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The Representation of Literary Materiality in Martial's Epigrams

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2012

Luke Roman
Luke Roman*
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

Around the world, covers have become advertisements for their books. The dignity that characterizes something self-contained, lasting, hermetic — something that absorbs the reader and closes the lid over him, as it were, the way the cover of the book closes on the text — has been set aside as inappropriate to the times. The book sidles up to the reader; it no longer presents itself as existing in itself, but rather as existing for something other, and for this very reason the reader feels cheated of what is best in it. Theodor Adorno

In his last book, at the end of a successful, literary career, Martial asks in regard to his own genre of epigram: ‘quid minus esse potest?’ (‘What can be humbler?’, 12.95). Such self-disparagement is not necessarily surprising, since there is no reason to imagine that Martial's success as an epigrammatist would alter his genre's place in the traditional hierarchy of literary seriousness. Martial's denigration of his own oeuvre, however, goes beyond consciousness of epigram's status as a low genre. The epigrammatist not only registers his genre's formal rank, he develops fully articulated fictional scenarios depicting the nature of his writing and its role in society. According to the most salient and pervasive fiction characterizing Martial's work, epigram is an ephemeral form of literature embedded in specific, social contexts, and dedicated to immediate uses.

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Articles
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The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 91 , November 2001 , pp. 113 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Luke Roman2001. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Adorno, Theodor, ‘Bibliographical Musings’, in Notes to Literature (1974), trans. Nicholsen, Shierry Weber, vol. 2, 20Google Scholar.

2 Translations of Martial and other Latin writers are my own, but I have borrowed freely from the translations in Bailey, D. R. Shackleton, Martial: Epigrams (1993)Google Scholar. The Latin text is taken from Bailey's 1990 Teubner edition. This article owes a great deal to the anonymous referees for JRS, whose comments and insights have been incorporated passim.

3 A good introduction to, and subtle treatment of, this topic can be found in J. P. Sullivan, Martial: the Unexpected Classic: A Literary and Historical Study (1991), 56–77. Kröner, H. O., ‘Das literarische Selbstverständnis Martials’, in Pajares, A. B. et al. (eds), Athlon: Satura Grammatica in Honorem F. R. Adrados (1987), vol. 2, 469–84,Google Scholar addresses this topic via an examination of the changes in how Martial identifies his literary predecessors, and thus also his level of literary ambition.

4 D. P. Fowler, ‘Martial and the book’, in A. J. Boyle (ed.), Roman Literature and Ideology: Ramus Essays for J. P. Sullivan (1995), 199–226, is the central work on the topic, and decisively establishes the importance and literary interest of the book in Martial. See also Merli, E., ‘Ordinamento degli Epigrammi e strategic cortigiane negli esordi dei Libri I–XII’, Maia n.s. 45 (1993), 229–56,Google Scholar for a discussion of the structuring of Martial's books in terms of content and addressees; and Citroni, M., ‘Publicazione e dediche dei libri in Marziale’, Maia 40 (1988), 3–39Google Scholar. White, P., ‘The presentation and dedication of the Silvae and the Epigrams’, JRS 64 (1974), 40–61,Google Scholar persuasively argues for their existence on the basis of references in Martial and Statius. White further asserts, however, that these libelli constituted the primary context for the poetry's reception, and that the published book was something of a by-product. I follow Merli, Citroni, and Fowler in insisting on the importance of publication, not just for the literary significance of the collection and its ordering, but for the significance of publication as a literary/social/propagandistic event. See Merli, 245, n. 43; Citroni, 3. White develops further theses regarding literary culture in the early Empire in ‘The friends of Martial, Statius and Pliny, and the dispersal of patronage’, HSCP 79 (1975), 265–300;Google Scholar and ‘Amicitia and the profession of poetry in early imperial Rome’, JRS 68 (1978), 74Google Scholar ff.

5 For the history of this term, and its relevance to Martial, see Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), 206.

6 A good example of this line of interpretation can be found in Marache, R., ‘La revendication sociale chez Martial et Juvénal’, RCCM 3 (1961), 30–67Google Scholar. Note, for instance: ‘les relations humaines de jadis ont fait place à un automatisme improvable’, 45; ‘sous l'ironie et les plaisanteries éclatent le désespoir et la révolte’, 57.

7 P. White, Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome (1993).

8 Spisak, A. L., ‘Gift-giving in Martial’, in F. Grewing (ed.), Toto Notus in Orbe: Perspektiven in Martial-Interpretation (1998), 243–55Google Scholar, observes that, since even motifs of amicitia can be read cynically in terms of the idea of ‘gifts as hooks’, some external standard is required; Spisak chooses the sociological model of gift-exchange as a means of resolving the dilemma (248). Yet this seems to beg the question, and, further, does not address the distinct nature of the writer's munus. See U. Walter, ‘Soziale Normen in den Epigrammen Martials’, in Grewing, 221–41, esp. 225, on the rhetorical nature of Martial's motifs of social degradation.

9 Damon, C., The Mask of the Parasite: A Pathology of Roman Patronage (1997)Google Scholar, establishes a distinction between poems with real addressees and those with anonymous, satirical targets (see also Saggese, P., ‘Lo scurra in Marziale’, Maia 46 (1994), 53Google Scholar ff., on this distinction). The more positive indications of the former set of poems reveal the limitations of the literalist reading of Martial as parasite. My reading seeks only to add the qualification that poems with named contemporaries do not necessarily represent Martial's authentic opinions any more than poems directed at fictitious targets.

10 White, op. cit. (n. 4, 1975; 1978), and Sailer, R., ‘Martial on patronage and literature’, CQ 33 (1983), 246–57,CrossRefGoogle Scholar are the important works on this topic in Martial's case. Note also Sullivan, op. cit. (n. 3), 115 ff., and 155 ff.

11 Spisak, op. cit. (n. 8), 248 ff.

12 Oliensis, E., Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority (1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 48 ff., provides an insightful analysis of Horace's evasion of open gratitude to Maecenas for his gift of the farm; see also 161–2, 164–5.

13 The revelance of the concept of literary autonomy to Roman literature is argued by J. Zetzel, ‘Roman Romanticism and other fables’, in Galinsky, K. (ed.), The Interpretation of Roman Poetry: Empiricism or Hermeneutics? (1992), 41–97Google Scholar. The objection that the concern with autonomy is anachronistically imported from Romantic aesthetics is based on the assumption that ‘autonomy’ could only be articulated in its Romantic form. But works such as P. Bürger, The Decline of Modernism (1992) and Theory of the Avantgarde (1984) suggest that the concept of aesthetic autonomy is not limited in its significance to the Romantic period.

14 1.1.2; 3.3.3–4; 5.13.3; 5.60.5; 6.82; 7.17.10; 7.88; 11.3; 12.2. See Sullivan, op. cit. (n. 3), 58–9.

15 Note also 1.1.4–6; 8.69.

16 A similar reversal of traditional aesthetic priorities occurs in the motif of immediate publication, by contrast with the long period of compositional labor limae recommended by Horace and Catullus: e.g. Epigrams 1.25.

17 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), 199–200.

18 Macleod, C. W., ‘The poet, the critic, and the moralist: Horace Epistles 1.19’, CQ ns 27 (1977), 359–76,CrossRefGoogle Scholar demonstrates the importance of not simply aligning the jocular with whimsical irrelevance: ‘we should beware of making “serious” mean the same as “factual”, or “funny” the same as “imaginary”: for on that criterion Attic tragedy would be far funnier than Attic comedy. And a poem represents a unitary world: to distinguish real from invented elements within it is to sift what the poet has deliberately blended’, 360.

19 Catullus C. 95.8; Horace, Epistles 2.1.269–70.

20 Oliensis, op. cit. (n. 12), 197, observes the presence of this criterion in Horace's evocation of ‘exchanges that are finished when they are transacted, exchanges that leave no saving remainder’ at the close of Epistles 2.1.

21 See Salemme, C., Marziale e la ‘poetica’ degli oggetti: Struttura dell'epigramma di Marziale (1976)Google Scholar, and LaPenna, A., ‘L'oggetto come moltiplicatore delle immagini’, Maia 44 (1992), 7–44Google Scholar.

22 I am grateful both to Mario Citroni, who generously responded to a draft of this essay, and to the anonymous referees for JRS, for urging me to pursue the question of genre in greater depth, and for suggesting modes of approach.

23 Paukstadt's, R. elegant libellus, De Martiale Catulli Imitatore (1876)Google Scholar, treats Martial's references to Catullus; see esp. pp. 10–13 on the book. Note also Ferguson, J., ‘Catullus and Martial’, PACA 6 (1963), 3–15Google Scholar. E. Wagner, De M. Valerio Martiale Poetarum Augusteae Aetatis Imitatore (1880), less incisively than Paukstadt, but still usefully, covers Martial's references to the Augustan poets. A. Zingerle, Martial's Ovid–Studien (1877) deals with allusions to Ovid, Siedschlag, while E., ‘Ovidisches bei Martial’, RIFC 100 (1972), 156–61,Google Scholar picks up some possible echoes missed by Zingerle. A more synthetic discussion can be found in R. Pitcher, ‘Martial's debt to Ovid’, in Grewing, op. cit. (n. 8), 59–76. L. Friedlander (ed.), M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton Libri (1967), offers many useful parallels ad loc. Sullivan, op. cit. (n. 3), provides a general account of Martial's literary influences. The central work on Martial's relation to the tradition of Greek epigram is P. Laurens, L'abeille dans l'ambre: Célébration de l'epigramme de l'époque alexandrine à la fin de la Renaissance (1989).

24 Martial never, pace Swann, identifies Catullus as an epigrammatist. Swann, B., ‘Sic scribit Catullus: the importance of Catullus for Martial's Epigrams’, in Grewing, op. cit. (n. 8)Google Scholar, 48–58, and Martial's Catullus: The Reception of an Epigrammatic Rival (1994), makes this inference on the basis of Martial's consistent advertisement of Catullus' role as his primary literary predecessor, and his own role as the main heir to Catullus' legacy. That Martial allied himself with Catullus is, of course, quite true, but rather than interpreting this advertisement of literary inheritance as a sign that Martial saw Catullus as a writer of epigrams, it is more in the spirit of Martial's own language to read it as proclaiming that Martial is Catullus' heir in the domain of playful, nugatory first-person poetry at Rome. Epigram describes Martial's particular identity and ambition within this domain. Swann, in order to support his thesis, has to assume that a poet who asserts a strong identification with a predecessor's work is claiming that their work is exactly the same in regard to generic criteria. But Martial, as Swann's research powerfully demonstrates, adheres to the Catullan vocabulary of playful literary composition (sal, ludere, ioci, nugae, etc.) except in the case of the word epigrammata, which was his own, conscious addition. The conclusions of Laurens, op. cit. (n. 23), 183 ff., are sensible.

25 W. Fitzgerald, Catullan Provocations (1995), 41 ff. J. Zetzel includes Catullus in his discussion of the phenomenon of the ‘displaced patron’ in ‘The poetics of patronage in the late first century BC’, in B. K. Gold (ed.), Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome (1982), 87–102.

26 Fitzgerald, op. cit. (n. 25), 41.

27 M. Lowrie, Horace's Narrative Odes (1997), 72 ff., provides an excellent discussion of the differences between Horace's and Pindar's building metaphors. The complex issue of writing and song in the Odes is examined by Lowrie, 49–76; and by D. C. Feeney, ‘Horace and the Greek lyric poets’, in N. Rudd (ed.), Horace 2000: A Celebration, Essays for the Bimillennium (1993), 41–63, at 55.

28 See Citroni, M., ‘Le raccomandazioni del poeta: apostrofe al libro e contatto col destinatorio’, Maia 40 (1986), 111–46,Google Scholar and op. cit. (n. 4); White, op. cit. (n. 4, 1974).

29 For examples, see Paukstadt, op. cit. (n. 23), 10–11.

30 For Martial's resistance to certain elements of the neoteric programme and Callimachean aesthetics, see Citroni, M., ‘Motivi di polemica letteraria negli epigrammi di Marziale’, DiArch 2 (1968), 259–301,Google Scholar esp. 280 ff.; and Preston, K., ‘Martial and formal literary criticism’, CP 15 (1920), 340–51,Google Scholar esp. 342.

31 Epigrams 2.1, 1.118. M. Citroni, M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton Liber Primus (1975), xxxviii, on 1.118: ‘una brillante e orginale versione epigrammatica del principio callimacheo’.

32 Duret, L., ‘Martial et la deuxième Epode d'Horace: quelque réflexions sur l'imitation’, REL 55 (1977), 173Google Scholar ff., demonstrates Martial's extensive use of Hortialis ace's second epode in his descriptions of villas and the country, and also addresses the issue of the relative scarcity of scholarly attention applied to Martial's relation with Horace. Note also Donini, G., ‘Martial 1.49. Horatius in Martiale’, AJP 85 (1964), 56Google Scholar ff.

33 The central work on this topic remains Barwick, K., ‘Zyklen bei Martial und in den kleinen Gedichten des Catull’, Philologus 87 (1932), 63–79Google Scholar.

34 Epigrams 10.2. It is interesting to note, however, that in Martial's monumentum poem he is openly and touchingly grateful to his readers (‘lectores, opes nostrae’, ‘readers, my wealth’), by contrast with Horace's unflinching confidence (‘usque ego postera / crescam laude recens’, ‘I shall ever continue to grow, fresh with the praise of posterity’), and retracting slightly from the Horatian image of the indestructible monolith, he follows Propertius in employing the plural, monumenta.

35 On Ovid's reconsideration of his oeuvre from the perspective of the exile poetry, see Hinds, S., ‘Booking the return trip: Ovid and Tristia I’, PCPS 31 (1985), 13–32Google Scholar.

36 Epistles 1.17; Odes 3.30, 10 ff.

37 Satires 1.10.74: ‘contentus paucis lectoribus’. On Catullus, Callimachus, and the ‘anxiety of publication’, see Fitzgerald, op. cit. (n. 25), 44 ff.

38 For these and other references, see Zingerle, op. cit. (n. 23), 28.

39 Tristia 3.1.17. Many of the Ovidian images of the book going to Rome without its author are concentrated in Martial's third book (3.1, 4, 5), when he was away from Rome for not particularly exilic reasons. A similar echo in 12.2.3, written after his departure to Spain following Domitian's assassination, may have darker connotations. See Pitcher, op. cit. (n. 23), 60 ff; on the book in Ovid, Hinds, op. cit. (n. 35); and on the theme in ancient poetry more generally, Williams, R. D., ‘Representations of the book-roll in Latin poetry: Ovid Tr.1.1.3–14 and related texts’, Mnemosyne 45 (1992), 178–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Pitcher, op. cit. (n. 23), 61.

41 Tristia 1.7.20. For the relation of paternity, Tristia 1.1.107.

42 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), 199.

43 This reluctance is explicit in Epistles 1.20, but seems already to be implied in Satires 1.10, in which the speaker offers up his polished libellus: he is ‘contentus paucis lectoribus’ (‘content with few readers’, 74), including Maecenas, Virgil, Pollio, etc., but must envisage the possibility of wider circulation (‘vilibus in ludis’, ‘in common schools’, 75). On this epistle and Horace's treatment of the topic of publication, see Oliensis, E., ‘Horace on publication’, Arethusa 28 (1995), 209–24Google Scholar.

44 Howell, P., A Commentary on Book One of the Epigrams of Martial (1980)Google Scholar, ad loc, suggests as a meaning for magnis, ‘great authors’, which is tempting, as it would fit Martial's interest, as manifested in his Apophoreta, in the harmony, or dissonance, between the ‘size’ of a genre and the size of a book; on which, see below,

45 This could be read as information tout court, a realistic detail typical of epigram, with no bearing on the Horatian theme. Yet readers of the epistle, who have been taught by Horace to relate the sphere of the freed with literary publication, and the circulation of books with social mobility, and are aware of the liber/liber pun, might remark on the association of a freedman and a published book. Such an allusion, if it can be classed as one, would fit under S. Hinds' rubric of limit cases, where it becomes hard to distinguish authorial intention from the intertextual dimension of shared language (Allusion and Intertext in Latin Literature (1998), 17 ff.)

46 As Sullivan, op. cit. (n. 3), 149, remarks, Martial's description of the Forum Transitorium as the Forum Palladium is ‘a specific compliment to Domitian’, since the emperor was building a Temple of Pallas there. Coleman, K. M., ‘The liber spectaculorum: perpetuating the ephemeral’, in Grewing, op. cit. (n. 8), 15–36Google Scholar, esp. 31 ff., examines Martial's relation to the Flavian amphitheatre.

47 Propertius 1.8.33; on Horace and the angulus, see Ferri, R., I dispiaceri di un epicureo (1993Google Scholar).

48 For a good commentary on these opening poems of Martial and their relation to Martial's conception of audience, see Citroni, op. cit. (n. 31), ad loc; and for a general treatment of the ‘go, little book’ motif, Citroni, op. cit. (n. 28).

49 Howell, op. cit. (n. 44), ad loc.

50 ibid., ad loc., on the practice of sagatio.

51 See Citroni, op. cit. (n. 31), 264, for this wavering of tone between light and serious and its implication for Martial's attitude toward the seriousness of his own versus.

52 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), 201–2.

53 See ibid., 202 ff., for a discussion of such ironies, and, in particular, the question of codex vs. book-roll.

54 Citroni, M., ‘Marziale e la letteratura per i Saturnali (poetica dell'intrattenimento e cronologia della pubblicazione dei libri)’, ICS 14 (1989), 201–26Google Scholar. See also T. J. Leary, ‘Martial's early Saturnalian verse’, in Grewing, op. cit. (n. 8), 37–47, and Swann, op. cit. (n. 24), 23 ff.

55 Citroni, op. cit. (n. 54), 206–12.

56 Citroni, op. cit. (n. 54), 209, 212 ff.

57 Shackleton Bailey, op. cit. (n. 2), ad loc.

58 Poverty, an important concept in the articulation of Roman aesthetics, goes back to a Callimachean precedent: in Iamb. 3 there seems to be a connection between poetry and poverty, and also in AP 12.148; for a discussion of the relation between poverty and Callimachus' aesthetic ideas, see A. Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics (1995), 139 n. 18. Catullus' reference to his financial circumstances in his polymetrics (e.g. in 10, 13, 22, 44) can be read in terms of a poetics of paupertas. Horace develops poverty into an explicit, programmatic theme in his Odes, and Tibullus and Propertius take the dives amator (rich lover) as a foil-figure. This particular scenario in Martial recalls in its general structure Catullus' poem to Fabullus, C. 13: Catullus has no money; hence his guest/reader must supply everything for the convivium (party). For a discussion of poetic poverty, its structural parallelism with the figure of Apollo in the Augustan poets and Calpurnius, and the self-conscious travesty of these ideas in Juvenal and Martial, see W. Wimmel, ‘Apollo-Paupertas: zur Symbolik von Burufungsvorgängen bei Properz, Horaz, und Calpurnius’, in W. Wimmel (ed.), Forschungen zur römischen Literatur (1970), 291–7.

59 Citroni, op. cit. (n. 54), 229; on questions of chronology, see 214 ff.

60 ibid., 210–12. Note also the remarks of Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), 223–4.

61 ibid., 211–12.

62 There is a further parallel for this coincidence of mimetic and formal closure in the ending of elegiac love affairs, as in the case of Propertius 3.24, 25.

63 The sense of a comic world, created here by the special setting of the Saturnalia, is continued in Martial's later collections. Laurens, P., ‘Martial et l'épigramme grecque du Ier siècle après J. C.’, REL 43 (1965), 315–41,Google Scholar at 341, remarks that Martial's iterated use of pseudonyms works to ‘creer l'illusion d'un petit monde comique’.

64 Citroni, op. cit. (n. 54), 210.

65 See P. Bing, The Well-Read Muse: Present and Past in Callimachus and the Hellenistic Poets (1988), 34. Bing refers to a fragment of Stesichorus' Helen, PMG 187.3, for this meaning of the word. His discussion occurs in relation to AP 12.257, where the idea of ‘garland’ is reinforced by the poem's closure of Meleager's collection, ‘The Garland’ (Stephanos).

66 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), 223; Fowler also points out the potential metaliterary significance of festinatas (hurried) in the light of epigram's associations with rapid composition.

67 Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 27), 164 ff., in a thoughtful discussion of 1.38, examines its position at the ‘fold’, or border, not only between two books, but between different modes of discourse; in particular, she explores its relation to the previous ode, and at the same time to the following ode (2.1), also characterized by a genencally transgressive inclusion of serious, political subject matter.

68 My reading of Martial's propagandistic poetry does not focus on dissonance and irony; but see Garthwaite, J., ‘The panegyrics of Domitian in Martial Book 9’, Ramus 22 (1992), 79–102,Google Scholar on Martial's interest in awkward aspects of Domitian's moral programme; and ‘Putting a price on praise: Martial's debate with Domitian in Book 5’, in Grewing, op. cit. (n. 8), 157–72, esp. 167–71, on tensions surrounding the question of praise and patronage.

69 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), 223–4, notes the ‘intertextual richness’ of both of these poems.

70 This alternation of light and serious is interestingly juxtaposed with the collection's central motif of alternation between poor and rich gifts (‘divitis alternas et pauperis … sortes’, 14.1.5). Literary weight and seriousness may be reduced to the scope of a modest codex, while a relatively trivial work may be granted the honour of a deluxe edition. On the question of the worth of books in Martial's Apophoreta, see T. Birt, Das antike Buchwesen in seinem Verhältniss zur Litteratur (1882), 71 ff.

71 Not to mention the language of hiding: ‘multiplici pariter condita pelle latent’. Ulysses was a master of hiding, and it is ironic that the poem named after the city he destroyed, Ilias, lies in hiding together (pariter) with ‘Priami regnis immicus Uhxes’ (‘Ulysses, enemy to Priam's realm’) : his ‘latency’ in the Trojan horse was the final cause of Troy's downfall. There may also be a reference to Ulysses' Greek epithet polutropos, as one of the anonymous readers has pointed out to me, in the word multiplex.

72 There is a strikingly similar motif of the non-integrity of the book in the Elder Pliny. In the preface to his Naturalis Historia, he introduces his work with the vocabulary of nugatory triviality so common in Martial, and in praef. 33 points out to Titus how the table of contents allows his reader to read certain parts of his work and skip others. On this correspondence, see Citroni, op. cit. (n. 4), 10. The same idea may be implied by Pliny's claim that he put together his collection of epistles ‘ut quaeque in manus venerat’ (‘as each one came to hand’, 1.1.1); i.e. there is no integral structure.

73 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), 223.

74 Leary, op. cit. (n. 54), esp. 41–2, discusses the artistic principles of selection, and skill in arrangement, which lie behind the ostensible form of the miscellany.

75 Ep. 3.2, 4.86, 7.26, 7.97, 8.72.

76 Ep. 5.16, 7.97, 7.51.

77 Ep. 1.107, 1.108, 3.5, 10.58.

78 This epigram and Martial's conception of the liber are discussed by Citroni, op. cit. (n. 30), 272 ff.; also, Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), passim.

79 Note also 7.81: ‘“triginta toto mala sunt epigrammata libro.” /si totidem bona sunt, Lause, bonus liber est’ (‘“There are thirty bad epigrams in the whole book.” If there are as many good ones, Lausus, it is a good book’.).

80 Note Salemme, op. cit. (n. 21), 123: ‘la “non-poesia” funzionale’.

81 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), 224.

82 Epigrams 1.52, 1.70, 3.2, 3.5, 4.10, 4.82, 4.86, 5.5, 5.6, 5.80, 7.26, 7.97, 7.99, 8.72, 9.99, 10.20, 10.93, 12.1, 12.2, 121.11.

83 Citroni, op. cit. (n. 30), 266, discusses this poem in terms of Martial's avoidance of personal attack; this may be implied in the contrast between aceto (vinegar) and lene et dulce (smooth and pleasing), but honorificum (complimentary) and blanda (flattering) suggest that more is at stake than an absence of defamatory content.

84 On Martial's treatment of the Catullan cena, see Ferguson, op. cit. (n. 23), 13; Paukstadt, op. cit. (n. 23), 21. Paukstadt's remark is to the point: ‘sed argumentum huius carminis valde aliud est, nam Catullus, quanquam poemation, quo invitat, venustissimum est, parvam et tenuem, Martialis autem cenam magnam et lautam promittit’ (‘but the theme of this poem is rather differerent; for Catullus, although his little poem of invitation is most charming, promises a small, meagre dinner, whereas Martial promises a large, splendid one’).

85 On this form of recusatio in Martial, see Citroni, op. cit. (n. 30), 287 ff.

86 d'Elia, S., ‘Appunti su Marziale e la civiltà letteraria dell'eta flavia’, in Letterature comparate: problemi e metodo: studi in onore di Ettore Paratore (1981), vol. 2, 647–66,Google Scholar argues, on the basis of such indications in Martial, that patronage went into decline because arrivistes from the provinces did not know how to patronize in the grand old style: ‘In un mondo “borgesizzato” il distacco fra “letteratura aristocratica” e “subletteratura popolare” si è attenuate in nome della “massificazione della cultura’”, 652. But as White, op. cit. (n. 4), points outs: ‘We should not assume that, a century before Martial, the roles and rules of literary and social life were so differently arranged that the rewards of poets were generally more abundant’, 77.

87 On the significance of this identification, see Kröner, op. cit. (n. 3), 476.

88 The ideological dimension of this poem is discussed in Walter, op. cit. (n. 8), 225–6; see also Sullivan, op. cit. (n. 3), 119 ff.

89 On Martial's treatment of the ingratus, see Sullivan, op. cit. (n. 3), 118.

90 ibid., 46 ff.

91 Catullus 58.6; 1.3–4, 8–9; Propertius 2.1.4.

92 On Maecenas' role as mediator and the consequences of the later obsolescence of this role, see Citroni, M., Produzione letteraria e forme del potere. Gli scrittori latini del I secolo dell'impero, in Schiavone, A. (ed.), Storia di Roma, II, 3, La cultura e l'impero (1992), 385Google Scholar.

93 La Penna, A., Orazio e l'ideologia del principato (1963)Google Scholar and Fowler, D., ‘Horace and the aesthetics of politics’, in S. Harrison (ed.), Homage to Horace: A Bimillenary Celebration (1995), 248–66Google Scholar, examine the tensional relation between imperial ideology and Horace's small Callimachean domain of lyric.

94 Feeney, op. cit. (n. 27), 54–5, discusses the difficulties Horace encountered in addressing the princeps directly: ‘talking to the great remained at the very limits of the tractable until the end’, 55.

95 Laurens, op. cit. (n. 23), 219 ff. elegantly characterizes Martial's poetic of sociability.

96 On the various forms epigram took in Rome, and their sociological implications, see Luiselli, B., ‘Sul significato socio-culturale dell'epigramma latino’, Studi Romani 21 (1973), 441Google Scholar ff.

97 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 4), 224.

98 Hinds, op. cit. (n. 45), examines the distinction between decline and ‘decline’, 83 ff., and warns of ‘the dangers of too facile a postmodern revisionism’, 90.

99 Adorno, op. cit. (n. I), 21.