Martial 1.35: Two Translations

Martial’s epigram doesn’t have a title, but we could, if we wanted, call it ‘A Poem Needs A Cock’. Here it is, and my literal translation of it:

Versus scribere me parum severos
nec quos praelegat in schola magister,
Corneli, quereris: sed hi libelli,
tamquam coniugibus suis mariti,
non possunt sine mentula placer.
Quid si me iubeas thalassionem
verbis dicere non thalassionis?
quis Floralia vestit et stolatum
permittit meretricibus pudorem?
Lex haec carminibus data est iocosis,
ne possint, nisi pruriant, iuvare.
Quare deposita severitate
parcas lusibus et iocis rogamus,
nec castrare velis meos libellos
Gallo turpis est nihil Priapo.

I write verses that are too unserious,
the kind no teacher would read out in school —
that’s your complaint, Cornelius! But these little books
are like husbands with their wives:
they cannot please without a cock.
Would you order me to compose a Thalassian shout
and not include the Thalassian words?
Who wears clothes to the Floralia, or lets
whores wear respectable matronly dress?
This law is laid down for funny poems:
they’re useless unless they help scratch that itch.
So put away your seriousness
I ask you: spare my games and jokes.
Don’t cut the balls off of my books:
an ugly gallus is nothing compared to Priapus.

So yes: Martial thinks a poem without rudery is like a husband without a cock (mentula: the coarser version of the Latin penis). Thalassio is a Roman nuptial shout or song, corresponding to the Greek ‘Hymen Hymenaeus!’ We don’t know much about the thalassio actually, since it wasn’t written down; but it is likely (it’s implied here) that it was pretty rude: ‘the thalassio was an ancient marriage invocation whose obscenity and sexual content were meant to induce the conception of children’ [Art L Spisak, Martial: a Social Guide (Bloomsbury 2007), 50]. ‘Matronly dress’ is stola, the female equivalent of the male toga: a long, modest dress worn by ladies of high status. This is what a stola looked like:

(Only with arms, obviously). In the poem’s last line, a gallus is a priest of Cybele, whose exacting religious requirements necessitated her votaries castrate themselves— indeed, they had to remove not only testicles but penis too. ‘The galli castrated themselves during an ecstatic celebration called the Dies sanguinis, or “Day of Blood”, which took place on March 24.’ Ouch. Priapus, of course, was the phallic divinity: ‘In Greek mythology, Πρίαπος is a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens, and male genitalia. Priapus, marked by his oversized, permanent erection, became a popular figure in Roman erotic art and Latin literature, and is the subject of the often humorously obscene collection of verse called the Priapeia.’

Here’s another version of Martial’s poem, this time with rhymes:

My verse includes too much misrule,
no teacher would teach it in school —
Cornelius, so you whinge! But books,
are just like husbands with their wives:
they cannot please without their cocks.
You’d make me write Thalassian shout
and leave Thalassian rude-words out?
Who goes clothed to Floralia, or lets
whores wear respectable matron’s dress?
This law’s laid down for funny bits:
they have to scratch that sexual itch.
So put away your serious looks
I ask you: please spare my tomfoolery.
Don’t cut the balls from off my books:
Priapus keeps his family jewellery.