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Did Martial Have A Jewish Slave? (7.35)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Dwora Gilula
Dwora Gilula
Affiliation:
Hebrew University Jerusalem
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Extract

Mart. 11.75 is a variation on the same theme and may serve as a commentary on 7.35. As it was not common to wear clothing in the bath, a Roman lady not wanting mentulam videre (11.75.4) should not have gone to a public bath, where all the nude males, including Martial and his slave (7.35.3–4), were definitely not spadones (11.75.6; cf. 7.35.6).

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , December 1987 , pp. 532 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1987

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References

1 Howell, P., A Commentary on Book One of the Epigrams of Martial (London, 1980), 148;Google Scholar on voyeurism at the baths, see also Mart. 1.96, and Howell′s Commentary, 307–8; on Mart. 11.75 Kay, cf. N. M., Martial Book XI: A Commentary (London, 1986).Google Scholar

2 Stern, M., Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (Jerusalem, 1974–1984), i.525. Stern prints Lindsay′s text and his app. crit.Google Scholar

3 Solin, H., ‘Juden und Syrer in westlichen Teil der romischen Welt’, ANRW II, 29, 2 (1983), 659.Google Scholar

4 T has vv. 1–6; nuda has been preferred by Martial′s editors since Schneidewin (in his edition of 1842) distinguished the three families of Martial′s manuscripts, Reeve, cf. M. D. ‘Martial’, in Texts and Transmission, ed. Reynolds, L. D. (Oxford, 1983), 241 ff.;Google ScholarScriverius, who based his texl on MSS mainly from the C family, has nulla, Friedlaender′s, cf. L. edition (Leipzig, 1886), i. 121; on contamination amongst the ABC families cf. Reeve, loc. cit. (above).Google Scholar

5 This reading is preferred also by Adams, J. N., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982), 73, who, however, correctly takes cutisto mean prepuce.Google Scholar

6 The nulla sub cutereading, which initially came into being to do away with the prepuce, has generated a different (and quite preposterous) interpretation of cutis:a leather covering of the kind used by Laecania to cover her slave (alula,v. 1), cf., e.g.,Google ScholarRichard, P., Les Epigrammes de Martial (Paris, 1931), i.367 and 489, and Ker′s translation in the Loeb series. This interpretation, however, does not solve the basic difficulty of the passage. Both Martial and his slave still have a Iudaeum pondus, which now is ‘under no leather covering’, and not ‘under no prepuce’.Google Scholar

7 Adams, who equates ponderawith testicles, op. cit. 13, and cf. 212, nevertheless understands Iudaeum pondusto be a description of a male who is bene mentulatus;cf. also p. 13.Google Scholar

8 For Jews′ notoriety in this respect, cf. Tac. Hist.5.2 proiectissima ad libidinem gens.Cf. the commentary of Stern, op. cit. ii.40ff.; Adams, op. cit. 13, who also cites Mart. 11.94, in which a lustful verpuspoeta,who competes with Martial sexually, is attacked. The Romans treated Jews as a foreign ethnic group, one among many, and ascribed to them a stereotypic quality frequently ascribed to an ethnic group considered ‘ primitive’, i.e. not effeminated by culture, cf., e.g., Mart. 7.3. It is not, however, a characteristic trait which appears in stereotypic descriptions of Jews in later literature; cf. also Barrett, D. S., LCM 9.3 (1984), 44.Google Scholar