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Despite his enduring popularity, Martial has recently suffered from serious critical neglect. The present work is the first edition of selections from Martial to be published for decades, and includes a fully representative selection of the oeuvre of the poet, who has often been criticised, unfairly, the authors argue, for obscenity and flattery of the Emperor Domitian. The epigrams included in the selection are organised under various heads, e.g. Martial and poetry, sexual mores, satirical pieces. A very full introduction deals with such topics as the prejudices and predilections of his audience which conditioned Martial's choice of subject matter, Martial's language, the structure and style of the epigrams, the epigrammatic tradition and Martial's creative engagement with it. The detailed commentary is suitable for use with undergraduates and is distinguished by its focus on social history as well as literary interpretation.
Lush Diodorus sets the lads on fire, But now another has him in his net - Timarion, the boy with wanton eyes . . . Meleager, AP 12.109 Encompassing four thousand short poems and more, the ramshackle classic we call the Greek Anthology gathers up a millennium of snapshots from ancient daily life. Its influence echoes not merely in the classic tradition of the English epigram (Pope, Dryden) but in Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, Virgina Woolf, T. S. Eliot, H.D., and the poets of the First World War. Its variety is almost infinite. Victorious armies, ruined cities, and Olympic champions share space with lovers' quarrels and laments for the untimely dead - but also with jokes and riddles, art appreciation, potted biographies of authors, and scenes from country life and the workplace. This selection of more than 600 epigrams in verse is the first major translation from the Greek Anthology in nearly a century. Each of the Anthology's books of epigrams is represented here, in manuscript order, and with extensive notes on the history and myth that lie behind them.
This book is the first full-scale commentary on the epigrams ascribed to Theocritus since Gow's commented edition of 1950 and the first to methodically approach epigram as a literary genre attempting to bridge the gap between epigraphy and philological studies. The introductory chapters trace the history of the various epigrammatic genres and typologies within which the Theocritean epigrams can be inserted, focusing on both the literary and epigraphic conventions followed and respected by the epigrammatists. The commentary discusses in detail the text (recently established by Gallavotti, with some slight variations), with an emphasis on the dual contribution of literary and epigraphic evidence for a correct understanding of the questions related to content and the linguistic problems presented by the poems. The final chapters deal with the question of the authenticity of the epigrams and try to reconstruct how and when they were collected in the 'book' transmitted by the bucolic manuscripts and then entered the anthology.
This new, parallel-text prose translation of a generous selection of Martial's witty and satiric epigrams pulls no punches and matches the boldness of the originals. They bring Imperial Rome vividly to life. The edition establishes Martial's originality as a literary author and includes a full introduction and notes.
Decimus Magnus Ausonius of Bordeaux, whose life spanned the greater part of the fourth century AD, was one of the most significant literary and political figures of his age. After an academic career in his native Gaul he was appointed tutor to the future emperor Gratian, a position through which he achieved great power for himself and his family. He was made consul in 379 and later lived to enjoy a ripe old age as the grand old man of Latin letters. In this modern edition of Ausonius' short poems, collected together under the general heading of epigrams, N.M. Kay gives a line-by-line commentary dealing with points of literary, linguistic, historical and other interest. The epigrams throw light on many aspects of Ausonius' life, career and attitudes as well as on fourth-century Latin literature, and will thus be of interest to students of the fourth-century western world, of Latin literature, and of the epigram form in particular. This edition includes both Latin text and translation.
Provides an introduction as to what epigram means and why it matters. Short content excellent for undergraduates and researchers alike.
This edition provides an English translation of and detailed commentary on the second book of epigrams published by the Latin poet Marcus Valerius Martialis. The past ten years have seen a resurgence of interest in Martial's writings. But contemporary readers are in particular need of assistance when approaching these epigrams, and until now there has been no modern commentary dedicated to Book II. This new commentary carefully illuminates the allusions to people, places, things, and cultural practices of late first-century Rome that pervade Martial's poetry. It analyzes the epigrammatist's poems as literary creations, treating such topics as the structure of the individual poems and of the book as a whole, and the influence of earlier texts on Martial's language and themes.
A Prosopography to Martial’s Epigrams is the first dictionary of all the characters and personal names found in the work of Marcus Valerius Martialis, containing nearly 1,000 comprehensive entries. Each of them compiles and analyses all the relevant information regarding the characters themselves, as well as the literary implications of their presence in Martial’s poems. Unlike other works of this kind, the book encompasses not only real people, whose positive existence is beyond doubt, but also fictional characters invented by the poet or inherited from the cultural and literary tradition. Its entries provide the passages of the epigrams where the respective characters appear; the general category to which they belong; the full name (in the case of historical characters); onomastic information, especially about frequency, meaning, and etymology; other literary or epigraphical sources; a prosopographical sketch; a discussion of relevant manuscript variants; and a bibliography. Much attention is paid to the literary portrayal of each character and the poetic usages of their names. This reference work is a much needed tool and is intended as a stimulus for further research.