Trustees of Boston University

Some Epigrams of MartialAuthor(s): Peter PorterSource: Arion, Vol. 8, No. 4, Translation Issue (Winter, 1969), pp. 520-524Published by: Trustees of Boston UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163226 .

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SOME EPIGRAMS OF MARTIAL

Peter Porter

1.71

Here's a toast to the ladies :

six tiltings of the jug to Laevia, seven for Justina, five for Lycas, four Lyde and three for Ida: one for each letter of our mistress' names?

too bad the bitches never come, so five up-endings more

of Falernian?that'll be enough to call the girl who never fails,

warm-tailed and celerious sleep I

2.52

Dasius, chucker-out

at the Turkish Baths, is a shrewd assessor:

when he saw big-titted

Spatale corning he decided to charge her entry for three

persons. What did she do?

Paid with pride of course.

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Peter Porter 521

1.71

Laevia sex cyathis, septem Iustina bibatur,

quinqu? Lycas, Lyde quattuor, Ida tribus. omnis ab infuso numeretur amica Falerno,

et quia nulla venit, tu mihi, Somne, veni.

2.52

Novit loturos Dasius numerare: poposcit mammosam Spatalen pro tribus: illa d?dit.

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522 SOME EPIGRAMS OF MARTIAL

2.59

Small and select, the restaurant called The Mouthful Overlooks Caesar's tomb and you may view

The sacred domes with garlic on your breath. Wine and dine there if you've got the pull,

See and be seen, for even as you chew The God Augustus welcomes you to death.

2.59

(alternate version)

Small and select, the restaurant called The Morsel Overlooks Caesar's tomb, and you may view The sacred domes with garlic on your breath: Sharks fin undercut or from the dorsal

Is the house's specialty and as you chew The God Augustus welcomes you to death.

7.17

How bucolic a biblioth?que

where the charmed reader looks out over raspberry

canes on the encroaching city! If in these rural stacks there's room

among the heavyweight authors for the sort of poem which delights sophisticated Thalia ( say a shelf between the national epics and the medical encyclopaedias ), then receive these seven modest

books, with the author's latest emendations (these alone

will enable your heirs to sell them to a North African University)? take them, friendly space of

truth and learning, and guard them well, for by these inconsequential gifts the world will come to honour the country library of Julius Martialis, man

of taste and friend to genius.

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Peter Porter 523

2.59

Mica vocor: quid sim cernis, cenatio parva: ex me Caesareum prospicis ecce tholum.

frange toros, pete vina, rosas cape, tinguere nardo:

ipse iubet mortis te meminisse deus.

7.17

Ruris bibliotheca delicati, vicinam videt unde lector urbem, inter carmina sanctiora si quis lascivae fuerit locus Thaliae, hos nido licet inseras vel imo,

septem quos tibi misimus libellos auctoris c?lamo sui notatos: haec illis pretium f acit litura. at tu mu?ere delicata parvo quae cantaberis orbe nota toto,

pignus pectoris hoc mei tuere, luli bibiotheca Martialis.

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524 SOME EPIGRAMS OF MARTIAL

12.85

Orthodox to the last, Fabullus,

you make a moral metaphor to play up your virility: The flavour of sodomy comes out

the other end as halitosis. This has a heterodox side, what do you say to another aphorism for your medical table talk? The uxorious man doesn't get his fishy smell from licking postage stamps.

12.85

Pediconibus os olere dicis. hoc si, sicut ais, Fabulle, verum est,

quid tu credis olere cunnilingis?

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