Denial, by Martial

I don’t know what Chloe did to deserve any of this, but I love that such a petty grievance has survived almost 2,000 years (and this is not the only epigram he wrote about her!). Martial’s works were largely published during his life, so perhaps this was in fact a real person.* He became known as the “original insult comic” for his epigrams which took aim at people or observations around his life in Rome.

In this translation I’ve tried to retain some of the style of the Latin. Chloe’s name is reserved for the second-to-last word in Latin, while the majority of the epigram is linked by the word ‘and’ (‘et‘ and ‘-que‘), which I have varied for a more interesting translation into English.

Latin poetry follows a strict pattern of long and short syllables, rather than stressed and unstressed in English, giving a poem its rhythm. This epigram is written in “Phalaecian hendecasyllables”, frequently used by the likes of Catullus and Martial – although we see it in Sappho and Anacreon’s poetry in Greek as early as the 7^th Century BCE! Again, I’ve tried to mimic the pattern of syllables in the English (except for the last line, which was too long to match with the others).

I picked the name Denial based on how I read this poem – after all, who writes something about someone they don’t care about? Epigrams don’t typically come down to us with names attached, so this poem is officially designated Book 3, Epigram 53.

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Featured Image: an inscription from Ostia Antica, Rome’s ancient port. This one was curious as it featured a name, Chryseros (see the bottom left corner), with a couple of Greek letters mixed in to spell the same – clearly Chryseros was not impressed with the Latin alphabet.

* This might be known by scholarship – I just haven’t looked into it!