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Marcus Valerius Martialis (March, between 38 and 41 CE–between 102 and 104 CE) was born at Bilbilis, a small town in the north-east of Spain (Hispania). He is commonly known in the English speaking world as Martial. He was a scathing satirist, often writing highly derogatory poems of his acquaintances — including his patrons — which he published under the title of Epigrammata. Though not the first Roman poet to write in an epigrammatic style he is widely considered to have brought the epigram to its acme as a literary genre; thus he is rightly considered the 'Father of the Epigram.'
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)
- Epigrammata, twelve books of short poems.
- Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba.
- My poems are naughty, but my life is pure.
- I, 4.
- Non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere ‘Vivam’:
Sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie.- Believe me, wise men don't say ‘I shall live to do that’, tomorrow's life is too late; live today.
- I, 15.
- Variant translations:
- 'I'll live to-morrow', 'tis not wise to say:
'Twill be too late to-morrow—live to-day. - Tomorrow will I live, the fool does say;
Today itself's too late; the wise lived yesterday.
- 'I'll live to-morrow', 'tis not wise to say:
- Cineri gloria sera venit.
- Glory paid to ashes comes too late.
- I, 25, line 8.
- Stop abusing my verses, or publish some of your own.
- I, 91.
- You complain, friend Swift, of the length of my epigrams, but you yourself write nothing. Yours are shorter.
- I, 110.
- Invitas nullum nisi cum quo, Cotta, lavaris
et dant convivam balnea sola tibi
mirabar quare numquam me, Cotta, vocasses:
iam scio me nudum displicuisse tibi.- You invite no man to dinner, Cotta, but your bath-companion; the baths alone provide you with a guest. I was wondering why you had never asked me; now I understand that when naked I displeased you.
- I, 23 (Loeb translation).
- I do not love thee, Sabidius, nor can I say why; this only I can say, I do not love thee.
- I, 32, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "I do not love thee, Doctor Fell, / The reason why I cannot tell; / But this alone I know full well, / I do not love thee, Doctor Fell", Tom Brown, Laconics.
- Ride, si sapis.
- Laugh if you are wise.
- II, 41.
- Turpe est difficiles habere nugas,
Et stultus labor est ineptiarum.- 'Tis degrading to undertake difficult trifles; and foolish is the labour spent on puerilities.
- II, 86 (Loeb translation).
- Sit mihi verna satur: sit non doctissima conjux:
Sit nox cum somno: sit sine lite dies.- Let me have a plump home-born slave, have a wife not too lettered, have night with sleep, have day without a lawsuit.
- II, 90 (Loeb translation).
- Simpliciter pateat vitium fortasse pusillum:
Quod tegitur, magnum creditur esse malum- Let a defect, which is possibly but small, appear undisguised.
A fault concealed is presumed to be great. - Variant translation: Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.
- III, 42.
- Let a defect, which is possibly but small, appear undisguised.
- Semper eris pauper, si pauper es, Aemiliane;
Dantur opes nulli nunc, nisi divitibus.- You will always be poor, if you are poor, Aemilianus. Wealth is given to-day to none save the rich.
- V, 81 (Loeb translation).
- Nullos esse deos, inane caelum
Adfirmat Segius: probatque, quod se
Factum, dum negat haec, videt beatum.- Selius affirms, in heav'n no gods there are:
And while he thrives, and they their thunder spare,
His daring tenet to the world seems fair. Anon. 1695. - IV, 21.
- Selius affirms, in heav'n no gods there are:
- The bee enclosed and through the amber shown
Seems buried in the juice which was his own.- IV, 32, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb", Francis Bacon, Historia Vitæ et Mortis; Sylva Sylvarum, Cent. i. experiment 100.
- Laudant illa sed ista legunt.
- They praise those works, but read these.
- IV, 49.
- You ask what a nice girl will do? She won't give an inch, but she won't say no.
- IV, 71.
- Divisum sic breve fiet opus.
- Divided the work will thus become brief.
- IV, 83 (Loeb translation).
- Si post fata venit gloria, non propero.
- If glory comes after death, I hurry not.
- V, 10 (trans. Zachariah Rush).
- Nobis pereunt et imputantur.
- They [the hours] pass by, and are put to our account.
- V, 20, line 13; this phrase is often found as an inscription on sundials.
- Vita non est vivere, sed valera vita est.
- Life is not living, but living in health.
- VI, 70.
- Variant translations:
- It is not life to live, but to be well.
- Life's not just being alive, but being well.
- Barbarian hordes en masse you fuck,
Odd types into your bed you tuck,
You take on blacks and Asian forces,
And Jews, and soldiers, and their horses.
Yet you, voracious Roman chick,
Have never known a Roman dick.- VII, 30.
- Quisquis ubique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat.
- A man who lives everywhere lives nowhere.
- VII, 73.
- Accipe quam primum; brevis est occasio lucri.
- Take while you can; brief is the moment of profit.
- VIII, 9.
- Laudas balnea versibus trecentis
Cenantis bene Pontici, Sabelle.
Vis cenare, Sabelle, non lavari.- You praise, in three hundred verses, Sabellus, the baths of Ponticus, who gives such excellent dinners. You wish to dine, Sabellus, not to bathe.
- IX, 19.
- Ampliat aetatis spatium sibi vir bonus. Hoc est
Vivere bis vita posse priore frui.- Virtue extends our days: he lives two lives who relives his past with pleasure.
- X, 23. Alternatively translated as "The good man prolongs his life; to be able to enjoy one's past life is to live twice", in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "For he lives twice who can at once employ / The present well, and e'en the past enjoy", Alexander Pope, Imitation of Martial.
- Neither fear your death's day nor long for it.
- X, 47. Alternatively translated as "Neither fear, nor wish for, your last day", in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou livest / Live well: how long or short permit to heaven", John Milton, Paradise Lost, book xi, line 553.
- Ardua res haec est opibus non tradere mores.
- 'Tis a hard task this, not to sacrifice manners to wealth.
- XI, 5 (Loeb translation).
- Non est paupertas, Nestor, habere nihil.
- It is not poverty, Nestor, to have nothing at all.
- XI, 32 (Loeb translation).
- The mode of death is sadder than death itself.
- XI, 91.
- Fortuna multis dat nimis, satis nulli.
- Fortune to many gives too much, enough to none.
- XII, 10.
- Difficilis facilis iucundus acerbus es idem:
Nec possum tecum vivere nec sine te.- Difficult and easy-going, pleasant and churlish, you are at the same time: I can neither live with you nor without you.
- XII, 46
- Variant translation: Difficult or easy, pleasant or bitter, you are the same you: I cannot live with you—or without you.
- Compare: "Thus I can neither live with you nor without you", Ovid, Amores, Book III, xib, 39
- He who refuses nothing...will soon have nothing to refuse.
- XII, 79.
- Currant verba licet, manus est velocior illis;
Nondum lingua suum, dextra peregit opus.- Although the words run speedily, the hand is swifter than they; the tongue has not yet, the hand has already, completed its work.
- XIV, 208.
- And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?- Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto I, st. 43, ll. 343–344
- The greatest of epigrammatists, and the father of the epigram as we understand it.
- Walter C. A. Ker, trans., Martial: Epigrams, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1919), Vol. I, Introduction, p. viii
- I have now gone through the first seven books of Martial, and have learned about 360 of the best lines. His merit seems to me to lie, not in wit, but in the rapid succession of vivid images. I wish he were less nauseous. ... Besides his indecency, his servility and his mendicancy disgust me.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, in The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, ed. G. Otto Trevelyan, Vol. I (1875), p. 378
- Audio Valerium Martialem decessisse et moleste fero. Erat homo ingeniosus acutus acer, et qui plurimum in scribendo et salis haberet et fellis nec candoris minus. ... At non erunt aeterna, quae scripsit; non erunt fortasse, ille tamen scripsit, tamquam essent futura.
- I have just heard of the death of poor Martial, which much concerns me. He was a man of an acute and lively genius, and his writings abound in both wit and satire, combined with equal candour. ... And though it should be granted, that his poems will not be immortal, still, no doubt, he composed them upon the contrary supposition.
- Pliny the Younger, Letters, 3.21 (trans. William Melmoth)
- Epigrammaton libri (in Latin) at The Latin Library.
- Martial, Epigrams (in English) at Tertullian.org
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