant metapoetic meaning could help to focalize this interpretative prospective.

This study examines the structural function of the marriage-divorce theme in the second edition of Martial's book 10, which is built around the poet's decision to move back to Spain, leaving his beloved domina Rome after more than thirty years. The paper, in the wake of recent works on intratextuality and especially on the structure of Martial's books, takes into exam the book's epigrams devoted to the marriage-divorce theme, declined in satiric as well as serious way, with the aim of enlightening links between texts, which the poet sets up to increase the book's compactness and to enrich at the same time individual poems with further meaning, inside a sophisticated texture that he presents to his generic lectors, real authors of his lasting fame.

I focus on Martial’s pessimistic sense of Nature, on his substantial distrust of every kind of Art. Nature is ferocious and unpredictable. It only pretends to be tamed, wearing an ephemeral mask, but it is never truly tamed. Lurking behind the mask, there’s always an unredeemable core of feritas, ready to spill over and destroy all human efforts.

La presentazione Power Point con la quale ho accompagnato la relazione che ho tenuto nella giornata di studi su "Historia y Medicina en la Antigüedad", che si è tenuto presso Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
2 febbraio 2017, nella quale ho cercato di vedere quale sia la reputazione sociale della professione medica che emerge da un’opera assai particolare come gli "Epigrammi" di Marziale

This paper examines some epigrams of Ausonius’ Bissula, underscoring the literary dimension in which the biographical relationship between the poet-patronus and his young slave-alumna is rewritten in these verses. The girl is seen as an erotic subject and elegiac domina, whose ambiguous identity results in an ideal combination of perfect Latin upbringing and natural German beauty (see in particular the indigenous feature of the blonde hair), which makes her superior to the Latiae pupae and, implicitly, to the puellae of the elegiac tradition (Biss. 3-4). The theme of Bissula’s beauty, which needs no artifice, becomes central in Biss. 5-6, in connection with the subject of the portrait, in which Ausonius proposes again, in a new and original way, some conventions of ecfrastic poetry. The highlighted models make it possible to establish what the general tone of the collection must have been and to reconsider hypotheses about its incompleteness.

RESUMEN. Este trabajo está dividido en dos partes. En la primera se estudian los testimonios de culto al toro y a la luna como definidores del territorio primitivo del 'ager Vasconum', en especial las muy características «aras taurobólicas» de Navarra y el Oeste de Zaragoza. En la segunda se propone un nuevo método de análisis, por conjuntos, para intentar aprovechar datos, hoy inutilizables, del geógrafo Ptolomeo (II. 6, 66), acerca de las ciudades vasconas. Con diversos materiales arqueológicos y fuentes literarias, antiguas y medievales, se llega a proponer nueva ubicación para dieciocho de ellas y, en especial, para el enorme territorio público conocido como «Las Bárdenas Reales», un posible 'ager Caesarianus adsignatus'. La propuesta final de localizaciones (fig. 13) coincide bastante bien con la experimental a partir de Ptolomeo (fig. 9), lo que puede indicar la validez del método empleado.

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses two main issues. The first part is an in depth study of the evidences related to the worship of the bull and the moon, in particular the most characteristic of them known as «aras taurobólicas» (Navarra and W. of Saragossa). They are considered by the author as defining elements of the 'ager Vasconum' original territory. In the second part the researcher proposes a new method of analysis, by groups, as a better way of making use of some of the data around the Vasconic towns, gathered by the geographer Ptolemy (II, 6. 66). Various ancient and medieval archaeological and literary sources analysed suggest new locations for eighteen Vasconic towns. Specially relevant is the new location proposed for the vast territory known as “Bárdenas Reales”; that could possibly be an 'ager Caesarianus adsignatus'. The concluding proposed map (fig. 13) appear to match reasonably well with the experimental one based on Ptolemy (fig. 9). This could illustrate the reliability of the methods of study employed by the author.

N.B.- El análisis del territorio vascón según las coordenadas de Ptolomeo, nunca aprovechado para este fin (salvo en las pocas ciudades bien conocidas que cita), que en este estudio se propuso analizar no globalmente, como se venía intentando sin éxito, sino sectorialmente, por conjuntos, unido con datos de itinerarios, miliarios, epígrafes, monedas, y fuentes literarias antiguas y medievales, condujo a las hipótesis de localización de 17 ciudades (varias de ellas raramente citadas en la historiografía, como Seburi, Hispal, o las Bárdenas Reales) o, por ejemplo, a la identificación de la segunda calzada vascona del Ravenate, que propuse iría paralela al río Arga (http://www.tierravascona.info/aliciacanto/vascones_identificacion_ciudades.htm).

Este método de análisis sectorial, y la idea de que Ptolomeo usaba varias fuentes diferentes, difíciles de ajustar entre sí, y que además fueron alteradas en la Edad Media por sus copistas, vinieron a ser REVALIDADOS diez años más tarde, en 2007-2008, por estudios técnicos, geodésicos, debidos a los Dres. D. Lelgemann, E. Knobloch y F. Neitzel, del Institut für Geodäsie und Geoinformationstechnik u. Institut für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte de la Technische Universität Berlin. Véanse, por ejemplo, "Ptolemäus korrigiert" (http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/ptolemaeus-korrigiert-eine-neue-vermessung-der-alten-welt-1.826706), "Entzerrte Weltkarte" (http://www.scienzz.de/ticker/art9041.html), o "Descifran y corrigen histórico mapamundi de Claudio Ptolomeo" (http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2738940,00.html). Véase también, en abril de 2009, el ensayo de T. Tornadijo “Las ciudades vasconas en Ptolomeo: un análisis multivariante”(http://terraeantiqvae.com/profiles/blogs/las-ciudades-vasconas-en), que arrojó numerosas coincidencias con mis cálculos previos.

- Tras la publicación de este trabajo se suscitó en varios investigadores  (J. Andreu, J. Velaza, Á. Jordán, J.L. Ramírez Sádaba...) un renacimiento del interés por las fuentes literarias y ciudades vasconas, bastante olvidadas desde la única monografía de Mª J. Peréx Agorreta (1986), que en este aspecto concreto no había avanzado mucho. Incluso se organizaron dos o tres congresos sobre el tema (a sólo uno de los cuales fui invitada, aunque no pude luego entregar a tiempo mi ponencia), como "Navarra en la Antigüedad. Propuesta de actualización" (2006) o  el VII Congreso de Historia de Navarra: "Los Vascones de las fuentes antiguas. En torno a una etnia de la Antigüedad peninsular" (2009). Todo lo cual creo que, científicamente, me compensó de la falta de reconocimiento formal por parte de algunos de ellos (no así Andreu, o Peréx: 2009, 147-148), y hasta de algunas copias y falsedades en las citas (ad ex. Ramírez Sádaba). Algo muy habitual, por otro lado, sobre todo cuando alguien "de fuera" se acerca a determinados temas con el saludable ánimo de revisarlos.

Para este fenómeno, y para el tratamiento por parte de algunos autores que frecuentan el asunto, sería útil cf. este comentario de 13-4-2009: http://terraeantiqvae.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2043782%3ABlogPost%3A39447&commentId=2043782%3AComment%3A39513 "

The Latin verb pēdīcāre in many scientific works is presented as a loanword from Greek (from the substantiated adjective παιδικά applied in relation to eromenos), and its semantic field is outlined around pederasty. The meaning of this word, as well as its etymology itself, evokes justified controversy. The purpose of this dissertation is therefore to determine the origin and meaning of this word.
The conducted research has revealed that:
 This expression in the extant ancient sources was most often used as a vulgar threat of punishment for improper behaviour (such as theft, peeping, slanders, etc.) and in a mocking function as a vulgar criticism of someone's sexual behaviour.
 The hypothesis about the Greek origin of this word (caused by the believe of the Greek sources of male homosexual behaviour) already existed in the fifteenth century as a communis opinio and became the grounds for introducing the spelling of paedicare in the editiones principes of works by the Roman writers and the first Latin dictionaries, although this spelling is not certified in epigraphic sources or in the traditions of Roman handwritten writers.
 This verb should be regarded as the Latin native word based on the *pēd-/*pōd-stem, with the addition of the word-forming derivation -īc-, productive in the archaic era and present in words such as amīcus → amīcāre.

This essay provides the first critical edition of Angelo Poliziano’s commentary to Mart. De spect. 1, which is preserved in ms. Mon. Clm. 754, ff. 284r-284v. First, I focus my attention on the dating of the commentary and on the text of Martial Poliziano actually read; I also analyse the references to a work written by Poliziano but not preserved, the so-called Observationes. The next section concerns the ancient sources Poliziano used in his commentary (Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Diodorus Siculus, Solinus, Pomponius Mela). In the last part of the article, Poliziano’s commentary is compared with Domizio Calderini’s commentary to Martial and Niccolò Perotti’s Cornucopiae. This paper also contains a chapter on Apollonius Rhodius’ manuscripts which at that time were available to Poliziano.

In Marziale xi 96, conservato solo da una famiglia di codici, il poeta rimprovera uno schiavo germanico che impedisce a un fanciullo romano di dissetarsi a una fonte dell'aqua Marcia. Alcuni studiosi considerano il componimento un'ekphrasis di un fregio o un gruppo scultoreo. Finora la sua autenticità non è stata messa in discussione.Tuttavia l'estraneità del componimento alla compatta sezione conclusiva del libro, caratterizzata da tematica sessuale, linguaggio osceno e da numerosi collegamenti intratestuali, la struttura dell'epigramma, il suo tono nazionalistico e razzista e alcuni tratti stilistici e lessicali depongono a sfavore della paternità marzialiana.

In Martial xi 96, preserved only by one manuscript family, the poet blames a German slave who prevents a Roman boy from quenching his thirst at a fountain with water supplied from the aqua Marcia. Some scholars consider the epigram an ekphrasis of a sculptured frieze or of a sculpted group. So far the poem's authenticity has been not brought into question. However, the lack of connection between the epigram and the compact and homogeneous final section of the book, characterized by sexual themes, obscene language and many intratextual links, its structure, its nationalistic and racist content and some stilistic as well as verbal features do not support Martial's authorship.

Nil intemptatum linquere. Sull’origine di un’espressione poetica (con qualche osservazione sul testo di Verg. Aen. 8.205 s.)

Martial 2.14.1 nil intemptatum Selius, nil linquit inausum is a grandiose hexameter, which presents three forms not elsewhere attested in the epigrammatist’s corpus (intemptatum, linquit, inausum). Critics consider the verse as a combination of two augustean intertexts (Hor. ars 285 nil intemptatum + Verg. Aen. 7.308 nil linquere inausum). This centonary way of quotation however doesn’t conform to Martial’s intertextual practice. In this paper is put forward the hypothesis that both Hor. ars 285 and Mart. 2.14.1 descend from Ennius’ Annals. It is then discussed the transmitted text at Verg. Aen. 8.206. There intemptatum, variant reading discarded by editors for intractatum, which has stronger manuscript support and looks difficilior, is worthy of a reconsideration in the light of a linguistic-stylistic analysis and of the possible Ennian origin of the expression.

The thesis seeks an answer to the question ‘How did the Romans’ view on sexuality change during the early Empire, from the late Republic to the first two centuries of the Principate?’ by studying law and literature in the chosen period and whether we can see changes in these. The background for this question, lies in emperor Augustus’ moral laws lēx Iūlia dē marītandīs ōrdinibus and lēx Iūlia dē adul­teriīs coercendīs, that is, The Julian law on the marrying of the classes, and The Julian law on the punishing of adultery. The thesis studies how sexuality, sexual deviance and expressions of these were accounted for in law, and how law addressed human sexuality during the Principate till the time of Marcus Aurelius. The second part of the thesis covers how this came to be expressed in literature. From the late Republic to the Augustan age, we get to know texts by Cicero, Catullus and Sulpicia, and from the time of the Principate, Martial, Juvenal and Pliny the younger. By examining the writers’ expressions of sexuality, and how this changed over time, the thesis aims at providing an answer to what the Romans considered sexual deviance, and which changes one can find in the study of law and literature.

The thesis is also available through Munin (http://munin.uit.no/handle/10037/8432), where it was originally published (open access). It is written in Norwegian and has numerous textual examples in Latin with vowel length shown, some in Greek, and translations provided for everything.

Depuis longtemps, les études critiques ont reconnu la valeur métapoétique
de l’opposition des concepts « grand » et « petit » chez Martial. Le « grand » est souvent
compris comme la noblesse et l’exaltation du dédicataire et de la valeur littéraire de
l’oeuvre ; le « petit » peut être interprété comme la modestie formelle du genre et la petite
taille de la composition individuelle. Cependant, dans le douzième livre des épigrammes
on observe une valorisation particulière des deux concepts. La réinterprétation du
« grand vs petit » permet au poète de créer un nouveau discours métapoétique, à travers
lequel il présente, en même temps, une innovante revalorisation nostalgique de la grandeur
perdue (dimension existentielle, statut social et poétique et production littéraire destinée
aux grands empereurs), une désapprobation du « petit » négatif dans lequel il doit vivre
(la pusillitas de Bilbilis qui castre sa uis poétique) et une revalorisation finale du « petit »
dans le « grand » (avec de suggestifs jeux de miroir entre les dimensions chronologique,
géographique et littéraire). Ce sera la seule solution pour atteindre le bonheur et l’épanouissement
existentiel ainsi que, dans ses déclarations et prises de position, la maturité
poétique. Le moyen par lequel s’exprime ce mouvement est la fama.