Teaching Martial's Poems

This spring, I faced a new challenge. I had promised to teach a course on Martial's poems as part of the curriculum of the Classics Department at the University of Turku. I've taught Latin and other topics related to antiquity for many years, but I hadn't previously taught this type of course. Both the content of the course and its target group were new to me. While I'm familiar with Martial's texts because I've studied them for my dissertation, I hadn't taught them in a university course before this. Additionally, teaching a course for both major and minor students in Latin is different in its requirements compared to, say, high school or adult education courses, which I have the most experience with.

Teaching Martial

The goal of such a course is usually to familiarize oneself with the works of one ancient author or a specific genre of ancient texts. As an undergraduate student, I remember taking courses on Cicero, Horace, Homer, epigraphy, and Latin at the old Royal Academy of Turku. When planning my course on Martial, I recalled what the courses I took as a student were like and what worked best pedagogically. I also received a lot of good practical tips from other teachers in our department, which I applied in my course. However, I decided not to directly imitate others' teaching but rather to conduct my course based on my own expertise and experience as a teacher.

I had quite a bit of freedom in planning the content and assignments for the course. Initially, I considered what I most wanted the students to learn about Martial's poetry. One of my primary goals was to highlight the versatility of and variation in Martial's poems, including the range of subjects, varied poetic meters, the language of the poems, and their arrangement in Martial's books. For the course text I chose the first book of epigrams by Martial, which we read from the beginning. This book provides a good overview of Martial's poems in my opinion.

Reading commentaries and preparing lectures.
A quote from the collection Carmina Priapea
as context for Martial's poem 1.35, where Martial defends
his obscene poems referring, among other things, to the god Priapus.

One of the biggest challenges in planning the course was assessing how much I could demand from students in a four-credit course. I tried to recall my own days as an undergraduate and the workload of the courses I took. My course on Martial consisted of 12 lectures (each lasting 90 minutes), in addition to which students submitted about every other week a small assignment on the poems for the next lecture. The course also included an essay, in which students reflected, based on the poems read in the course and one article, on topics such as Martial's life and works, the characteristics of Martial's poems, and the comprehensibility of the poems for a modern reader. Additionally, the course included midterm and final exams, in which students had to analyse the content and grammar of the poems covered in the course.

Martial's poems are in many ways a very gratifying material to teach. The poems are usually short, easy to read in terms of language and structure, and each poem usually deals with a clear topic. Teaching progressed conveniently from poem to poem, and it was easy to discuss the characteristics of each poem. We translated the poems together and analysed their language, poetic meters, and content. I particularly aimed to highlight the cultural context of the poems, such as references to other authors, mythology, Roman history, and everyday phenomena in ancient Rome. I used a lot of additional material to contextualize the poems, such as excerpts from other ancient authors, inscriptions, graffiti from Pompeii, Roman artifacts and art, as well as later artists' interpretations of the themes of the poems.

Examples of practitioners of ancient medicine as
background to Martial's poem 1.30 which deals with a doctor.

Although I've been studying Martial's poems for my dissertation for several years, I haven't had to delve into their language, structure, and content as thoroughly as when teaching this course. When conducting research, I mostly read the poems in translations, and I mainly focus on the satirical and stereotypical characters in them. In-depth analysis of individual poems often takes a back seat. However, during this course, I had to carefully consider the grammatical structures, word choices, stylistic features, intertextual relationships between different poems, the relationship of individual poems to Martial's larger body of work, events in Martial's life, historical context, and much more. The old truth docendo discimus or "by teaching, we learn" holds true indeed. During this spring, I've learned a lot about both Martial's poems and teaching a university course.

Here are a few examples of poems covered in the course:

You read him, you ask for him, and here he is:
Martial, known the world over
for his witty little books of epigrams.
Devoted reader, the glory you have given
him while he lives and feels
comes to few poets in their graves.

(Mart. 1.1)

Martial often portrays himself as modest and downplays the significance of his poems, but in this introductory poem, he presents himself as a world-famous poet. The poetic genre of Martial's poems was epigram, which generally refers to short and witty little poems. Usually, the point of the poem is revealed right at the end, as in this poem:

Gemellus is a-wooing Maronilla.
He is eager and insistent, begs her, gives her presents.
Is she such a beauty? On the contrary, she couldn’t be uglier.
So what is so desirable about her, so attractive? Her cough.

(Mart. 1.10)

Gemellus seeks to marry the ugly and sick Maronilla in hopes of inheriting her fortune. Martial often comments on such everyday phenomena and ridiculous characters in his poems. Sometimes he borrowed the subjects of his poems from mythology or historical events, as in this poem:

When virtuous Arria was handing her Paetus
the sword she had drawn from her own flesh, she said:
“I swear the wound I have dealt does not hurt,
but the wound you will deal, Paetus, that hurts me.”

(Mart. 1.13)

In this poem, Martial refers to events during the reign of emperor Claudius who reigned AD 41–54. Aulus Caecina Paetus had been sentenced to suicide for his involvement in a conspiracy against the emperor. According to the story, he did not dare to stab himself to death, so his wife Arria showed him how it's done. Emperor Claudius is also mentioned in this poem:

Tell me, what folly is this? You devour mushrooms on your own,
Caecilianus, before the eyes of the invited multitude.
What fate shall I call down upon you to match
so big a belly and so big an appetite?
May you eat such a mushroom as Claudius ate.

(Mart. 1.20)

The character of Caecilianus is a stingy host who indulges in mushrooms at dinner while his guests watch. Mushrooms were a delicacy even in ancient times. Martial wishes Caecilianus death referring to Claudius, who, according to ancient historians, was murdered with poisoned mushrooms. Dinners are also the subject of the following poem, albeit from a completely different perspective:

You never invite anybody, Cotta,
unless you have bathed with him;
only the baths give you a guest.
I used to wonder why you had never asked me to dinner.
Now I know that you didn’t like me in the nude.

(Mart. 1.23)

Cotta is a voyeur who searches the baths for dinner guests based on which men's appearance pleases him. Such satirical characters were usually fictional in Martial's poems, but the poems reflect real phenomena and characters of Roman everyday life such as drunkards, adulterers, legacy-hunters, and parvenus. Sexual perversions were also a common theme for Martial, as in this poem:

Lesbia, when you turn your tricks, you don’t hide them;

the doors are always open and unguarded.
A spectator gives you more pleasure than a lover 

and you have no use for joys concealed.
A prostitute, on the other hand,
drives witnesses away with curtain and bolt
and rarely does a chink gape in Summemmius’ brothel.
Learn modesty from Chione or Ias, if from nobody else.
Even dirty whores take cover in tombs.
Do you find my strictures too harsh?
I am not telling you not to get fucked,
Lesbia, only not to get caught.

(Mart. 1.34)

The character of Lesbia in this poem is an exhibitionist who wants everyone to witness her sexual activities. The name Lesbia appears in many of Martial's erotic poems and is probably a reference to Martial's poetic precursor Catullus, who in his poems relates his unhappy love for a woman named Lesbia.

Martial also knew how to write on more serious topics such as the good life and friendship. In this poem, he praises his friend Decianus:

If one there be to be numbered with such rare friends

as old-time faith and ancient fame know of,

one steeped in the arts of Cecropian and Latin Minerva,

a good man, truly without guile;

if one there be that guards the right, admires virtue,

and asks nothing from the gods with secret lips;

if one there be that rests on the strength of a noble heart:

hang me if his name be not Decianus.

(Mart. 1.39)

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Translations of Martial's poems:

Martial. Epigrams, Volume I: Spectacles, Books 1-5. Edited and translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Loeb Classical Library 94. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.