If as a book I seem too long, my end
too far, to make me short, read just a few.
My short page often ends at a poem’s end,
so make me just as brief as pleases you.
Paula would marry me; I’m disinclined.
She’s old. If she were older, I’d change my mind.
I, Martial, am renowned for poetry
of eleven feet or syllables, acclaimed
for ample wit, without effrontery,
by tribes and nations—but why envy me?
The horse Andraemon is as widely famed.
Aper shot his wealthy wife—an arrow through her heart
during a game of archery. At gamesmanship, he’s smart.
Sextus, why relish writing what Claranus
and skilled Modestus barely comprehend?
Your books need not a reader, but Apollo.
Cinna outrivaled Vergil, you contend.
Let your verse earn such praise; let my creations
please scholars without needing explications.
You ask why I paint healthy lips
with white lead and my chin with goo
often when I go out, Philaenis?
I’m not fond of kissing you.
Happy Antonius Primus now has numbered
fifteen Olympiads of tranquil years.
He looks back on past days and years securely,
not dreading Lethe’s water as it nears.
No day that he recalls is grim or painful;
there’s none whose memory he would avoid.
A good man can expand his life: he lives
twice over whose past life can be enjoyed.
The senate on your birthday, Diodorus,
reclines as guests of yours; few knights are missed.
Your dole is lavish: thirty coins apiece.
Yet no one is aware that you exist.
The dish you used to send at the Saturnalia,
you sent your mistress; the green dinner gown
you gave her on the first of March was purchased
instead of buying me a toga. Now,
Sextilianus, you get girls for free:
you fuck them with the gifts you once gave me.
You lately sold a servant for twelve hundred
to dine well, Calliodorus, just one time.
But you did not dine well: the four-pound mullet
you bought as the meal’s showpiece was a crime.
One wants to shout, “That’s not a fish, you beast!
That’s no fish! That’s a man on whom you feast.”
You ask, Caedicianus, whom this picture,
adorned with roses and violets, portrays?
That’s Marcus Antonius Primus in midlife.
In this the old man views his younger face.
If only art could show his heart and spirit!
For loveliness, no painting could come near it.
You swear you were born when Brutus led us. Liar!
Lesbia, were you born in Numa’s day?
There, too, you lie: those who recount your eons
report Prometheus molded you from clay.
My Polla, I was always told,
saw a queer friend a lot
in private. Lupus, I broke in.
A faggot he was not.
You’ve buried seven wives now in your field.
Phileros, no one’s land can top that yield.
To visit, Quintus Ovidius, Caledonians,
green Tethys and Father Ocean, do you yield
the hills of Numa and Nomentan leisure,
parted in old age from your hearth and field?
You postpone joys, but Atropos keeps spinning,
and every hour’s added to your sum.
You will have shown your friend (who wouldn’t praise it?)
that keeping your word means more than life. But come
back to your Sabine home at last to dwell,
counting yourself among your friends as well.
If my small books say something smooth and sweet,
if a suave page sounds flattering, you deplore
such greasy fare; you’d rather gnaw a rib
when I serve loin of a Laurentian boar.
My flask’s not to your taste: drink Vatican
if vinegar delights your palate more.
Most genial Martial, these things are
the elements that make life blessed:
money inherited, not earned;
a fire year-round, a mind at rest,
productive land, no lawsuits, togas
rarely, friends of like degree,
a gentleman’s physique, sound health,
shrewd innocence, good company,
plain fare, nights carefree, yet not drunk;
a bed that’s decent, not austere;
sleep, to make darkness brief; desire
to be just what you are, no higher;
and death no cause for hope or fear.
Though you drink drafts of amethyst
and swill Opimian, dark and old,
you toast me in new Sabine wine.
“Would you prefer it served in gold?”
you ask me. Cotta, who would sup
leaden wine from a golden cup?
Numa saw Thelys the eunuch in formal dress
and called him a condemned adulteress.
I’m Scorpus, the glory of the roaring Circus,
Rome’s short-lived darling, cheered for a brief span,
then seized by jealous Fate at twenty-seven.
Counting my wins, she thought me an old man.
You cover your fine tables. Get a clue!
Olus, like that, I own fine tables, too.
If just one poem fills a page, you skip it.
The short ones please you, not the best. I serve
a lavish dinner culled from every market,
but you are only pleased with the hors d’oeuvre.
A finicky reader’s not for me; instead,
I want one who’s not full without some bread.
Here rests Erotion’s all-too-hurried shade,
dispatched in her sixth winter by Fate’s crime.
Make yearly offerings to her tiny ghost,
whoever rules this plot after my time.
So may your home and household last for years
with nothing but this stone to call for tears.
Polla, my queen, if you take up my books,
receive my jests without a frown of scorn.
Your bard, the glory of our Helicon,
who blew fierce war on his Pierian horn,
in bawdy verses didn’t blush to say,
“Cotta, if I’m not sodomized, why stay?”
Since you boast you’re a citizen of Corinth,
Charmenion, which no one can deny,
why call me “brother,” when I come from Tagus,
born of Iberians and Celts. Do I
look similar to you? You roam resplendent
with curled locks; I have stubborn Spanish hair.
You’re smooth from daily depilation; I
have shins and cheeks with bristles everywhere.
Your mouth lisps and your tongue is weak, but only
Silia’s voice is more robust than mine.
A dove is not more different from an eagle,
a shy gazelle from an unyielding lion.
So cease to call me “brother” so that I
don’t start to call you “sister” in reply.
Who, Theopompus, bid you be a cook?
Who was so proud, so heartless? Could one bear
to desecrate this face with kitchen soot
or let a greasy fire pollute this hair?
Whose hand can better hold wine-scoops and crystal,
or, mixing it, improve Falernian’s taste?
Let Jupiter make Ganymede his cook
if starlike pages thus can go to waste.
Rome, spare at last the tired congratulator,
the weary client. How long shall I call
among the escorts and the men in togas,
earning a hundred cents a day in all,
while Scorpus for one hour’s win takes home
fifteen full bags of new gold coin in gains?
I wouldn’t want my books to be rewarded—
for what are they worth?—with Apulian plains.
Not Hybla nor the grain-rich Nile attracts me,
nor the delightful grape that from the steep
summit of Setia’s slope views Pomptine marshes.
What do I want, you ask? I want to sleep.
Maximus, nothing Carus did was naughtier
than dying of fever. It, too, was unfair!
Harsh, heinous fever, if you’d just been milder!
He should have been saved—for his physician’s care.
Eros weeps when viewing murrine cups
or boys or tables made of citrus wood.
He groans that he can’t buy the whole Enclosure.
He’d take it home, poor fellow, if he could.
How many do like Eros, but dry-eyed!
Most ridicule his tears—and weep inside.
When two arrived one morning to fuck Phyllis,
each longed to take her naked first. To meet
their wish, she vowed she’d service both at once—
and did: one raised her tunic; one, her feet.
You wonder why Afer doesn’t go to bed?
You see who lies beside him. Enough said.
Why pluck your ancient cunt, Ligeia,
stirring up buried ash and bone?
Such daintiness suits girls, but you
no longer can be called a crone.
Trust me, it’s nice for Hector’s wife,
but for his mother it’s unfit.
You’re wrong to think you have a cunt
now that a cock’s unknown to it.
Ligeia, show some shame at least:
don’t pluck its beard when the lion’s deceased.
Almo owns only eunuchs, his cock is no use,
yet he gripes that Polla fails to reproduce.
No serpent of Numidia guards my orchard,
nor does Alcinous’ royal land serve me.
My farm’s Nomentan trees bear fruit in safety;
their leaden apples fear no thievery.
I therefore send these yellow fruits of autumn,
produced in mid-Subura recently.
Your spouse and lover returned your brat to you,
denying they fucked you, Galla. What did you do?
As a pyre was built with flammable papyrus,
the weeping wife bought myrrh and spice to strew.
When undertaker, bier, and grave were ready,
Numa named me his heir—and then pulled through.
You fool, why mix your verse with mine? A book
at odds with itself, poor man, does you no good.
Why try to herd your foxes with the lions
and make owls look like eagles? Even should
you have one foot as swift as Ladas, blockhead,
you can’t run if the other leg is wood.
How did Philinus, you inquire,
who never fucks, become a sire?
Ask Gaditanus, if you’d know it,
who never writes, though he’s a poet.