Martial: Liber Spectaculorum. With introduction, translation and
commentary. Edited by KATHLEEN M. COLEMAN. Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006. Pp. lxxxvi + 322. Cloth, $125.00. ISBN
0–19–814481–4.
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Previously published CJ Online reviews are at
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Print Version: CJ 103.3 (2008): 340–2
Modern commentaries on authors such as Ovid and Martial, who until quite
recently were more avoided than studied in the halls of traditional
philology, cannot be greeted enthusiastically enough. Not many, however,
are compiled with the diligence C. has devoted to the Liber Spectaculorum;
the only English commentary written lately and comparable in quality is, to
my knowledge, Roy Gibson’s work on Ars Amatoria 3 (Cambridge, 2003). One
contributing factor could be that both Gibson and C. chose not to confine
themselves, as is increasingly the rule, to scholarship penned in English,
but take in the entire international spectrum. Anyone out to tell C. that
she has missed important literature will find significant omissions only in
the peripheral areas where specialists dwell. Considering the “scope and
characteristics” of the Liber Spectaculorum (pp. xxxiii–xlv), she looks,
for example, at Rufinus’ epigrams (which, like the Liber, may have been
part of a “thematically unified collection,” p. xxxiii), but does not
mention Regina Höschele’s book on Rufinus. [n. 1] Existing scholarship on
what is perhaps the most difficult of Martial’s poetic libri is discussed
in a comprehensive “General Introduction” (pp. xix–lxxxvi); the most
important literature on single epigrams, moreover, are named in the
commentary. Each text and translation is followed there by a customized
introduction which ends with relevant references; hotly debated questions
are discussed as they arise.
The surviving Liber Spectaculorum—the manuscripts show no title, but C.
argues convincingly in favor of this one (pp. xxv–xxviii)—is probably only
an epitome, which makes it difficult to appraise as a book. We may
reasonably assume that excerptors kept to the original order of the poems.
This was common practice, as we can see in Phaedrus’ Liber Fabularum. (The
two genres being related, C.’s study might have benefited from a
comparison). Like Martial’s greater collection of epigrams, the Liber
Spectaculorum includes poems that are closely linked by their content, and
in some cases it seems likely that a sequence found in the epitome also
formed part of the original book. C. puts forward good reasons for
supposing that—to name one example—Poems 1–3 (her numbering is that of
Shackleton Bailey) form an introductory sequence (pp. xxxvi, 37). She could
have substantiated her findings by asking here and in other sequences
within the Liber whether Martial is using, as he often does elsewhere, the
principle of verbal concatenatio (illustrated most recently by Robert
Maltby ). Thus the word astra of 1.7 is picked up in 2.1, as are 1.7
amphitheatro in 2.5 amphitheatri, and 2.4 in urbe in 3.2; people (2.12
populi; 3.1 gens; 3.12 populorum) link 2 to 3, as does the final word in
each (2.12 domini; 3.12 pater). This omission is unfortunate, since C.
usually shows a lively interest in Martial’s use of words. She offers a
number of excellent observations on style, and these, together with her
notes on textual criticism, usage, meter and intertextuality, will more
than satisfy the needs of her more philologically orientated readers.
It goes without saying that the Liber, one of our few sources on games in
the Flavian amphitheater, calls for a commentary packed with the relevant
history, especially as Martial himself, writing for an audience familiar
with “the technical and ideological scope” of the arena, was every bit as
elliptical as the genre conventionally demanded (pp. xliv–xlv). C. is at
pains to fill in the gaps but, unlike some of her predecessors, resists the
temptation to turn her Realien section (pp. lxv–lxxii) into a full-blown
treatise. Everything she says (e.g., about the hypogeum) is actually
crucial for our understanding of the poems. Her judicious handling of all
matters historical is also evident when she discusses the identity of the
texts’ unspecified Flavian Caesar (pp. xlv–lxiv). The communis opinio being
that the Liber was written to mark the inauguration of the amphitheater,
Titus is generally the favorite. Following Sven Lorenz, C. shows that
Domitian is just as likely to have been the Caesar. However, she plumps in
Poems 9 and 26 for Domitian because of the rhinoceros mentioned there (and
shown on a coin dating from 83–5 CE); she then turns back to Peter White’s
libellus theory and hypothesizes about chartae minores published under both
emperors and eventually combined to form one liber. But in the end she does
come round to the view that “Martial’s ‘Caesar’ starts to look almost like
an idealized abstraction, above identification”: as such he makes a good
“epigrammatic you” to the Liber’s speaker, who himself never says “I” and
thus appears as “part of a collective audience witnessing Caesar’s marvels”
(p. lxxxii).
When it comes to Martial’s persona, C. goes too far, seeing a clear
distinction between the Liber’s speaker and that of the twelve-book
collection. True, the latter does visibly find the world he caricatures
amusing, while the former is full of praise and wonderment. But must that
mean that he does not want to amuse as well? Our own abhorrence of arena
brutality blinds us to the possibility that Martial’s contemporaries may
have thought it entertaining, even witty to see a bear not listening
enraptured to “Orpheus,” but mauling him to death (sp. 24). Why? Because
for the Romans “Orpheus” in the arena was obviously a criminal deserving of
punishment. C. simply avoids this thorny theme—one of the very few sins of
omission in her commentary. Another is her failure to provide an Index
locorum; the iambic Catullus appears nowhere in the Index nominum et rerum,
so that the reader’s attention is only drawn on p. 155 to the nice allusion
in 19.1 to Catullus 101.1. But since anyone really interested in Roman
poetry will have to read this first-class commentary from cover to cover,
no index at all would have been fine too.
NIKLAS HOLZBERG
University of Munich
[n. 1] Verrückt nach Frauen: Der Epigrammatiker Rufin (Tübingen, 2006); at
any rate, press times allowed only a narrow window for C. to have
considered Höschele's work.
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