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I realize that if I continue past this page that I might possibly, perhaps, and maybe will find something that might offend the sensibilities of maidenly aunts, dainty women, and delicate men. Therefore if I am offended and so show my own lack of sophistication, tolerance, and belief in the right of people to read and learn what they will, then that's just tough tiddy.
Some translators of Martial try to capture the spirit of his epigrams in the English rather than a literal rendering. For this you need a rather bouncy meter - meter in Latin was by length of syllable, not accent - and to show that it is not high-falootin' poetry, you can make the lines rhyme, although the author of CooperToons is still a bit perplexed that some poetry magazines warn they don't accept rhymed poetry - meaning they wouldn't accept "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe or "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. But then, Michelangelo's David or his Pietà wouldn't win the Turner Prize, either.
But now at least we have now set the guidelines for translating Martial's - ah - "poetry" we can proceed. Let's try this one:
Ventris onus misero, nec te pudet, excipis auro.
Basse, bibis vitro. Carius ergo cacas.
which in one possible translation is:
The load of the stomach you capture in wretched gold (i. e., a golden toilet), and you are not ashamed.
Bassus, you drink from glass. Therefore you shit more expensively.
So we'll try our own non-high falootin' translation as:
Pleased and gorged, gargantuan gut,
On a golden throne you sit.
But, Bassus, but you only drink from glass.
So it costs you more to shit!
Martial and Bassus
The verb, "cacare", by the way, even in scholarly writings is almost always translated into English as "shit". So we do the same here. The Latin, though, has found its way into many Romance languages, including Spanish, Italian, French, and Romanian, where - according to CooperToons research and discussions with informants - the word does not carry quite the vulgar force of the Anglo Saxon. Instead it might better be translated more like "poop" - slightly off and a bit childish, but not entirely taboo. After all, the Yule log burned in the fireplace on Christmas in a Catalan home is called the "caga tió", and asking your family to gather round the shit-log might dampen the Christmas spirit.
Despite some ambiguous references in his epigrams, historians tend to believe Martial never married. He probably 1) couldn't afford it and 2) may not have been the best choice when a girl was interested in masculine companionship. This you can understand if you read what he wrote for one of the ladies.
Os et labra tibi lingit, Manneia, catellus:
Non miror, merdas si libet esse cani.
which literally means:
Manneia, a little dog licks the mouth and lips for you.
I don't wonder, if it is pleasing to be shit for a dog.
which in the spirit of the poem is
Your puppy licks your mouth and lips
And never wants to quit.
Manneia, I don't wonder why.
All dogs eat their shit.
Martial sometimes really seemed to be stretching for topics. For instance once he wrote:
Rem peragit nullam Sertorius inchoat omnes.
Hunc ego, cum futuit, non puto perficere.
which in (mostly) English is
Everything he begins, Sertorius completes nothing.
I don't believe he finishes when he futuits.
The word we didn't translate is from the Latin futuere, a word transmitted through the ages into various European languages. Today historians translate this with a particularly common English word which shares the initial letter with the Latin. But perhaps a slightly milder term is warranted, and we'll recite the poem as:
Whenever Sertorius start a thing, he runs into some bumps.
I don't think the man can finish, even when he humps.
Perhaps it is best not to illustrate this poem.
We mentioned Martial wrote a lot of epigrams about Roman public bathing and once more we can draw actual insight into the institution from what he wrote. It has sometimes been pointed out that the word in Latin nudus does not always mean totally nude in our sense. It can mean being dressed in undergarments or otherwise skimpy clothing. So, we wonder, just how nude were the people in the baths, particularly since men and women did at time share the same facilities?
Again, Martial gives us a pretty unambiguous answer.
Audieris in quo, Flacce, balneo plausum,
Maronis illic esse mentulam scito.
which is literally translated as:
If you will hear applause in a certain bath, Flaccus,
It was by having known the mentula of Maron.
In the older dictionaries from the 19th century, mentula is defined as membrum virile - that is, they translate Latin with Latin. Another dictionary of similar vintage just said "See Appendix" which only had nothing but more Latin. Then when you move to the mid-20th century popular Latin dictionaries for students, the word isn't even there. Big help.
It really wasn't until the advent of the Fount of All Knowledge (i. e., the Internet), that the word was regularly translated into what must be called rather coarse English. As is evident by now, the CooperToons website abhors vulgarity of any kind, but in the spirit of scholarship is obliged to state that typical translations for mentula are common English words of the hoi polloi such as "cock" and "dick". Once more we must emphasize that the Latin probably carried a somewhat milder force and should perhaps be rendered in a folksier manner with words like pecker, pud, jemson, horn or tallywhacker. But for sheer poetry, you can't beat James Michie's translation in his selection of Martial's epigrams:
If from the baths you hear a round of applause,
The giant prick of Maron is surely the cause.
Perhaps it is best not to illustrate this poem either. So we can finish up our essay if you click here.
References
Epigrams of Martial, James Michie, Translator, Modern Library Classics, 2002 (Original Edition, Hart Davis, 1973). This brief quote used here is for review and commentary.