SOURCE: An introduction to Martial, Book XI, Duckworth, 1985, pp. 14-18.

[In the following excerpt, Kay provides a concise overview of Martial's literary legacy in Italy, England, France, and Spain.]

… Martial was well known in late Antiquity: authors like Ausonius,³⁰ Sidonius Apollinaris,³¹ and Luxorius³²quoted from him and imitated him; the grammarians used him for illustrations;³³ and in the seventh century Isidore of Seville cites him some fourteen times, though twelve of these instances are from the Xenia and Apophoreta.³⁴ During the following years Martial continued to be known to Carolingian and other scholars, and, though some of their knowledge of him stems from the grammarians, Isidore and each other, some is independent of these sources; we find citations in Alcuin's pupils Hrabanus Maurus (776-856) and Theodulf (d. 821), and in Maurus' pupil Walahfrid Strabo (c. 809-49).³⁵ In the early Middle Ages Martial enjoyed popularity in England: the epigrammatist Godfrey of Winchester (c. 1050-1107)³⁶ produced good enough imitations to be confused with him in succeeding centuries; Henry of Huntingdon (d. 1154?)³⁷ used deliberate echoes of him in his small output; and John of Salisbury (c. 1115-80)³⁸ knew him better than anyone since Antiquity (his quotations include 11.56.15f. and 11.104.19f.). At a slightly later date we find Vincent of Beauvais (d. 1264) citing liberally from Book XI (e.g. 55.3; 56.1f.; 56.15f.; 68.1f.)³⁹ So from Antiquity to the Middle Ages there is no time at which Martial drops completely from sight; though never one of the most popular authors,⁴⁰ knowledge of him and interest in him was always somewhere maintained.

With the thirteenth century we come to the North Italian pre-humanists, in particular Lovato Lovati (d. 1309), Albertino Mussato (d. 1329), and Zambono di Andrea (d. 1315), all of whom were familiar with Martial; they heralded the great revival of learning of the humanists and a continuing concern with Martial in the period.⁴¹ Petrarch and Boccaccio both allude to him,⁴² though his importance and influence grew greater in the fifteenth century: a notable case in point was one of the great book collectors of the day, Giovanni Aurispa (c. 1369-1459); he was a friend of Antonio Beccadelli, whose collection of epigrams called Hermaphroditus (written c. 1425) caused a literary scandal. One of the poems (1.41) asks Aurispa to send a copy of Martial (which he did; it still exists); and the generally obscene tone of Beccadelli's work clearly shows the influence of Martial, though he had a voice of his own and produced epigrams far more lively and humorous than most neo-Latin poets and poetasters.⁴³ A single example must suffice, chosen for its similarity in subject to 11.21:

Ad Aurispam de Ursae Vulva (2.7)

          ecquis erit, vir gnare, modus, ne
  vulva voracis
  Ursae testiculos sorbeat usque meos?
ecquis erit, totum femur haec ne sugat hirudo,
  ne prorsus ventrem sugat ad usque meum?
aut illam stringas quavis, Aurispa, medela,
  aut equidem cunno naufragor ipse suo.

In this same period Martial began to be read in Italian schools, which further boosted his popularity (some 110 manuscript copies of the time bear adequate witness)⁴⁴—the placing of an author on school curricula often confirms a resurrection of his work or a deepening of interest in him. This also resulted in an increased output of imitations: many such neo-Latin pieces survive,⁴⁵ for the most part tediously uninteresting, but some, like those of Politian (1454-94) and Marullus (c. 1453-1500), well worthy of note.⁴⁶ Martial was one of the first authors to benefit from the advent of printing (first edition Rome 1470/1), and Calderinus' huge commentary, which is still of interest, appeared in 1474.⁴⁷

This Italian work on Martial awakened interest in the rest of Europe: during the sixteenth century we find poets imitating and translating him for the first time in the vernacular. In France this begins in the 1530s with M. Sceves and the Lyons poets, Etienne Dolet, Nicolas de Bourbon and Gilbert Doucher;⁴⁸ Clement Marot wrote his epigrams in c. 1544, though they were not published until 1596—in them he draws much on Martial, but he often expands on the original to suit the social conditions of his day.⁴⁹ This is his version of 11.62, 'De Macee':

Macée me veult faire ecryore
Que requise est de marrite gent.
Tant plus viellist, plus a de gloire
Et jure comme ung vieulx sargent
Qu' on n'embrasse point son corps gent
Pour neant; et dit vray Macée:
Car toujours elle baille argent
Quant elle veult estre embrasée.⁵⁰

Though the poets of the Pleiad knew Martial and produced some creditable copies of him,⁵¹ they formulated a policy of denigrating him in favour of Catullus: thus of Ronsard's three translations (of 2.17; 3.46 and 9.73), the two latter were removed from later editions of his poetry. Michel de Montaigne, very widely read in ancient literature, gives more than forty quotations of Martial in his Essays—quotations which he sometimes doctors to suit his own ends; in one essay he displays a thorough acquaintance with the sexual material of Book XI.⁵² Francois de Maynard wrote the bulk of his epigrams between 1615 and 1642, by virtue of which he was labelled 'alter Gallico in orbe Martialis'; as a riposte to the Venetian Andrea Navagero (1483-1529), who had burned a copy of Martial each year, he had a copy made for himself annually. Though he expands a lot on the originals, he is by no means slavish in his imitation and displays considerable innovation.⁵³

Meanwhile the epigram was flourishing in England in a century (c. 1550-1650) in which it reached a perfection which falls short of only Martial himself. Sir Thomas More had published his epigrams in 1518, but they rely heavily on the Greek Anthology and show little familiarity with Martial.⁵⁴ One of the first English translations of Martial, by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1517-47), is also one of the best known and deservedly so:

My friend, the things that do attain
 The happy life be these, I find:
The riches left, not got with pain;
 The fruitful ground, the quiet mind … ⁵⁵

By 1550 Martial was being taught in the schools, and the composition of epigrams in Latin was a daily chore for many boys;⁵⁶ but the result was a rich crop of imitators and translators towards the end of the century. Of these the most worth reading are Timothy Kendall, George Turbevile, Edward Guilpin, Thomas Bastard, Sir John Davies, John Weever and John Harington.⁵⁷ A piece of Bastard's can stand as a motto for them all (1.17):

Martiall, in sooth none should presume to
 write
Since time hath brought thy Epigrams to
  lighte:
For through our writing, thine so prais'de
  before
Have this obteinde, to be commended more:
 Yet to our selves although we winne no
 fame,
 Wee please, which get our maister a good
 name.

But though they do indeed all owe much to Martial, these poets at their best (debatably Davies and Harington) provide their own witty turns of phrase and describe or lampoon situations and people of their own day to great effect. And they paved the way for the epigrammatists who have made the most innovative and durable use of Martial's legacy—Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick and John Donne.⁵⁸ A contemporary of theirs was the Welshman John Owen (c. 1560-1622), whose Latin epigrams (about 1500 of them in ten books, the vast majority being single elegiac distichs) gained almost as much renown, and were translated and imitated almost as much as those of Martial.⁵⁹

Much the same pattern is followed by the Spanish vernacular epigram: the first sign of Martial's influence comes with the translation of Sp. 25b by Garcilaso de la Vega (c. 1501-36); the Sevillan Juan de Mal-Lara (c. 1524-71) translated over thirty of Martial's pieces, among them 11.32; 100 and 101; best known are Baltasar Gracian y Morales (1601-58),⁶⁰ who quoted freely from Martial in his prose works, and Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), who used Martial pointfully in his own satirical verse,⁶¹ as well as making some straight translations.⁶²

Thus in England, France and Spain the impulse from Italy led to a flourishing of epigrammatic activity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially the years 1550-1650. In Germany that flourish began rather later, the vernacular superseding the Latin epigram only after 1650, whereupon many minor poets⁶³ addressed themselves to the task of imitating Martial: none can be said to rise above the merely competent.⁶⁴ As a sample here is G.P. Harsdorffer's (1607-58) version of 11.92, 'An den Klügelmann':

Der fehlt Herr Klügling sehr, der dich
  schalhaftig nennt,
Du bist die Schalkheit selbst, wie manniglich
 bekennt.⁶⁵

From the eighteenth century onwards there have been many translators of Martial, both in prose and verse, but none that have been anywhere near as successful or entertaining as their predecessors⁶⁶ (the reason lies in the fact that they have been for the most part translators pure and simple; they have not tried to adapt Martial to their own style, idiom and climate as, for example, Beccadelli, Jonson or Herrick did). To take an example: one James Elphinston rendered all of Martial into verse, but his fame rests on the ridicule his efforts evoked from Burns:

O thou whom Poesy abhors,
Whom Prose has turned out of doors,
Heard'st thou yon groan?—proceed no further!
'Twas laurelled Martial calling, Murther! …

Notes

… ³⁰ See G. Bernt, Das lateinische Epigramm im Ubergang von der Spitantike zum fruhen Mittelalter, Münchener beitrige zur Mediävistik und Renaissance Forschung 2 (1968), p.46.

³¹ ibid. p.95.

³² ibid. p.108f.

³³ ibid. p.181: M. Manitius, Philologus 3 (1890), p.560f.

³⁴ Bernt, op.cit. p.181.

³⁵ ibid. p. 183; 242n.27.

³⁶ See F. R. Hausmann, M in Italien, Studi Medievali 17 (1976), p.l73f.; F. J. C. Raby, A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages² (1957). I.p.41.

³⁷ e.g. the reminiscence of 11.5.3 'difficile est opibus mores non tradere, Zeta' (T. Wright, Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 59b (1872), 2.p.166).

³⁸ See Hausmann and Manitius locc.cit.

³⁹ ibid.

⁴⁰ e.g. his works are listed in only about a dozen medieval library catalogues: see Bernt, op.cit. p.178f.

⁴¹ See Hausmann, op.cit. p.178f.; and passim, for humanist work on M.

⁴² ibid. p.l79f.; G. Martellotti, RCCM2 (1960), p.388f.

⁴³ See Hausmann, op.cit. p.186f.

⁴⁴ ibid. p. 191f.

⁴⁵ Some can be found in the anthologies of Ranutius Gherus (i.e. Jan Gruter): Delitiae Poetarum Italorum; Gallorum; and Belgicorum.

⁴⁶ See L. Bradner, M &H 8 (1954), p.62f.

⁴⁷ The first commentary on M. may have been that of the Englishman John Marrey (d.1407), but the authenticity of the work is doubted by F. R. Hausmann (Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, ed. F. E. Cranz and P. 0. Kristeller, 4 (1980), p.295).

⁴⁸ See K. H. Mehnert, Sal Romanus und Esprit Français, Romanistiche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 33 (1970), p.47f.

⁴⁹ ibid. p.55f.

⁵⁰ ed. C. A. Mayer (1970), no. 174.

⁵¹ For versions of 11.63 and 68 by de Baif, see E. T. Simon's complete translation of M. (1819), which includes versions by many French poets. It is interesting that 11.68 is the most popular piece for imitation in this book with eleven examples: how many, one wonders, go back to the original, and how many were redone from a French version?

⁵² See D.Coleman, ap. R. R. Bolgar, Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500-1700 (1976), p.137f.

⁵³ See Mehnert, op.cit. p.106f.

⁵⁴ See H. H. Hudson, The Epigram in the English Renaissance (1947), p.29f.

⁵⁵ From M. 10.47.

⁵⁶ See Hudson, op.cit. p.147f.

⁵⁷ See T. K. Whipple, M. and the English Epigram from Wyatt to Ben Jonson, Univ. of California Publications in Modern Philology 10 (1925), passim.

⁵⁸ Pieces by Jonson and Herrick relevant to this book have been quoted in the appropriate places in the commentary. See further W. D. Briggs, CPh 11 (1916), p.169f.; ModPh 15 (1917/18), p.277f.; P. Nixon, CPh 5 (1910), p.l89f. For more general works on the English Nachleben of M. see P. Nixon, M. and the Modern Epigram (1927); H. P. Dodd, The Epigrammatists (1876); and A. Amos, M. and the Moderns (1858).

⁵⁹ There is an edition of Owen's epigrams by J. R. C. Martyn (vol. 1, 1976; vol. 2, 1978); he quotes Ben Jonson's opinion of the man: 'a pure Pedantique Schoolmaster, sweeping his living from the posteriors of little children, having no thinge good in him, his Epigrammes being bare narration.'

⁶⁰ See A. A. Giulian, M. and the Epigram in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, diss. Philadelphia (1930).

⁶¹ See L. S. Lerner, A & A 23 (1977), p.122f.

⁶² Edited by A. M. Arancon (1975).

⁶³ See R. Levy, M und die deutsche Epigrammatik des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, diss. Stuttgart (1903).

⁶⁴ Though (at a later date) Goethe's Venetian Epigrams are notable exceptions.

⁶⁵ Again it is interesting that most imitators made for the same overworked epigrams in M.: in Book XI, for example, 56; 92; but esp. 67 were German favourites (see Levy, op.cit.).

⁶⁶ The reminiscences of M. in Don Leon are a welcome exception (see 11.104 intro.). Robert Louis Stevenson's versions of 11.18 and 56 (ed. Vailima, 8.p.575f.) are disappointingly drab.