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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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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