Jovan Cvejetičanin (University of Virginia)
Martial’s debt to mime runs deep, as he himself says and many scholars acknowledge (Neger 2012, Fitzgerald 2007, Sullivan 1991). Alberto Canobbio (2001) claims that mime played an important role in the “obscene turn” with which Martial reconfigured epigram as a realistic genre. This paper will argue that a major element of the projected realism of Martial’s poetry is its juxtaposition to contemporary mime performances, which would have resonated with his urban readers and situated his epigrams within a Roman context. His programmatic statements often invoke the presence of mime and present its audience as ideal readers of the Epigrams. The Floralia festival, with its mimes that feature female nudity, is the basis of the analogy between epigram and theater. Martial’s poetics of spectacle focuses on showing that his poetry is not malicious (Garthwaite 2001). By studying how Martial constructs his imperial and female readers, I hope to show that the experience of watching mime informs their understanding of epigram in a positive way, since they realize that neither is harmful to Roman morals.
In Book 1, the analogy between epigram and mime is established already in the preface, in which the spectators of mimes performed at the Floralia are equated with the readers of epigram (epigrammata illis scribuntur, qui solent spectare Florales). Just as nudity in the festival is permitted because of ritual license, obscenity in epigram is permitted due to generic conventions. Another one of Martial’s goals in Book 1 is to construct Domitian as an emperor who is fond of epigram by inverting Ovid’s image of Augustus, whose enjoyment of mime is hypocrisy (Rimell 2008, Lorenz 2002). Martial goes beyond the literary tradition by incorporating contemporary mime performers into his argumentation. He urges the emperor to read epigrams with the same attitude with which he would watch Thymele and Latinus (illa fronte precor carmina nostra legas). By characterizing Latinus as a derisor, Martial points to the emperor’s tolerance of theatrical mockery, which he expects to be extended to epigram.
In Book 3, Martial emphasizes familiarity with mime when constructing his ideal female reader. Obscene epigrams in this book are concentrated towards the end and marked by an internal proem. In this proem, Martial mockingly warns women not to read on, teasing that they would now start reading in earnest (lassa libellum ponebas…nunc studiosa leges). Later in the book, he revisits a female reader wandering through the obscene part of the book. She is allowed to keep reading under the condition that she is familiar with Panniculus and Latinus, since the epigrams are no worse than mimes (non sunt haec mimis improbiora). While the Floralia is not explicitly present in this epigram, the festival is synonymous with mime in Martial, and its programmatic importance makes it easy to recall in this context. The spatial context of the Floralia also encouraged the mixing of sexes and social strata (Pasco-Pranger 2019, Favro 1991), which is something Martial points to through the validation of his female readers’ experience of watching mimes.