The HyperTexts
Martial Translations
These are my modern English translations of poems, epigrams and quotations
by
Marcus Valerius Martialis, who is better known today simply as Martial. Martial
was born circa 40
AD and he died circa 104 AD. He was a Latin poet from Hispania (the Iberian
Peninsula, or modern-day Spain). Martial is best known for his twelve books of epigrams,
which were published in Rome
between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and
Trajan. In these short, witty, often scathing and sometimes deliciously raunchy
poems, Martial lampooned "civilization" and the boorish/scandalous activities of his
contemporaries. He wrote more than 1,500 epigrams, most of them in elegiac
couplets, and is generally considered to be the father of the modern epigram.
Martial has been described as "colorful" and as "Rome's wiseacre poet."
Martial has been a possible or probable influence on epigrammatists such
as Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Thomas More, Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson,
Robert Herrick, Matthew Prior, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Voltaire, Dr.
Samuel Johnson, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Emily Dickinson, Walter Savage Landor, Robert Frost and J.
V. Cunningham.
translations by Michael R. Burch
You ask me why I've sent you no new verses?
There might be reverses.
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You ask me to recite my poems to you?
I know how you'll "recite" them, if I do.
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You ask me why I choose to live elsewhere?
You're not there.
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You ask me why I love fresh country air?
You're not befouling it there.
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Epitaph for the Child Erotion
by Marcus Valerius Martial
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Lie lightly on her, grass and dew ...
So little weight she placed on you.
NOTE: I created the translation above after the Nashville Covenant school
shooting and dedicated the translation to the slain children and the adult
victims of the massacre.
You never wrote a poem,
yet criticize mine?
Stop abusing me or write something fine
of your own!
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
He starts everything but finishes nothing;
thus I suspect there's no end to his fucking.
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You dine in great magnificence
while offering guests a pittance.
Sextus, did you invite
friends to dinner tonight
to impress us with your enormous appetite?
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You alone own prime land, dandy!
Gold, money, the finest porcelain—you alone!
The best wines of the most famous vintages—you alone!
Discrimination, taste and wit—you alone!
You have it all—who can deny that you alone are set for life?
But everyone has had your wife—
she is never alone!
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
To you, my departed parents, dear mother and father,
I commend my little lost angel, Erotion, love’s daughter,
who died six days short of completing her sixth frigid winter.
Protect her now, I pray, should the chilling dark shades appear;
muzzle hell’s three-headed hound, less her heart be dismayed!
Lead her to romp in some sunny Elysian glade,
her devoted patrons. Watch her play childish games
as she excitedly babbles and lisps my name.
Let no hard turf smother her softening bones; and do
rest lightly upon her, earth, she was surely no burden to you!
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by
Michael R. Burch
Martial wrote this touching elegy for a little slave girl, Erotion, who
died six days before her sixth birthday. The poem has been nominated as
Martial’s masterpiece by L. J. Lloyd and others. Erotion means “little love” and
may correspond to our term “love child.” It has been suggested she may have been Martial’s child by a female slave. That
could explain why Martial is asking his parents’ spirits to welcome, guide and
watch over her spirit. Martial uses the terms patronos (patrons) and
commendo (commend); in Rome a freed slave would be commended to a patron. A
girl freed from slavery by death might need patrons as protectors on the
“other side,” according to Greek and Roman views of the afterlife, where the
afterworld houses evil shades and is guarded by a monstrous three-headed dog, Cerebus. Martial is
apparently asking his parents to guide the girl’s
spirit away from Cerebus and the dark spirits to the heavenly Elysian fields
where she can play and laugh without fear. If I am correct, Martial’s poem is
not just an elegy, but a prayer-poem for protection, perhaps of his own daughter.
Albert A. Bell supports this hypothesis with the following arguments: (1)
Martial had Erotion cremated, a practice preferred by the upper classes, (2) “he
buried her with the full rites befitting the child of a Roman citizen,” (3) he
entrusted her [poetically] to his parents, and (4) he maintained her grave
for years.
To you, my departed parents, with much emotion,
I commend my little lost darling, my much-kissed Erotion,
who died six days short of completing her sixth bitter winter.
Protect her, I pray, from hell’s hound and its dark shades a-flitter;
and please don’t let fiends leave her maiden heart dismayed!
But lead her to romp in some sunny Elysian glade
with her cherished friends, excitedly lispingly my name.
Let no hard turf smother her softening bones; and do
rest lightly upon her, earth, she was such a slight burden to you!
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by
Michael R. Burch
I must admit I'm partial
to Martial.
—Michael R. Burch
Brief Encounters: Other Roman, Italian and Greek Epigrams
• No wind is favorable to the man who lacks direction.—Seneca the Younger, translation by Michael R. Burch
• Little sparks ignite great flames.—Dante, translation by Michael R. Burch
• The danger is not aiming too high and missing, but aiming too low and hitting the mark.—Michelangelo, translation by Michael R. Burch
• He who follows will never surpass.—Michelangelo, translation by Michael R. Burch
• Nothing enables authority like silence.—Leonardo da Vinci, translation by Michael R. Burch
• My objective is not to side with the majority, but to avoid the ranks of the insane.—Marcus Aurelius, translation by Michael R. Burch
• Time is sufficient for anyone who uses it wisely.—Leonardo da Vinci, translation by Michael R. Burch
• Blinding ignorance misleads us. Myopic mortals, open your eyes!—Leonardo da Vinci, translation by Michael R. Burch
• It is easier to oppose evil from the beginning than at the end.—Leonardo da Vinci, translation by Michael R. Burch
• Fools call wisdom foolishness.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch
• One true friend is worth ten thousand kin.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch
• Not to speak one’s mind is slavery.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch
• I would rather die standing than kneel, a slave.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch
• Fresh tears are wasted on old griefs.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch
• Improve yourself by other men's writings, attaining less painfully what they gained through great difficulty.—Socrates, translation by Michael R. Burch
• Just as I select a ship when it's time to travel, or a house when it's time to change residences, even so I will choose when it's time to depart from life.―Seneca, speaking about the right to euthanasia in the first century AD, translation by Michael R. Burch
Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their whores for exotic positions.
—Thomas Campion, Latin epigram, loose translation/interpretation by
Michael R. Burch
The HyperTexts