Mea Roma: A Meditative Sampling from M. Valerius Martialis - Softcover

Martial

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184861618X ISBN 13: 9781848616189

Publisher: Shearsman Books, 2018

Synopsis

“My project started with a ‘dissenting’ translation of Martial’s Book of the Spectacles. I use that term, not because I’m adapting or appropriating the text, but because the Spectacles sequence has a history of being dismissed as sub-par, early work commemorating the opening of the Colosseum. Current scholars, including Kathleen Coleman, who’s made the sequence somewhat of a specialty, increasingly seem to be challenging that dismissive view. Coleman also considers the dating purely speculative. I’m not attempting to join a technical and arcane historical debate. But strictly from a literary standpoint, her views on the dating free a poetic translator to exploit the same irony, double-entendre and polyvalence that imbues the greater Martial canon. The Spectacles’ extended theme – the animal fights, blood sports and execution entertainments of the Arena – is, as far as I know, unique in Classical poetry. Even the over-the-top adulation of the un-named, games-presiding ‘Caesar’ can take on its own cynical undertone when read in the context of Martial’s ‘hare and lion’ relationship with the self-styled Dominus et Deus Emperor Domitian.” (Art Beck)

About this title

About the Author:

Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial, born ca. 38-41 AD and died ca 103 AD) was a Roman poet from the province of Hispania (modern Spain) and is best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these short, witty poems he satirises city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances, and romanticises his provincial upbringing. He wrote more than1,500 epigrams. Martial has been called the greatest Latin epigrammatist, and is considered the creator of the modern epigram.

About this edition

• Publisher: Shearsman Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 184861618X
• ISBN 13: 9781848616189
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 132