Literature in Translation - Hustle and Flow: Martial and Juvenal
Tutor Ian Goh
This course focuses on two authors of “subordinate” poetic genres, namely epigram (Martial) and satire (Juvenal), who are too often dismissed as trivial, even incompetent poetasters. Their work ostensibly preserves the authentic tang of the c. 100 A.D. street, and has duly been used as evidence for the habits and practices of the Roman world, but it transcends such limited interpretation of its social commentary thanks to the peculiar and individual preoccupations found within. That said, commonplace caricatures of our authors’ personas present us with an obsequious Martial mired in poverty, obscene and wheedling, and a sclerotic, ranting Juvenal. However, neither poet is a stranger to subtlety and irony; each is hard to pin down. While we shall read them – starting with judicious extracts from Martial’s 15 books, then progressing to Juvenal’s 16 satires – for their wit and wisdom, with a sceptical eye to the strategies they use to get ahead in imperial Rome, close attention will be paid to the nitty-gritty of their poetic techniques and the import of their mocking intent.
Bibliography
Translations:
Braund, S. M. (ed. & tr.) (2004) Juvenal and Persius. Cambridge, MA (Loeb Classical Library).
Michie, J. (tr.) (2002) Martial: Epigrams. New York (Modern Library).
Rudd, N. (tr.) (1999) Juvenal: The Satires. Oxford (World’s Classics).
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. (ed. & tr.) (1993) Martial: Epigrams. 3 volumes. Cambridge, MA (Loeb Classical Library).
Sullivan, J. P. & A. J. Boyle (eds.) (1996) Martial in English. Harmondsworth (Penguin Classics).
Both Braund and Rudd are good translations; Michie is a venerable selection (it’s reprinted in a Penguin Classics version as well), but Shackleton Bailey is authoritative, if perhaps prohibitively expensive. The Sullivan & Boyle anthology (updating a similar volume edited by Whigham & Sullivan, Berkeley, 1987) contains English versions of selected epigrams “by divers hands”; here poetic licence is very much a feature. Some commentaries on individual books of Martial (e.g. by Kathleen Coleman for Liber Spectaculorum, ‘Book of Spectacles’, by Craig Williams for Book 2, and by Peter Howell for Book 5) also contain utilitarian translations, for reference.
Some introductory secondary literature:
Anderson, W. S. (1982) Essays on Roman Satire. Princeton, esp. 197-292.
Bramble, J. (1982) ‘Juvenal and Martial’, in Kenney, E. J. & Clausen, W. V. (eds.) The Cambridge History of Classical Literature. Vol. II: Latin Literature. Cambridge, 597-623.
Braund, S. (1992) Roman Verse Satire. Oxford (Greece & Rome New Surveys in the Classics 23).
Coffey, M. (1989) ‘Juvenal’, in Roman Satire. 2nd Ed. Bristol, 119-46.
Fitzgerald, W. (2007) Martial: The World of Epigram. Chicago.
Freudenburg, K. (2001) ‘Juvenal’, in Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal. Cambridge, 209-77.
Hooley, D. (2007) ‘Juvenal’, in Roman Satire. Oxford, 112-40.
Howell, P. (2009) Martial. London (Ancients in Action).
Rimell, V. (2005) ‘The Poor Man’s Feast: Juvenal’, in Freudenburg, K. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire. Cambridge, 81-94.
_______. (2009) Martial’s Rome: Empire and the Ideology of Epigram. Cambridge.
In the Cambridge ‘Green & Yellow’ series there are commentaries on selected epigrams of Martial by Lindsay and Patricia Watson (Cambridge, 2003), and on Book 1 of Juvenal (Satires 1-5) by Susanna Braund (Cambridge, 1996): the introduction to the Martial volume is more useful for the Latinless.