Martial's Epigrams
Impressions of Flavian Rome
Other posts about Roman literature:
Representations of Roman Streets in Three Plautine Comedies
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Animated Books: Walking at the Scale of Rome, 20 May
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Image 1. Engraved bust of Martial. Artist unknown. Image source: Universal dictionary of arts, sciences, and literature; Volume XIV (1816).
Biography
Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 40 CE–c. 102 CE), better known as “Martial,” published books of poetry, many of which recorded his impressions of street life in imperial Rome. He hailed from Bibillis, a town in the northeast of Spain. His family leveraged a connection with Seneca to prepare for their son’s arrival to Rome around the year 64, but Seneca fell out of favor with Nero just a year later. While many representations of Rome are delivered to us by elites, Martial provides one of a client and expresses the resentments of someone who had sometimes groveled for his meals. While Simon A. Speksnijder claims that the salutatio was in practice for about 100 years, starting from about 123 or 122 BCE,1 Martial used many of his Epigrams to complain about the practice and used various literary devices to express different manners of shirking his obligations. Therefore, the salutatio still existed in some form during Martial’s lifetime.
Martial published his first volume of poetry around 80 CE, the Spectacles, corresponding to the reign of Titus and the unveiling of the Roman Colosseum, a project started under Vespasian. He published his first two books of the Epigrams around 86, starting a period of some commercial success. He released about one book of his Epigrams per year between 87 and 96 (Books III-X). Martial revised Book X after the assassination of Domitian and re-released it in 98. The extant form of Book X is the second edition.2 The Spectacles and the first ten books of the Epigrams comprise the works he composed when he resided in Rome,3 even though Books XI and XII also include commentary on the capital city.4
What Reading Martial Might Tell Us about Street Life in Ancient Rome
I am not prepared to address the notion that writers such as Martial present “the city as text,”5 but I agree that we cannot uncritically accept observations expressed in ancient texts as unvarnished truth, if there is even such a thing. We might imagine if science officers from Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise were attempting to understand the United States during the period of 1945–2017 through reading newspaper columns and watching holograms of cable news personalities. They would need to be wary about the filters these commentators impose on their environments. The poems of Martial are very much opinion pieces, so we must be careful evaluating the ostensibly factual claims. The endeavor of gleaning street life from Martial’s Epigrams is fraught with indeterminacy, even with context flowing from the some excellent scholarly commentaries. Martial’s self-image also colors his representation of Rome.6
Martial very much wants his reader to know how much walking is required to fulfill his duties as a client. These were substantial treks for many Romans. In some cases, he makes these trips. In other cases, his success as an epigrammist provides enough financial independence for him to safely criticize the patronage system and refuse to participate in the morning salutatio. Fortunately, he records his impressions of Roman street life, even when he invokes the metaphor of the animated, mobile volume of epigrams. As I argued above, the demands of patrons on their clients pushed many sets of sandals onto the streets, where they performed customs according to diurnal patterns. Though Speksnijder marks the end of the salutatio as the late Principate, Martial’s poems published at the end of the first century CE indicate the practice persisted into at least the early Flavian era.7 When Martial arrived in Rome, he was mentored by Seneca.8 Seneca’s comments from De Beneficiis 6.34.4 highlight congestion caused by the salutatio, while questioning the benefits of the custom.9 Thus the salutatio appears to be thriving during the reign of Nero, when Martial first arrives in Rome (under the tutelage of Seneca), and still alive when Martial published his last volume during the reign of Trajan.
The throngs themselves are evidence of robust street life in Flavian Rome. Yet Cicero and Seneca both wax wistful about the lack of true friends within their crowds.10 This might be taken as an example to be used against contemporary advocates of street life. However, proponents and mavens of “street life” do not claim that you are always among close friends. Or in different words, streets need not be filled with people who have close connections. For example, Jane Jacobs criticizes the notion that a person should always be with friends, and only with friends. She calls this concept “togetherness,” and identifies this as a cause for the dysfunction and lifelessness of suburban streets.11 Functional streets and neighborhoods do not require a network of close friends; rather, they only require a rich network of loosely associated people who live and work in the neighborhood. This people are active in the street and act as “eyes on the street.”12 For Jacobs, an important test for a well-functioning street is how well it treats strangers.13
Shackleton Bailey, trans. Martial’s Epigrams, Volume I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 1–2; Simon A. Speksnijder, “Beyond ‘public’ and ‘private’: accessibility and visibility during salutationes,” in Public and Private in the Roman House and Society (JRA Supplementary Series, 102), edited by Kaius Tuori and Laura Nissin (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology: 2005), 91.
Shackleton Bailey, Martial’s Epigrams, Volume I, 2–4.
Loc. cit.; cf. Ray Laurence, “Literature and the Spatial Turn: Movement and Space in Martial’s Epigrams,” in Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Space and Mobility, Ray Laurence and David J. Newsome, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 82–3, esp. fn.12.
Laurence, “Literature and the Spatial Turn,” 81.
Laurence, “Literature and the Spatial Turn,” 81; Victoria Rimell, Martial’s Rome: Empire and the Ideology of Epigram (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 19–50; Luke Roman, “Martial and the City of Rome,” The Journal of Roman Studies 100 (2010): 88.
Roman, “Martial and the City of Rome,” 88.
Speksnijder, “Beyond public and private,” 91, claims the salutatio lasted circa 123–23 BCE.
Shackleton Bailey, Martial’s Epigrams, Volume I, 2–4.
Citation taken from Speksnijder, “Beyond public and private,” 91 with fn. 56.
Compare Seneca De Beneficiis 6.34.4 to Cicero Letters to Atticus 1.18.1, “out of the entire crowd I can find no one with whom I can joke freely or sigh intimately.”
Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities, (New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1992).
Jacobs, Death and Life, 35 passim, though a more appropriate phrasing should be “eyes in the street,” since she makes it clear that a person watching from a garret window does not count. Windows are important, but there must be a critical mass of people in the streets. The Jacobsian urbanist is gregarious and confident.
Loc. cit.