Martial and The Book Fowler1995

MARTIAL AND THE BOOK
D.P. Fowler
Alongside Catullus and Ovid, Martial is the Latin writer who tells us
most about the ancient book, and he receives detailed treatment in most
histories of ancient book production: he has a chapter to himself, for
instance, in Roberts and Skeats' The Birth of the Codex} Books and
reading are a central concern of his poetry from his very first publications:
around 10-15% of the epigrams deal with this theme.2 The topic has
received, however, much less attention from literary critics than from
scholars interested in the Realien of ancient book production,3 and those
who have paid attention to it have tended to play down the importance of
the published books compared to the 'occasional' reception of the epigrams
either through recitation or through informal pamphlets (the so-called
'libelW prominent in the important work of Peter White)4. Even John Sul-
livan, who was more aware than many of the importance of the book in
Martial, sees the published books as 'open-ended collections, to which
material could be added as it became available or necessary' and declares
that 'Martial is less careful about the endings of his books...than about
their beginnings and general structure'.5 I have suggested elsewhere that,
on the contrary, the endings of Martial's books may be seen as possessing
particularly ingenious effects of closure,6 and in general it seems to me
that the engagement with reception in book-form shown by Martial's epi-
grams is extremely sophisticated. The libellus theory has been particularly
damaging to the appreciation of the poems, since it has functioned by
attempting to demonstrate that the epigrams do not 'fit' in their published
contexts but must be supposed to have had more apt settings in previous
informal brochures presented to patrons. Accordingly, I want here to attack
that theory as a preliminary to a more wide-ranging account of the tex-
tuality of the epigrams. A number of important points have already been
made by Mario Citroni,7 but a frontal assault seems justified by the general
acceptance that still seems to be accorded to the libellus hypothesis.8
Most ancient genres have their origins in oral performance on specific
occasions, or at least create a myth of this nature. Hymns were sung on
cult occasions or at festivals, threnoi served a practical purpose in cele-
brating and lamenting the dead to console the living, paraklausithyra
(komoi) set out to open doors for the excluded lover. The epigram by
contrast shares with the letter the distinction of being rooted in writing.
But the genre from early on in its history became contaminated with
various oral forms of occasional verse,9 and often represents itself as a
witty saying, an instance of that urbanity of repartee that was so central to
the ideal of the Roman aristocrat. This accentuated the occasional nature
of the genre: almost by definition, an epigram is a short trifle dashed off
31
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D.P. FOWLER
rapidly in response to an event.10 It is important to note, however, that

while this may actually be true of many epigrams, in principle it may also
be an example of the same sort of generic pretence that has Horace singing
to the lyre or Propertius composing outside his mistress's door. In Martial's
poetry, as in Horace's Odes,u there is in fact, I would argue, a constant
tension between the assumed circumstances of reception and the actual
existence of the poems as written texts, and we should not try to remove
that tension. In particular, Martial makes much play with a contrast
between the humble occasional nature of epigram and the large claims he
makes for it as a guarantor of fame and immortality, a contrast in which
the book-publication of the poems is an essential element even with respect
to Martial's contemporary renown:
Hie est quem legis ille, quern requiris,

toto notus in orbe Martialis
argutis epigrammaton libellis:
cui, lector studiose, quod dedisti
uiuenti decus atque sentienti,
rari post cineres habent poetae.
(1.1)
You read him, you ask for him, and here he is: Martial,
known the world over for his witty little books of epi-
grams. Devoted reader, the glory you have given him
while he lives and feels comes to few poets in their
graves.12
That poem, '1.1' in both ancient and modern editions,13 demonstrates

some of the complexities of the production and reception of Martial's epi-
grams, and before turning to the libellus theory, I should like to raise some
of these. 'Book One' was not the first book of epigrams that Martial pub-
lished. Although various uncertainties remain, the following chronology is
generally accepted:14
80 De Spectaculis
84-5 Xenia (Book 13) and Apophoreta (Book 14)
86 Books 1 and 2
87 Book 3
89 Book 4
90 Book 5
91 Book 6
92 Book 7
94 Book 8
95 Books 9, 10 (lost first edition?)
96 Book 11
32
97 Book 10 (second edition?)

101 Book 12 (lost first edition?)
104 Book 12 (second edition?)
That is, three books of epigrams preceded 'Book One', but they were books
on single themes rather than the mixed books of Martial's central produc-
tion. In the 80s and 90s Martial was then publishing about one book per
year, often apparently around the time of the Saturnalia.15 His last book is
written in Spain, from where he apologises in Ovidian fashion to its
addressee, Priscus, for contumacissimae trienni desidiae, 'three years obsti-
nate indolence' (12 praef.). By then (with some complications caused by
re-editions) Martial had published 12 books of mixed epigramsthe
number of books in the Aeneid, half an Iliad or Odyssey.
'1.1', however, does not look like an introduction simply to a first mixed
collection, and that seems confirmed by the reference to libellis meis ('my
little books') in the prose preface. But there can be no question here of a
reference to informal pamphlets, as in both cases the context suggests a
concern with Martial's reputation amongst the wider public. The solution,
as many have seen, is that the preface and first poem introduce a collection
of book-rolls published together in codex form. This is made clear in 1.2:
Qui tecum cupis esse meos ubicumque libellos

et comites longae quaeris habere uiae,
hos erne, quos artat breuibus membrana tabellis:
scrinia da magnis, me manus una capit.
(1.2.1-4)
You who want my little books to keep you company wher-

ever you may be and desire their companionship on a long
journey, buy these, that parchment compresses in small
pages. Give book boxes to the great, one hand grasps me.
And Martial goes on to tell the reader where the book is on sale:
ne tamen ignores ubi sim uenalis et erres

urbe uagus tota, me duce certus eris:
libertum docti Lucensis quaere Secundum
limina post Pacis Palladiumque forum.
(1.2.5-8)
But in case you don't know where I am on sale and stray

wandering all over town, you will be sure of your way
under my guidance. Look for Secundus, freedman of let-
tered Lucensis, behind Peace's entrance and Pallas' forum.
33
D.P. FOWLER
What we do not know is how many books were in the codex edition: a
popular guess is 1-7, because of the reference in 7.17.6 to a set of author-
ially-corrected texts of seven books sent to the library of Iulius Martialis.16
What is more important, perhaps, is to see that the reason why we cannot
easily tell how large the collection was is that the fiction is preserved
throughout that the reader is unrolling a set of book-rolls, not turning the
pages of a codex. Individual books have prefaces and concluding
sequences, and the terms used for the act of reading are those appropriate
to the book-roll.
At this point, we might be tempted to see the question of the reception
of the epigrams in codex form as irrelevant: not just on the grounds that
they were in any case originally published separately, but more sophisti-
catedly because the implied reader of them is a book-roll reader, whatever
the actual empirical reader is doing. The epigrams prefatory to the codex
edition may then be seen as on the threshold of the text (to use Genette's
metaphor), not exactly part of it: with poem 3 we are back in the world
of rolls, as the reference to boxes, scrinia, in line 2 makes clear, in pointed
contrast to 1.2.4. But to do this is to miss some interesting effects. The
book-roll reader is configured as someone reading the epigrams for the
first time, indeed often, in a familiar figure, as reading over the shoulder
of the poet as he writes: the codex-reader is a lector studiosus (1.1.4) who
already knows and appreciates Martial. In explicitly introducing both of
his readers into the text, Martial dramatises a familiar feature of reception
(even in the primary cultural setting) that is more usually only implicit,
that of re-reading. Literary interpretation often works through the construc-
tion of a first reader, whose responses are tracked as she moves through
the text; equally often, it appeals to effects of anticipation and recall which
are those of re-reading. There is little to be gained by allowing only one
of these readers primacy, and much of interest to be noted in the interplay
of indeterminacy between them. In poem 1.2, for instance, the lector stu-
diosus is told where he can get a nice collected Martial to carry around
with him: but naturally he will only be reading 'these' (hos, 3) directions
if he has already bought the codex. This play, in which the act of reading
is both stressed and effaced, is typical of Martial: I discuss some more
examples below.
The double reading established by the codex edition raises the possibility
of new interpretations of a number of the epigrams. The last epigram of
Book Two, for instance, depicts a reader who has read that book but not
the first:
'Primus ubi est' inquis 'cum sit liber iste secundus?'

quid faciam si plus ille pudoris habet?
tu tamen hunc fieri si mauis, Regule, primum,
unum de titulo tollere iota potes.
(2.93)
34
'If this is the second book,' you say, 'where is the first?'
How can I help it if the other is more bashful? However,
if you prefer that this one become the first, Regulus, you
can take one iota from the title.
One scenario that we may here construct17 is of a reader who has bought
'Book Two' (Martial's use of numbers rather than titles for his libelli is a
strikingly original aspect of his practice, perhaps connected with the codex
edition): so for instance Shackleton Bailey ad loc. remarks that 'apparently
Regulus had not had a copy of Book 1 and M. had none left to give him'.
But in the context of the codex collection, the reader naturally cannot help
but have Book 1or does she? After all, there is really only one 'book',
the codex she holds in her hand. One may also imagine that the title page
of the codex contained only a general title, and that there was no explicit
to Book One: the first reference to a book number would then be a 'IF at
the opening of the second book.
The specific effects produced if we allow the presence of both roll
readers and codex re-readers deserve further exploration, despite all the
uncertainties that surround the format of early books. But I want to stress
rather the general point that it is not helpful to work with a sharp notion
of the implied reader of Martial's poems as simply a first time roll reader.
It is a cliche" that bears repeating that the implied reader is always in fact
a constructed reader, that it is interpretations which imply readers, not
texts. Whenever we try to get away from the messiness of empirical recep-
tion to ideal conditions, it is always open to another critic to vector into
her implied reader aspects of the empirical pragmatics of reception that
the first critic is trying to exclude: and some of the most interesting aspects
of literature will lie in the indeterminacies created by these possibilities.18
This is even more important if we push back the question of the reception
of the epigrams one more level. As I remarked above, they represent them-
selves as occasional verse, and create a world in which their reception is
embedded in the everyday life of Rome: they invite a transparent reading
in which we look through them to the occasions that supposedly gave birth
to them. Like comedy, they hold up a mirror to life, as his Muse tells him
in 8.3 after he had tried to give up verse:
at tu Romano lepidos sale tinge libellos:

agnoscat mores uita legatque suos.
(8.3.19f.)
But do you dip your witty little books in Roman salt; let
life recognise and read of her ways.
Modern critics who read through the textuality of the epigrams are in a
sense therefore only doing what Martial wants. But the constant reference
35
D.P. FOWLER
to book reception should encourage a parallel desire to stay one's eye on

the glass. Even Life in 8.3 is a reader. Martial's epigrams are represented
as a ktema es aei, his claim to fame: if the everyday is his inspiration, he
is also prepared to represent it as a hindrance to the poetic project. In
10.70, criticised by Potitus for writing scarcely one book a year, he blames
the duties of a client (though when he asks at the end 'when will a book
get done?', the reader three quarters of the way through Book 10 will have
her own comments to make); and in 11.24 he blames his attendance on
Labullus for the fact that 'in almost thirty days I have finished scarce a
page' (which again will be news to the reader of the previous 23 poems).
The constant reference to the book in Martial should be an invitation to
treat his poems as more than a source for social history, and to allow the
interplay of possible readers to produce its myriad and complex effects.
The most notable example of what I take to be a misplaced transparency
of interpretation is the libellus theory, to which I now turn. But first, some
remarks on recitation. The public recitation of literary works was obviously
an important cultural practice at Rome, especially under the Empire, but I
am inclined to think that the stress on it in recent scholarship19 has led to
a neglect of the far more important reception of literature through books
and reading. Martial frequently refers to the practice, common in all
periods, of informal recitation to friends of work in progress, and he refers
to recitation of his own published books by impostors,20 but his regular
assumption is that the general public will learn of his poems by reading
them in books, not by hearing them at formal recitations.21 They will
however then be so struck with them that they will recite them informally
on all occasions (like Victorians or Edwardians would perform popular
songs known from sheet music):
Laudat, amat, cantat nostras mea Roma libellos,

meque sinus omnes, me manus omnis habet.
(6.60. If.)
My Rome praises my little books, loves them, recites

them; I am in every pocket, every hand.
te conuiuia, te forum sonabit,

aedes, compia, porticus, tabernae.
uni mitteris, omnibus legeris.
(7.97.11-13)
The dinner tables, the Forum, the houses, the crossroads,

the colonnades, the shops will utter you. You are sent to
one, you will be read by all.
Liuet Charinus...
36
non iam quod orbe cantor et legor toto,

nee umbilicis quod decorus et cedro
spargor per omnes Roma quas tenet gentes...
(8.61.1, 3-5)
Charinus is green with envy...not now because I am

recited and read the world over, not because, handsome
with bosses and cedar oil, I am scattered through all the
nations under Rome's dominion...
It is this practice (real or imagined) which accounts for a number of the

references to aural reception of the epigrams: when Martial claims, for
instance, in 9.81 lector et auditor nostros probat, Aule, libellos ('reader
and listener approve my little books, Aulus'), he need not be referring to
formal recitations by himself but to people hearing the poems at parties.
But Martial like other ancient poets is also happy to use the language of
aural reception more generally, even when reference to reception in books
is also present, as for instance when referring to his future fame:
si uictura meis mandantur nomina chartis

et fas est cineri me superesse meo,
audiet hoc praesens uenturaque turba fuisse
illi te, Senecae quod fuit ille suo.
(7.44.7-10)
If names consigned to my pages shall live and it is given

to me to survive my ashes, present and future generations
shall hear that you were to him what he was to his Seneca.
Some would want to stress here the strong auditory element in ancient
reading,22 though that again has been overstressed.23 I should rather place
the emphasis on the way in which Martial's epigrams are always simul-
taneously conversation and text. Poems and poets can always be figured
as talking to their readers, even if there is at the same time full realisation
that this illusory presence is no more than (or no less than) a construct.
But to the libellus theory. In his 1974 article, White argued that 'the
poet's published books represent only the last and least important means
of presenting poems to patrons', with the primary means being 'recitation,
impromptu performance, and private brochure' (40). To these private bro-
chures he gave the name libelli. I want to argue that it is the published
books that are central, that there is no reason to hypothesise the existence
of such brochures, and that libelli in Martial always refer either to the
published books or generically to 'little books' as a class. In theory, there
need be no conflict between a 'transparent' approach to the epigrams which
looks through them to construct a social reality and an approach which
37
D.P. FOWLER
engages with their literary textuality, but in practice, as I remarked above,

the attempt to turn the epigrams directly into documents of social history
is actually damaging to an appreciation of their art. White is emphatic that
'in the case of patron-oriented verse, the occasion of a poem overrides
every ulterior consideration. We should approach the poetry first of all as
a kind of log (oblique and incomplete to be sure) of the intricate man-
oeuvrings carried on by poets vis-a-vis their patrons' (48). Even a log is
a text: but Martial's textuality, I believe, encompasses a much wider and
more subtle range of effects.
White's case rests above all on a series of specific readings, where he
argues that the epigrams as we have them in the published books betray
signs of earlier, more appropriate, presentation in brochure form. He also
has some general arguments, however, and I begin with these. The pub-
lished books, he claims, are an ineffective way to flatter patrons: there are
too many patrons mentioned in each book, the flattery would often be out
of date by the time the book came out, and there are a number of occasional
poems whose addressee is not identified in the published book. Moreover,
'Martial's poems are filled with reminders that his poems were conceived
and often delivered sometimes in a matter of moments' (42), and situate
themselves in a world where poetry is the stuff of everyday intercourse,
not entombed in a book. The first set of arguments here depends on a view
that the purpose of the poetry is straightforwardly flattery of patrons on a
particular occasion, and that seems too simplistic even if one wants to
foreground an encomiastic purpose. The practice of honouring multiple
addressees in a collected book is of course well-established at Rome: we
see it above all in Horace's Odes and Epistles, but also in Catullus, the
Eclogues, love elegy, and Ovid's Ex Ponto, not to mention the contentious
case of Statius' Siluae. One can of course take the heroic line of attempting
to efface the textuality of these collections also by finding 'occasions' for
the individual poems that make them up, but it is easier to admit a broader
view of what a 'patron' expected from a poet. 24 Similarly, as I have already
remarked, the many references that appear to embed the epigrams in the
everyday may be no more than what the German critic of 19th century
English literature P. Goetsch has called fingierte Mundlichkeit. To take
them simply at straight value is as misconceived as trying to turn Dickens
or Hardie into oral bards. 25 I want to spend a little more time, however,
on the argument that we have a number of poems where the addressee is
not named in the published books but which have to have a specific ref-
erent. Martial of course has a large number of poems addressed to anon-
ymous or fictional figures where no one feels the need to construct a real
settingparticularly obscene or satirical epigrams where any imagined
setting is inconceivable in real life. White assumes however that a lauda-
tory epigram must always have a real addressee because the sole purpose
of such an epigram must be flattery. There is no reason in principle,
however, why such epigrams should not be 'literary exercises' as much as
38
any other. As with all White's arguments, there is a basic problem with
the assumption that the poem is inadequate or ineffective in the published
book: how then do we motivate its inclusion there? By definition, it cannot
then function as flattery, and if we allow it to possess a secondary 'literary'
value, there is no reason why we should not if we choose make that value
primary. A case in point is the poem with which White begins:
Si mihi Picena turdus palleret oliua,

tenderet aut nostras silua Sabina plagas,
aut crescente leuis traheretur harundine praeda
pinguis et inplicitas uirga teneret aues:
cara daret sollemne tibi cognatio munus,
nee frater nobis nee prior esset auus.
nunc sturnos inopes fringuillarumque querelas
audit et arguto passere uernat ager;
inde salutatus picae respondet arator,
hinc prope summa rapax miluus astra uolat.
mittimus ergo tibi paruae munuscula chortis:
qualia si recipis, saepe propinquus eris.
(9.54)
If my thrushes were stuffed yellow with Picene olives or

a Sabine woodland stretched my snares or my buoyant
booty were drawn down by a lengthening reed and a
greasy rod held entangled birds, Dear Kindred would give
you the customary present, neither brother nor grandfather
would come ahead of you with me. As it is, my land hears
pauper starlings and the plaints of chaffinches, makes
springtime with the chattering sparrow. On that side the
ploughman answers the magpie's greeting, on this the
greedy kite flies close to the uppermost stars. So I send
you a humble present from my little poultry yard; if you
accept such gifts, you shall often be my relative.
White argues that this needs a specific setting and addressee to make
sense, which the published book does not provide: Shackleton Bailey
agrees, though opting for a different solution by supposing the loss of
a couplet in which the addressee was named. The poem is part of a
sequence on giving, with 9.52 and 53 addressed to Quintus Ovidius and
55 to Stella and Flaccus: all three are presented elsewhere as friends of
Martial, and 53 and 55 are gently mocking poems. Any of the three
could have been made the addressee of 54 without us thereby having to
imagine a specific setting for the poem in real life, just as the names in
52, 53 and 55 signify little if anything more than 'friend of Martial'.
We do not 'need' a named addressee to understand the poem in any
39
D.P. FOWLER
basic sensethere are no obscure detailsand the problem of the lack

of addressee is a poetic one: what is the literary point of the anonymity
of address? This literary problem would exist also if we supposed bro-
chure publication, since it is through poems with named addressees that
we supposedly reconstruct the traces of these libelli: we would still want
to distinguish between these and the poems with anonymous addressees.
In the case of 9.54, one point is clearly to create an atmosphere of
familiarity and simplicity (note the absence of other names, except for
the two adjectives of place in the opening foil), and also to invite gener-
alisation, but there is another point to consider: the potential ambiguity
of the last words saepe propinquus eris ('often you will be my/a rela-
tive')- If the addressee accepts small gifts, Martial will be happy to
provide them; but the addressee will also prove the sort of person to
whom many people will give such small offerings. A willingness to
accept small gifts on the occasion of the cara cognatio will certainly
ensure popularity, but not to any great personal advantage. On this
reading, the poem is less warm, and more satirical towards the addressee.
This would not prevent it having a real addressee in a friend of Martial,
but it does perhaps remove some plausibility from White's idea that a
poem like this has to be seen in a context of presentation to a patron.
There is a more general point, however, which applies to poems like
9.54. We are inclined to demand of written poetry that it internalises any
aspects of the pragmatics of its reception that might be provided 'outside
the text' in an oral performance. I do not mean by this the Romantic ideal
summed up in Fraenkel's famous index entry to his Horace,26 'poems,
understanding of, not dependent on outside information', but merely that
there should not be, for instance, deictics whose reference can not be
deduced from the text: not 'Me' but 'phaselus Me quern uidetis hospites".
The incorporation of these pragmatic elements into a text is in fact a prime
marker of its textuality: paradoxically, the more explicit markers of oral
or informal presentation we come across, the more we may be certain that
we have a literary text before us).27 But the absence of these markers within
a text is no guarantee that a text is oral or 'real' or bound to a particular
occasion or whatever the critic would like to establish in opposition to
mere textuality. No feature of a text can ever establish such an external
context because all features may be imitated in a wholly fictional setting.
It is like the problem of circumstantial detail in historiography: the first
thing a good liar does is to put in lots of such details, while an even better
liar may leave them out to avoid arousing suspicion. The pursuit of textual
markers of orality is as hopeless as the Stoics' pursuit of a kataleptike
phantasia by which the wise man could tell a real egg from a fake: Mtind-
lichkeit may always be fingiert. More generally still, any super-reading
which purports to find elements in a text which are 'against the grain',
which somehow exposes aspects that the text itself wishes to hide, is open
to being capped by a super-duper-reading which incorporates such flaws
40
and fissures into the surface of the text, like the knot-holes in simulated
wood.
This point might be appealed to in relation to the specific poems whose
incompatibility with book publication is White's principal argument for
the existence of libelli, but in fact I want to argue much more simply that
the incompatibility does not exist, and that we never need to assume the
existence of such brochures. I turn now to these passages. The first is
something of a red herring:
Longior undecimi nobis decimique libelli

artatus labor est et breue rasit opus,
plura legant uacui, quibus otia tuta dedisti:
haec lege tu, Caesar; forsan et ilia leges.
(12.5)
The longer labour of my tenth and eleventh books has

been compressed and has filed down my work to brevity.
Let idlers, to whom you have given leisure in security,
read more: these, Caesar, are for you to read. Perhaps you
will read those others as well.
This is normally taken to refer to a special epitome of Books 10 and 11

made for the emperor. This is not absolutely certain,28 but even if the
reference is, as White suggests, to 'a unique copy, not duplicated for the
public at large', the existence of a special epitome for the emperor of two
published books establishes nothing about normal publication.29 What
needs to be appreciated on any hypothesis 30 is the role of this epigram
within Book 12, where it is part of a sequence of poems dealing with both
Nerva and Trajan. The general reader finds herself reading a private com-
munication with the emperor, within which she is figured as uacua, 'at
ease' (Shackleton Bailey's 'idlers' is too strong, but there is an element of
that sense) because of the new emperor's gift of that otium ('leisure') which
was always a prerequisite for literary appreciation. Martial hopes that the
emperor will have the time and inclination to read more extensivelyand
the general reader is left with no excuse for not reading on in the book.
Although the poem's implied reader is in one sense the emperor, to read
it only in those terms is to miss the implications for the empirical reader:
but as soon as one sets up that opposition, one sees that in another sense
it is precisely the uacui who are the real implied readers. To read this
poem only as a piece of evidence, a fragment of a log-book of patronage,
is a wasted opportunity.
The second example is to the Muses, and through them to Domitian's
secretary, Parthenius:
Si non est graue nee nimis molestum,

41
D.P. FOWLER
Musae, Parthenium rogate uestrum:

sic te serior et beata quondam
saluo Caesare finiat senectus
et sis inuidia fauente felix,
sic Burrus cito sentiat parentem:
admittas timidam breuemque chartam
intra limina sanctions aulae.
nosti tempora tu Iouis sereni,
cum fulget placido suoque uultu,
quo nil supplicibus solet negare.
non est quod metuas preces iniquas:
numquam grandia nee molesta poscit
quae cedro decorata purpuraque
nigris pagina creuit umbilicis.
nee porrexeris ista, sed teneto
sic tamquam nihil offeras agasque.
si noui dominum nouem sororum,
ultro purpureum petet libellum.
(5.6)
If it is not too much trouble and burden, Muses, please

request your friend Parthenius as follows: 'So may a late
and happy old age one day end you while Caesar lives,
so may you be fortunate and Envy wish you well, so may
Burrus soon appreciate his fatheradmit this timid,
slender volume within the threshold of the more sacred
palace. You know the times when Jove is serene, when he
shines with his own gentle countenance wherewith he is
wont to deny nothing to suppliants. You need have no fear
of exorbitant petitions. The page, adorned with cedar oil
and purple, that has grown between its black bosses never
asks large, troublesome favours. And do not present the
book, hold it as if you were offering nothing, doing
nothing. If I know the Lord of the Nine Sisters, he will
ask for the little purple volume of his own accord.
This is a companion piece to 5.5, which asks the head of the Palatine
library (?) Sextus to find a place in the 'minor poetry' section for Martial's
libelli. The reference there is clearly to published books, but White wants
5.6 to refer rather to a special brochure. The elegant volume imagined in
the poem is clearly a special presentation copy, but the natural assumption
is that it is a copy of Book Five;31 certainly nothing in the description of
the volume as a 'shy little bit of paper' {timidam breuemque chartam, 7)
need conflict with that. Again, however, we should try to construct a
reading of the poem by the general reader who meets it in roll or codex.
42
There is a contrast between the royal presentation copy and the more ordi-
nary volume that the reader holds in her hand, but the reader may also
figure the emperor as a model for her own reception of the book, which
is not thrust upon her but modestly waits to be taken over the reader's
threshold and accepted within, never asking any 'large, troublesome
favours'.
I have already argued that the generic pretence of the epigram to be a
short poem written quickly in response to a recent event should not nec-
essarily be taken any more (or less) literally than the generic pretence of
the paraklausithyron. This is relevant to White's next point, that in the
preface to Book Twelve Martial tells Terentius Priscus that he is sending
him some epigrams composed paucissimis diebus ('in a very few days'),
while in the first epigram of that book he talks of this collection as
breui...libello ('a short book'). White argues that Martial could not have
written Book Twelve in a few days, and that it is not a short book. Fried-
lander had thought of a separate edition, but White argues that this cannot
be a published book because 'Martial's books already bordered on the
minimum limit' (40), and hence we must suppose brochure publication. If
this were correct, it would again seem the height of folly on Martial's part
to place the prose preface in the published book, where it is out of place;
but the hypothesis takes too seriously the conventions of the epigram,
which is always by definition an impromptu poem dashed off and collected
in a little book. In a sense, White is Martial's ideal reader in taking the
statements this seriously: the effect of the real is part of their point. But
not at the same time to recognise the game being played again leads to an
undervaluation of Martial's art.
White's next example is a difficult one, and though I believe that there
are no grounds for thinking that it is evidence for brochure publication, I
am less confident that I have a satisfactory reading myself:
Lasciuos leporum cursus lususque leonum

quod maior nobis charta minorque gerit
et bis idem facimus, nimium si, Stella, uidetur
hoc tibi, bis leporem tu quoque pone mihi.
(1.44)
Do my pages large and small contain the gamesome runs

of hares and the play of lions? Do I do the same thing
twice over? Well, if this seems too much to you, Stella,
why not on your side give me hare twice over for dinner?
Martial apologises to Stella for writing too many poems on the same theme,
that of lions and hares. There are in fact seven poems on this theme in
Book One32 but the meaning of maior...charta minorque ('greater and
lesser sheets of paper') has occasioned much discussion. The question is
43
D.P. FOWLER
complicated by the following epigram, which is clearly related:
Edita ne breuibus pereat mihi cura libellis,

dicatur potius ton d'apameibomenos.
(1.45)
Rather than have my work published in small volumes and

so go to waste, let me say 'to him in answer'.
There is a typical joke here: criticised for repetition, Martial offers a second
poem on the theme of repetition. Unless he is allowed to repeat himself,
Martial's books would be too short and would thus 'go to waste', not be
read. Libellis is a generalising plural, but the reference, as Shackleton Bailey's
translation rightly emphasises, has to be to hypothetical published books
(edita:cf. 1.25.If.; 1.91.If.; 2.6.1,17; 6.85.1). The reader of these two poems
in roll or codex will surely want to associate them, and see the reference in
1.44 also to the published book(s), rather than to separate brochures. The
accusation of having put out poems on the same theme in different collections
would surely be weaker than the accusation of publishing them in the same
book. The problem of maior...charta minorque remains, and I offer two
suggestions. First, charta (as Shackleton Bailey notes) suggests single sheets
rather than books, and one might take the reference to be to the pieces of
papyrus on which Martial composes his poems, as a polar expression for
'every scrap of paper': looking indeed to a stage before publication, but to
the foul papers of the poet (later translated into the published book) rather
than to informal brochures. 33 Alternatively (or additionally) one might think
of the dual roll/codex publication of the book, which gives the poem an extra
twist: Martial not only repeats himself, and repeats himself about repetition,
he even repeatedly publishes the repeated treatments of repetition. Either
way, there is another possible joke generated in the book by the collocation
of 44 and 45. Homer's half-line 'to him in answer...' was parodied by
Cratinus (PCG fr. 355, with Austin ad loc.) but nevertheless used provoc-
atively by Antimachus (fr. 79 Wyss): more repetition about repetition. But
the line is also given a sexual meaning by Straton, Anth. Pal. 12.4: anyone
wanting an older boy wants 'to him in answer', i.e. a top not a bottom. If
we allow the half-line to have already such an association, we have a link
to the following famous epigram:
Cum dicis 'propero, fac si facis,' Hedyle, languet

protinus et cessat debilitata Venus,
expectare iube: uelocius ibo retentus.
Hedyle, si properas, die mihi ne properem.
(1.46)
Hedylus, 34 when you say, 'I'm in a hurry, do it if you're

44
going to,' forthwith my passion languishes; crippled, it

subsides. Tell me to wait, and I shall go all the faster for
the check. Hedylus, if you are in a hurry, tell me not to
be in a hurry.
Although the exact details of the sexual encounter here have been much
discussed, this poem is completely intelligible as a self-standing epigram.
But it shares with the complaints of literary repetition a taste for a more
leisurely approach than some would urge, and if 45 is given any sexual
connotations, however slight, then we may be encouraged to see the three
poems as linked. More speculatively, it raises the possibility of reading 46
in the book metapoetically, of Martial's relationship with the reader. Fig-
uring the reading contract in sexual terms is of course a common feature
of much modern criticism from Barthes on, but sexual and poetic imagery
are at least as intertwined in Greek and Latin texts. 35 What the reader will
make of finding herself (or himself) in the position implied by 46 is of
course another question....
I shall return to the question of metapoetic reading at the end, and here
move on to White's next passage, 2.91 to Domitian, which refers to Mar-
tial's poems as festinatis totiens tibi lecta36 libellis ('so often read by you/
to you in hurried books'). If his poems have 'detained Domitian's eyes'
(detinuere oculos carmina nostra tuos, 4), Martial asks for the ius trium
liberorum, the 'privileges of a father of three'. The poem is part of the
closing sequence of Book Two, and the following poem announces the
grant of the right: the last poem, 93, is the epigram, discussed already, in
which Regulus asks where the first book is if this is the second. It would
be possible to take the reference here in festinatis...libellis (which can
again be generic pretence, not reality) to be to the De Spectaculis, Xenia,
and Apophoreta: Citroni 37 objects that these are not concerned with Domi-
tian, but the reference in 2.91 need not be to dedication. Alternatively, one
could take the reference to be to Books One and Two, with totiens an
exaggeration.38 But a third possibility is suggested by the codex publication
of the book, which I have already suggested is relevant to 2.93: the ref-
erence is then to the published rolls that make up the codex. There is then
a paradox of this poem forming the closure to just the second of the fes-
tinati libelli to which it refers, but this sort of paradox is, as we have seen,
entirely typical of Martial's play with multiple levels of reception; a
paradox heightened by the following poem, where Martial is rewarded
within the book for something that can only have been granted after the
book has been read.
Just as 2.91 forms part of the closing sequence of Book Two, so White's
next example, 1.101, occurs towards the end of Book One. In it, the death
of a slave Demetrius is described, the scribe of the copies of Martial's
books presented to the emperor:
45
D.P. FOWLER
Ilia manus quondam studiorum fida meorum

et felix domino notaque Caesaribus,
destitit primos uiridis Demetrius annos...
(1.101.1-3)
Once the faithful amanuensis of my studies, a boon to his

master and known to the Caesars, Demetrius in his green
youth deserted his opening years...
If Demetrius is dead and this is Book One, how can he have been the
scribe of any published libelli? Again, we might think of the De Specta-
culis, Xenia, and Apophoreta, with the Caesars in question being Titus and
Domitian: but also again, an alternative is to look to the codex publication.
One should not, at any rate, neglect again the joke in lamenting the death
of a scribe in one of his own books. The last lines may draw out the
paradox:
sensit deficiens sua praemia meque patronum

dixit ad infernas liber iturus aqua.
(1.101.9f.)
As his strength failed, he realised his reward and called

me 'patron', to go a free man to the waters of the
underworld.
Martial manumitted Demetrius on his death-bed: he went down to Hades

a free man, liber. Despite the difference in quantity, it is difficult not to
think here of a graphic ambivalence with liber, 'book': Demetrius the
scribe lives on in Martial's book, the very book which contains his
obituary.
White next deals with poems which 'represent themselves as introduc-
tions to accompanying books' but which, he claims, 'are so awkwardly
placed for this purpose that one must conclude that Martial could not orig-
inally have designed them for the positions they now occupy' (47). Again,
one must marvel at the construction of a poet who so chose to demonstrate
his awkwardness in a published volume. What we in fact find in these
poems is not awkwardness but a sophisticated play on the notions of serial
readingwe progress through the book epigram by epigramand of total
presentation, in which we hold the whole work in our hands. I have dis-
cussed White's first example, 11.106, elsewhere,39 but it well illustrates
the ingenious way that Martial highlights the paradoxes of reading:
Vibi Maxime, si uacas hauere

hoc tantum lege: namque et occupatus
et non est nimium laboriosus.
46
transis hos quoque quattuor? sapisti.

(11.106)
Vibius Maximus, if you have time to say hello, read only

this; for you are a busy man and not overindustrious. Do
you pass by these four verses too? You show your sense.
White comments: 40 'The poem could not have been meant to stand here,
or else Maximus would have had to unroll to the third last poem in the
book before he discovered the one item of which Martial begs him to take
notice.' Hence this poem must once have been the first poem in a libellus.
What one might take to be the greater absurdity of complimenting a man
on not reading a poem in the poem itself is passed over, but the two
paradoxes are obviously of the same kind. The poem is also simultaneously
sermo and text, in that on one level Martial depicts himself as stopping
Vibius in the street and pressing on him his latest productionif he has
time to say hellowhile on another the poem moves within a wholly
textual world, and Vibius snubs (transis) not Martial but 'these four
verses'. As before, in trying to take this poem seriously, to think when and
where one could possibly utter these words, White is in a sense being
exactly the reader Martial wants, but a reader who can then enjoy the
absurdity rather than continuing the desperate search to resolve it is likely
to have a higher opinion of Martial's poetry.
The second 'introductory' poem discussed is this one:
Hos quoque commenda Venuleio, Rufe, libellos,

inputet et nobis otia parua roga,
immemor et paulum curarum operumque suorum
non tetrica nugas exigat aure meas.
sed nee post primum legat haec summumue trientem,
sed sua cum medius proelia Bacchus amat.
si nimis est legisse duos, tibi charta plicetur
altera: diuisum sic breue fiet opus.
(4.82)
These little books also, Rufus, commend to Venuleius, and

ask him to debit me with a few idle hours; unmindful for
a while of his cares and employments, let him criticise my
trifles with no unkindly ear. Only let him not read them
after the first cup or the last, but when Bacchus in mid
career loves his contests. If two is too much to read, you
may fold up one of the rolls. Divided, the work will thus
become short.
Two books are presented to Venuleius: White argues that these cannot be
47
D.P. FOWLER
the third and fourth books, because they are envisaged as being published
a few months apart, but there is no reason why books three and four cannot
retrospectively be fashioned into a unit in this way. Poem 82 is part of the
closing sequence of Book Four (which contains 89 poems: cf. 86, 88, 89),
and the reference certainly functions in this way in the published book.41
Martial has to have two books for the joke at the end, which may be more
complicated than it seems. One possibility is to stress tibi ('for/by you')
in line 7: if Venuleius is too busy to read two books, let Rufus keep one
for himself. There is then a play on diuisum: the two books are halved for
Venuleius by being divided amongst the two men. Another possibility is
that plicetur means 'roll to the end as if read', so that Venuleius is given
one roll 'pre-read' as it were: for the practice, cf.:
Explicitum nobis usque ad sua cornua librum

et quasi perlectum, Septiciane, refers,
omnia legisti. credo, scio, gaudeo, uerum est.
perlegi libros sic ego quinque tuos.
(11.107)
You bring back the roll to me unrolled to its horns as

though you had read it through, Septicianus. You have
read everything, I believe it, I know it, I'm delighted, it's
true. In the same way I read through your five books.
The simple plicetur remains a little puzzling, however: although not com-
pletely unparallelled,42 it is not the obvious word to use of a roll, and
might even suit a codex better, with the pages folded back. If one thinks
of a use of the figure of simple for compound, plicetur for expUcetur, one
should perhaps conjecture a colloquial register for the usage.
White's third introductory poem is 7.26, to Apollinaris:
Apollinarem conueni meum, scazon;

et si uacabitne molestus accedas,
hoc qualecumque, cuius aliqua pars ipse est,
dabis: hoc facetae carmen inbuant aures.
si te receptum fronte uideris tota,
noto rogabis ut fauore sustentet.
quanto mearum, scis, amore nugarum
flagret: nee ipse plus amare te possum,
contra malignos esse si cupis tutus,
Apollinarem conueni meum, scazon.
(7.26)
Limping verse go meet my Apollinaris, and, if he is not

too busy (don't approach him at the wrong time) give him
48
this, such as it is, of which he is himself a part. Let his

witty ear be the first to hear the verses. If you see yourself
received with an unwrinkled brow, ask him to support you
with his well-known favour. You know how ardently he
loves my trifles. I can't love you more myself. If you want
to be safe against ill-wishers, go meet my Apollinaris,
limping verse.
White is again Martial's ideal first reader:43 'Apollinaris cannot have read
this as the twenty-sixth poem of a book, because the scazon is imagined
to be the first poem which confronts him (conueni). Furthermore, verses 5
and 6 imply that he has not yet chosen whether to accept or reject the
accompanying book.' It is worth noting that in fact it is not clear that the
reference in 3f. is to a book at all: hoc qualecumque, cuius aliqua pars
ipse est ('this, such as it is, of which he is himself a part') points to a
book, but the single hoc...carmen in 4 (slightly misleadingly rendered
'verses' by Shackleton Bailey) suggests a reference to the individual poem
(of which Apollinaris is also clearly a part). The implication of 8, 'I can't
love you more myself, is also that what is being judged is the individual
poem, though we can of course take te to mean 'you and your companions'.
The scazon is told to go to Apollinaris and then to give 'this' to him
this being the very scazon in question: a bewildering paradox, but one that
by now I hope will seem not unattractive. But we also surely take the
whole book to be what the scazon is presenting to Apollinaris. He will be
the first to read this bookwe read in the roll (and possibly re-read in the
codex, if the codex edition included Book Seven). Again, the empirical
reader can figure herself either as associated with the surrogate reader
Apollinaris and like him 'judging' the book, or can sense the distance
between the two, perhaps uncomfortably aware of the possibility that she
could become one of the maligni mentioned in the penultimate line.
The final introductory poem discussed is one in which Martial asks
Severus to read his nugae with Secundus:
Non totam mihi, si uacabis, horam,

dones et licet inputes, Seuere,
dum nostras legis exigisque nugas.
'durum est perdere ferias': rogamus,
iacturam patiaris hanc ferasque.
quod si legeris ista cum diserto
sed numquid sumus inprobi?Secundo,
plus multo tibi debiturus hie est,
quam debet domino suo, libellus.
nam securus erit, nee inquieta
lassi marmora Sisyphi uidebit,
quern censoria cum meo Seuero
49
D.P. FOWLER
docti lima momorderit Secundi.

(5.80)
Give me less than an hour, Severus, if you have the time

(and you may put it on my account), while you read and
criticise my trifles. 'It's hard to sacrifice a holiday.' I ask
you to suffer and bear this loss. But if you read them (or
am I going too far?) along with eloquent Secundus, this
little book will owe you much more than it owes its
master. For it will feel safe, nor see the stone of weary
Sisyphus, once bitten by the censorial file of learned
Secundus together with my Severus.
White finds here the future tenses 'ludicrously discordant' if Severus has
already had to read 79 of the 84 pieces in Book Five to get to this poem;
and indeed they are. We are again presented with a picture of critics being
asked to comment on a book in a poem that is part of the book, but there
are yet again more things we can do with this play on the simultaneously
incomplete and complete status of the book than merely try to construct a
situation where the poem could be literally true. The position of the
epigram as part of the closing sequence of Book Five is again signifcant,
particularly as we can see in the coupling of the two critics an echo of the
Gallus papyrus fragment, which is also probably from a conclusion:44
...] tandem fecerunt carmina Musae

quae possem domina deicere digna mea:
...].atur idem tibi, non ego, Visce
..] l.Kato, iudice te uereor.
...at last the Muses have fashioned me poems that I can

sing worthy of my mistress: [if the same thing seems true]
to you, Viscus, [and you] Cato, I shall not fear [criticism]
with you as judge.
We often find in Latin poetry poems of ambivalent status, at once part of

the book in which they occur and in a sense on the threshold of it, com-
menting on it programmatically or retrospectively. But we should not be
misled by the metaphor into thinking that such poems can only occur at
the entry or exit of the work. Conte demonstrated that the middle may be
made another such nodal point for such reflection,45 and it can in fact be
seen to occur throughout a work if we are prepared to abandon naive
notions of factual consistency.
This piece has been in one sense largely negative, since I have been
attempting to argue that we need never hypothesise in Martial publication
50
of the epigrams in private brochures: the poems are not a log of 'real'
social relations, but texts which simulate and construct a social world
whose textual existence is brought before the reader at every turn. In
another sense, however, I hope the argument has been more positive, in
suggesting ways in which the paradoxes of the book can be made positive
features of Martial's art. I have not space to develop this positive side
in this essay, but I do want to conclude by examining a few more
examples of the sophisticated play with the book that we find in the
epigrams. One aspect of this is the rapport that Martial sets up with the
reader. As I have suggested several times already, if one ideal reader of
the epigrams is the simple soul always trying to take them literally, there
is always space too for collusion with a reader willing to collude with
Martial's fictions:
Ohe, iam satis est, ohe, libelle,

iam peruenimus usque ad umbilicos.
tu procedere adhuc et ire quaeris,
nee summa potes in schida teneri,
sic tamquam tibi res peracta non sit,
quae prima quoque pagina peracta est.
iam lector queriturque deficitque,
iam librarius hoc et ipse dicit
'ohe, iam satis est, ohe, libelle.'
(4.89)
Whoa, there's enough, whoa now, little book! We have

got to the bosses. But you want to go on further and keep
going, there's no holding you at the final sheet, as though
you had not finished the business which was finished even
on page one. Already the reader grows querulous and
weary, already the very copyist says 'Whoa, there's
enough, whoa now, little book!'
Reader, scribe and author collaborate in mouthing the final 'ohe': as often,
Martial's collusion with the reader takes the form of self-deprecatory
remarks, despite the claims that he elsewhere makes for the epigrams.
Another example:
Nympha sacri regina lacus, cui grata Sabinus

et mansura pio munere templa dedit,
sic montana tuos semper colat Umbria fontes,
nee tua Baianas Sassina malit aquas:
excipe sollicitos placide, mea dona, libellos;
tu fueris Musis Pegasis unda meis.
'Nympharum templis quisquis sua carmina donat,
51
D.P. FOWLER
quid fieri libris debeat, ipse monet.'

(9.58)
Nymph, queen of the sacred lake, to whom Sabinus' pious

bounty gave a shrine, pleasing to you and long to endure,
so may hilly Umbria ever honour your spring nor your
Sassina prefer the waters of Baiae: receive kindly my gifts,
my anxious little books. You shall be Pegasus' fountain
to my Muses. 'Whosoever gives his poems to Nymphs'
temples tells us himself what should be done with his
books.'
This is an anathematikon of the type found in Book Six of the Greek Anthol-
ogy: what makes it typical of Martial is the final couplet giving the reply by
the Nymphor is it Sabinus? Or the reader? Anyone who gives books to
the nymphs deserves that 'the pages should be sponged clean or the books
thrown into the water' (Shackleton Bailey). But the self-disparagement is
complicated. In a sense, without the final couplet this would have been a
poem worth expunging from history; a boring dedication, a piece of empty
social poetry. The irruption of the disembodied reply in the final couplet
ironically makes the poemby declaring explicitly its imperfection.
I have several times commented on the way in which the empirical
readers of the epigrams both associate with and distance themselves from
the readers figured in the text. A good example of the complexities here
is given by part of the closing sequence of Book Nine:
Marcus amat nostras Antonius, Attice, Musas,

charta salutatrix si modo uera refert:
Marcus Palladiae non infitianda Tolosae
gloria, quern genuit Pacis alumna Quies.
tu qui longa potes dispendia ferre uiarum,
i, liber, absentis pignus amicitiae.
uilis eras, fateor, si te nunc mitteret emptor;
grande tui pretium muneris auctor erit:
multum, crede mihi, refert, a fonte bibatur
quae fluit, an pigro quae stupet unda lacu.
(9.99)
Marcus Antonius loves my Muses, Atticus, if only his

letter of greeting says true; Marcus, glory undeniable of
Palladian Tolosa, child of tranquillity the nursling of
Peace. Book, who can bear long stretches of travel, go,
pledge of absent friendship. You would have been worth
little, I grant, if a buyer were now sending you; the author
of the gift will make you precious. There's a great differ-
52
ence, believe me, between drinking water from a flowing

stream and water stagnating in an idle pond.
The special authorial copy of Book Nine presented is an absentis pignus

amicitiae ('pledge of absent friendship'), a surrogate for real social contact.
If it had been merely a book bought on a stall, it would not have had the
value that it does as coming from Martial's own hand. The ideology of
presence here implicit is exactly that which White conjectures for the epi-
grams: what is central is the social contact, and the book aims as far as
possible to recreate that contact, though it will always be second best. The
contrast is represented in the final couplet in Callimachean (and Horatian)
terms: the fountain is contrasted with the sluggish, muddy lake. But what
is the empirical reader of Book Nine supposed to do with that image? Her
copy was certainly bought in a shop, and she is no more able than us to
go back to the source for some clear water. The stagnant, idle lake is like
Plato's book: it just stands there looking stupid, and fails to engage in the
social dialogue which is life. But it is that lake which is speaking to the
reader as she reads the lines, and again it is the final couplet which saves
the poem from stupefaction. To see in this epigram merely a disparagement
of the written book and the anonymous reader is, again, to miss the way
in which they are in fact celebrated in the very act of criticism.
But the aspect of the book on which I want to conclude in a sense moves
me from the defensive to the offensive. Rather than merely suggesting that
it is profitable to take seriously the epigrams which refer to books and
reading, I want to go further and suggest that many of the epigrams which
do not so concern themselves explicitly may nevertheless take on a new
meaning if we are prepared to read them within the framework of written
reception. We are familiar with the strategy of reading objects metapoeti-
cally, as surrogates for the text, and any work in which we foreground the
written text will tend to favour such strategies, since the book as material
existent offers a middle ground between text and object. This is particularly
so in the epigram tradition, where real inscriptions lie in the background.
The following poem, for instance, pretends to be a marble inscription, but
it may also be read with reference to the text as literary monument:
Marmora parua quidem, sed non cessura, uiator,

Mausoli saxis pyramidumque legis.
bis mea Romano spectata est uita Tarento,
et nihil extremos perdidit ante rogos:
quinque dedit pueros, totidem mihi Iuno puellas,
cluserunt omnes lumina nostra manus.
contigit et thalami mihi gloria rara fuitque
una pudicitiae mentula nota meae.
(10.63)
53
D.P. FOWLER
The marble you are reading, traveller, is small indeed, but

will not yield to the stones of Mausolus and the pyramids.
My life was twice approved at Roman Tarentos and lost
nothing down to my dying day. Juno gave me five boys
and as many girls; their hands all closed my eyes. Rare
glory of wedlock was my lot, and my chastity knew but
one cock.
The surprise at the end of course negates the opening reference to marble
one thing this is not, it turns out, is a conventional honorific inscription.
But the allusion to Horace Odes 3.30 might in any case have alerted us to
the fact that this is not a stone and if we are uiatores, it is in a metaphorical
sense with reference to our journey through the text. Stone and poem alike,
however, are parua quidem, sed non cessura ('small indeed, but not going
to yield'). In a different register, when in 7.96 Urbicus is described as
conditus hie ('buried here') and the reader is asked for tears (da lacrimas
tumulo, qui legis ista, meo, 'you that read these lines, give tears to my
tomb', 7.96.6), we are aware that Martial's text is the boy's tomb, and it
is the generations of readers to come who will spare him a tear.
But the possibility of reading Martial's epigrams metapoetically through
the medium of the physical book goes much further than these inscriptional
poems, and I would like to close with some remarks on the Xenia and
Apophoreta, Books 'Thirteen' and 'Fourteen'. These were published before
Book One, and are supposedly tickets to attach to gifts for the Saturnalia,
of foodstuffs (xenia) and more general gifts (apophoreta, 'things to take
away with one'). They purport to be of practical utility:
Omnis in hoc gracili Xeniorum turba libello

constabit nummis quattuor empta tibi.
quattuor est nimium? poterit constare duobus,
et faciet lucrum bybliopola Tryphon.
haec licet hospitibus pro munere disticha mittas,
si tibi tarn rarus, quam mihi, nummus erit.
addita per titulos sua nomina rebus habebis:
praetereas, si quid non facit ad stomachum.
(13.3)
The entire assembly of Mottos in this slender little book

will cost you four sesterces to buy. Is four too much? It
could cost you two, and bookseller Trypho still make a
profit. You can send these couplets to your guests instead
of a gift, if sesterces are as scarce with you as they are
with me. You will find each item identified by its title; if
anything is not to your taste, just pass it by.
54
Notice, however, that the reader is only invited to use the distichs practi-
cally if as hard up as the poet. The 'usefulness' of the collection is surely
a patent fictionas comments like these make clear:
Quo uis cumque loco potes hunc finire libellum:

uersibus explicitumst omne duobus opus,
lemmata si quaeris cur sint adscripta, docebo:
ut, si malueris, lemmata sola legas.
(14.2)
You can finish this book at any place you choose. Every
performance is completed in two lines. If you ask why
headings are added, I'll tell you: so that, if you prefer, you
may read the headings only.
The reader who does not want to read the distichs may, if she wishes, read
just the headings: but if she does so, she will read lemmata sola in more
than one sense. These objects have no existence outside Martial's poetry.
A recognition of the fictionality of the poems has some important conse-
quences for the use made of them for the reconstruction of Realien, espe-
cially in the Apophoreta, where we may not after all have to decide, for
example, whether you really could get all of Livy into a single codex
(14.190). But I concentrate on the metapoetry of the final poems of each
book. Nothing demands that we take these poems metapoetically, but
nothing prevents us from doing so either:
Dat festinatas, Caesar, tibi bruma coronas:

quondam ueris erat, nunc tua facta rosa est.
(13.127)
Winter gives you forced garlands, Caesar. The rose used

to be spring's, now it has become yours.
Surgite: iam uendit pueris ientacula pistor

cristataeque sonant undique lucis aues.
(14.223)
Rise. Already the baker is selling boys their breakfast, and

the crested birds of daybreak sound from every side.
The festinatas...coronas of the final poem of Book Thirteen may easily

represent the 'hurried' epigrams of the book that the poem concludes, and
one may remember another modestly retiring closural poem about roses,
Horace Odes 1.38; while in 14.223 Martial cleverly reverses the concluding
commonplaces of the end of the Eclogues. The reader must arise, but not
because the shadows are lengthening: rather day is breaking, the dawn that
55
D.P. FOWLER
brings to an end the Saturnalia celebrated in Book Fourteen. The adipata

('rich fatty cakes'), for which 14.223 is the label, are the poems of the
book, ironically figured not in their Callimachean slenderness but in their
textual (and metatextual) riches.
And it is on that richness of texture that I want to conclude. I have tried
to free Martial's epigrams from a paradigm of 'occasional' poetry, and to
suggest that far from being transparent windows on to a day-to-day world
of social interaction, they are complex and sophisticated texts whose exis-
tence in the published books is central. But that should not make them less
interesting to the social historian. The next step after staying our eye on
the glass is to see what the patterns are, to try to integrate Martial's ide-
ology of the book with the wider ideologies of his world. I am not making
a plea in this article for a formalism whose only values are sophistication
and ingenuity. But we do need to take seriously the ways in which Martial
creates his world rather than simply reflecting it if we in our turn are to
attempt to construct a satisfying fiction.
Jesus College, Oxford
NOTES
Versions of this piece have been given in Oxford, Pisa and Princeton: I am grateful to all
the participants on those occasions. I hope to expand on some of the themes in a forthcoming
study of books and reading in Roman literature, research on which was conducted while I held
a Research Lectureship of the British Academy, for which I am most grateful.
1. C.H. Roberts and T.C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London 1983), 24-29.
2. Note especially Sped. 3\;Xenia 1-3; Apophoreta 1-11, 20, 21, 37, 38, 84, 183-196, 208,
209; 1. praef, 1-5, 16, 25, 29, 35, 38, 44, 45, 52, 53, 61, 63, 66, 70, 72, 91, 101, 107, 108,
110, 111, 113, 117, 118; 2.1, 6, 8, 23, 77, 86, 91, 93; 3.1, 2, 4, 5, 68, 69, 86, 97, 99, 100; 4.6,
8, 10, 14, 27, 29, 31, 33, 49, 72, 81, 82, 86, 89; 5.2, 5, 6, 10, 13, 15, 16, 26, 30, 36, 60, 63,
73, 80; 6.1, 60, 61, 64, 65, 85; 7.3, 11, 12, 17, 26, 44, 46, 51, 52, 68, 72, 77, 80, 81, 85, 88,
90, 97, 99; 8. praef. 1, 3, 18, 20, 24, 29, 61, 62, 72, 76, 82; 9. praef, 49, 58, 81, 99; 10.1-4,
20, 33, 45, 59, 64, 70, 74, 78, 87, 104; 11.1-3, 15-17, 20, 24, 42, 94, 106-108; 12. praef, 1-
5, 11,63.
3. There is no discussion of the role of the book, for instance, in P. Laurens' otherwise
detailed examination of Martial's poetics in L'Abeille dans Vambre (Paris 1989), 215-372.
4. P. White, 'The Presentation and Dedication of the Silvae and Epigrams', JRS 64 (1974),
40-61. The idea that Martial's works before the published books appeared in 'Buchelchen...die
von Hand zu Hand gingen' (Friedlander i.53) is of course much older: cf. e.g. R. Helm RE
'Valerius (233) Martialis' (1955), 79f.
5. J. P. Sullivan, Martial: The Unexpected Classic (Cambridge 1991), 23 n.38.
6. D.P. Fowler, 'First Thoughts on Closure', MD 22 (1989), 75-122, at 107f.
7. M. Citroni, 'Pubblicazione e dediche dei libri di Marziale', Maia 40 (1988), 3-39; cf. E.
Merli, 'Ordinamento degli epigrammi e strategie cortegiane negli esordi dei libri I-XII di Mar-
ziale', Maia 45 (1993), 229-56. Citroni's important series of articles on various aspects of
literary reception at Rome will shortly appear in a collected volume: see especially the survey
by him in G. Cavallo, P. Fedeli and A. Giardina (eds.), Lo spazio letterario di Roma antica
HI: La ricezione del testo (Rome 1991), 53-116. 8. So even J. Garthwaite, 'The Panegyrics of
Domitian in Martial Book 9', Ramus 22 (1993), 78-102, in a sympathetic account of the effects
56
of contextualisation within the book, nevertheless accepts the libellus hypothesis.

9. On the origins and development of the epigram, see Laurens (n.3 above), 33-64.
10. For brevity as a generic rather than literal requirement, see M. Lausberg, Das Einzeld-
istichon (Munich 1982), 29-63 (with a good discussion of the complexities of Martial's actual
practice). For 'rapid response' cf. e.g. Sped. 31 Da ueniam subitis...(though the textual status
of that poem is a little uncertain), and see below. The frequent reference to sudden events and
the use of words like subitus in the epigrams (24x) perhaps represent a thematisation of this
aspect of them.
11. I am indebted here to a forthcoming study of this phenomenon in the Odes by Michele
Lowrie.
12. Except'where noted, all translations are from the Loeb of D.R. Shackleton Bailey (Cam-
bridge MA and London 1993), though I do not follow his numeration.
13. On the numeration, cf. 2.93, and see below.
14. Cf. Sullivan (n.5 above), 6-55.
15. Cf. M. Citroni, 'Marziale e la letteratura per i Saturnali (poetica dell' intrattenimento e
cronologia della pubblicazione dei libri)', ICS 14 (1989), 201-26.
16. For the question, see M. Citroni (ed.), M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton Liber I (Flor-
ence 1975), 17f.
17. For more possibilities, see Citroni (n.16 above), xv-xviii.
18. There are excellent remarks on the complexities of 'readers' and 'Readers' in A. Shar-
rock, Seduction and Repetition in Ovid's Ars Amatoria 2 (Oxford 1994).
19. Cf. e.g. K. Quinn, 'The Poet and his Audience in the Augustan Age', ANRW 30.1 (Berlin
and New York 1982), 75-180, with bibliography; specifically on Martial, W. Burnikel, 'Zur
Bedeutung der Miindlichkeit in Martials Epigrammbiichern I-XII', in G. Vogt-Spira (ed.), Struk-
turen der Miindlichkeit in der rbmischen Literatur (Tubingen 1990), 221-33.
20. See esp. 1.29, with Citroni (n.16 above) ad he.
21. Contra Burnikel (n.19 above), 222, but his examples (2.1.9f., 7.29.5f. and the preface
to 12) do not establish public recitation of published work as a norm.
22. Cf. Burnikel (n.19 above).
23. The question of 'reading aloud' in antiquity is a complex one that I intend to discuss
elsewhere, but M. Burnyeat (letter, TLS 19th April 1991) has pointed out that Ptolemy On the
Criterion 5 (P. Huby and G. Neal [eds.], The Criterion of Truth [Liverpool 1989], 191) estab-
lishes conclusively that silent reading was a perfectly normal practice in antiquity.
24. Cf. Citroni (n.7 above), Merli (n.7 above). As will be obvious, in general on 'patronage'
I find the approach of J.G. Zetzel, 'The Poetics of Patronage in the Late First Century BC, in
B.K. Gold (ed.), Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome (Austin 1982), 87-102 more
productive than that of White, recently restated in his Promised Verse (1994): cf. the review
of the latter by D. Feeney in BMCR 94.6.16.
25. P. Goetsch, 'Fingierte Miindlichkeit in der Erzahlkunst entwickelter Schriftkulturen',
Poetica 17 (1985), 202-18; cf. W. Erzgraber and P. Goetsch, Mundliches Erzahlen im Alltag,
fingiertes Mundliches Erzahlen in der Literatur (Tubingen 1987), and D. Meyer, 'Der Einbe-
ziehung des Lesers in den Epigrammen des Kallimachos', in M.A. Harder, R. Regtuit and G.
C. Walker (eds.), Callimachus (Groningen 1993), 161-75.
26. Oxford 1957: see esp. 26. Cf. D.P. Fowler, 'Images of Horace in Twentieth-Century
Scholarship', in C. Martindale and D. Hopkins (eds.), Horace Made New (Cambridge 1993),
268-76, at 273f.
27. Cf W. Albert, Das mimetische Gedicht in der Antike (Frankfurt 1988).
28. Another possible sense is simply that Book 12 is shorter than the earlier books. This is
literally true, albeit only by a small margin: more importantly, it is consonant with Martial's
remark to Priscus in 12.1, otia, Prisce, breui poteris donare libello ('you will be able to give
your leisure, Priscus, to a short volume'). Alternatively, it has been suggested that Books Ten
and Eleven were published together, and jointly constitute the larger volume with which 12 is
contrasted.
29. Cf. Citroni (n.7 above), 30.
30. Cf Merli (n.7 above), 245 n.43.
31. The model is obviously Horace Epist. 1.13: there the use of the plural libellis (4) and
the term carmina (17) suggests that the volumes being presented are the Odes (cf. R. Mayer
[Cambridge 1994] ad loc. and p.4), but the many attempts to make the reference be to the
Epistles themselves shows how natural such a reading is.
32. 1.6, 14,22,48,51,60, 104.
57
D.P. FOWLER
33. Cf. O. Weinreich's review of O. Helm, Studien zu Martial (Stuttgart 1928), Phil. Woch.
49 (1929), 807-10 at 808f.; cf. also Lustrum 2 (1957), 190f.
34. Shackleton Bailey follows Bentley here in altering to the feminine Hedyli, but the change
has nothing to recommend it, and his statement against Sullivan's point that Hedylus is a bottom
in 5.52 and 9.57 that 'M. does not as a rule carry over name associations from book to book'
stretches the sense of 'as a rule' to breaking point: see his own list (n.12 above, iii.324).
35. Cf. J. Bramble, Persius and the Programmatic Satire (Cambridge 1974), 41-45, 59-62.
36. D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 'Corrections and Explanations of Martial', CPh 73 (1978), 273-
96, emended to collecta ('collected'), referring to previous brochure publications, because he
did not believe that Martial could boast of the emperor's reading his poems in this way and
because he did not see how totiens tibi lecta could cohere with detinuere oculos tuos: he later
(CPh 75 [1980], 69f.) withdrew the first argument in the light of 4.27.1 saepe meos laudare
soles, Auguste, libellos ('often, Augustus, you are wont to praise my little books'). That poem
refers back to 2.91 in that it also alludes to the grant of the ius trium liberorum: the
meos...libellos there too are surely the published books, since Martial envisages the envious
denying that the emperor praises Martial's books. This is a weaker argument if the reference
is to unpublished pamphlets rather than to public works to whose deficiences the envious may
personally attest.
37. Citroni (n.7 above), 5.
38. Cf. Friedlander ad loc.
39. Fowler (n.6 above).
40. White (n.4 above), 47; cf. (surprisingly) also Citroni (n.7 above), 36, and Merli (n.7
above), 253 n.58.
41. If one takes the reference in 3.1.3 to a single librum...priorem ('previous book') to mean
that Books One and Two form a unit, then one may want to make more of the idea that Books
Three and Four form another pair. But the reference in 3.1 may merely be to the preceding
book in the sequence, i.e. Book Two: Martial makes much of the serial ordering of his books,
not least through his explicit use of numbers rather than titles for them.
42. Cf. Sen. Ep. 95.2, a reciter's text minutissime scriptam, artissime plicatam (though a
codex notebook would be possible), Aul. Gell. 17.10.1 (of the Spartan skutale) and especially
Vulg. Luc. 4.20 cum plicuisset librum, where the context of Jewish worship makes a reference
to a scroll certain but the Greek has the equally unusual ptuxas. At the end of the Torah reading,
the scroll would presumably not have been rolled to the end, but the two ends would be 'folded'
together.
43. White (n.4 above), 48.
44. FLP fr. 2 Courtney: see especially R.G.M. Nisbet in the editio princeps, JRS 69 (1979),
I49f.
45. 'Proems in the Middle', in F. Dunn and T. Cole (eds.), Beginnings in Classical Literature
(YCS 29, Cambridge 1992), 147-59.
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MARTIAL AND THE BOOK

rapidly in response to an event.10 It is important to note, however, that

Hie est quem legis ille, quern requiris,

That poem, '1.1' in both ancient and modern editions,13 demonstrates

97 Book 10 (second edition?)

Qui tecum cupis esse meos ubicumque libellos

You who want my little books to keep you company wher-

ne tamen ignores ubi sim uenalis et erres

But in case you don't know where I am on sale and stray

'Primus ubi est' inquis 'cum sit liber iste secundus?'

at tu Romano lepidos sale tinge libellos:

to book reception should encourage a parallel desire to stay one's eye on

Laudat, amat, cantat nostras mea Roma libellos,

My Rome praises my little books, loves them, recites

te conuiuia, te forum sonabit,

The dinner tables, the Forum, the houses, the crossroads,

non iam quod orbe cantor et legor toto,

Charinus is green with envy...not now because I am

It is this practice (real or imagined) which accounts for a number of the

si uictura meis mandantur nomina chartis

If names consigned to my pages shall live and it is given

engages with their literary textuality, but in practice, as I remarked above,

Si mihi Picena turdus palleret oliua,

If my thrushes were stuffed yellow with Picene olives or

basic sensethere are no obscure detailsand the problem of the lack

Longior undecimi nobis decimique libelli

The longer labour of my tenth and eleventh books has

This is normally taken to refer to a special epitome of Books 10 and 11

Si non est graue nee nimis molestum,

Musae, Parthenium rogate uestrum:

If it is not too much trouble and burden, Muses, please

Lasciuos leporum cursus lususque leonum

Do my pages large and small contain the gamesome runs

complicated by the following epigram, which is clearly related:

Edita ne breuibus pereat mihi cura libellis,

Rather than have my work published in small volumes and

Cum dicis 'propero, fac si facis,' Hedyle, languet

Hedylus, 34 when you say, 'I'm in a hurry, do it if you're

going to,' forthwith my passion languishes; crippled, it

Ilia manus quondam studiorum fida meorum

Once the faithful amanuensis of my studies, a boon to his

sensit deficiens sua praemia meque patronum

As his strength failed, he realised his reward and called

Martial manumitted Demetrius on his death-bed: he went down to Hades

Vibi Maxime, si uacas hauere

transis hos quoque quattuor? sapisti.

Vibius Maximus, if you have time to say hello, read only

Hos quoque commenda Venuleio, Rufe, libellos,

These little books also, Rufus, commend to Venuleius, and

Explicitum nobis usque ad sua cornua librum

You bring back the roll to me unrolled to its horns as

Apollinarem conueni meum, scazon;

Limping verse go meet my Apollinaris, and, if he is not

this, such as it is, of which he is himself a part. Let his

Non totam mihi, si uacabis, horam,

docti lima momorderit Secundi.

Give me less than an hour, Severus, if you have the time

...] tandem fecerunt carmina Musae

...at last the Muses have fashioned me poems that I can

We often find in Latin poetry poems of ambivalent status, at once part of

Ohe, iam satis est, ohe, libelle,

Whoa, there's enough, whoa now, little book! We have

Nympha sacri regina lacus, cui grata Sabinus