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Selected Epigrams
Finalist:Literary Award -Translation (2015)
This lively translation accurately captures the wit and uncensored bawdiness of the epigrams of Martial, who satirized Roman society, both high and low, in the first century CE. His pithy little poems amuse, but also offer vivid insight into the world of patrons and clients, doctors and lawyers, prostitutes, slaves, and social climbers in ancient Rome. The selections cover nearly a third of Martial's 1,500 or so epigrams, augmented by an introduction by historian Marc Kleijwegt and informative notes on literary allusion and wordplay by translator Susan McLean.
Finalist, Literary Translation Award, PEN Center USA
Book Details
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publish Date: Dec 3rd, 2014
- Pages: 256
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 7.90in - 5.00in - 0.60in - 0.55lb
- EAN: 9780299301743
- Categories: • Ancient & Classical
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About the Author
Marcus Valerius Martialis, or Martial (ca. 40-104 CE), made his way to Rome from Iberia (now Spain) and won renown across the Empire for his humorous epigrams. Susan McLean is a professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University. She won the 2014 Donald Justice Poetry Prize for a collection of her own poems, The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and in 2009 her collection The Best Disguise won the Richard Wilbur Award.
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Praise for this book
"A neatly chosen, crisply rhymed selection of [Martial's] most pungent sallies; perfect bedtime reading."--Books of the Year, Times Literary Supplement
"The Roman satirist Martial hasn't had a good deal hitherto from his translators. An older generation suppressed his hilarious obscenities, while today it's his racism, sexism, class prejudice, and callousness towards the ugly, deformed, or slaves (no poet was ever less P.C. than Martial) that cause offense. Now Susan McLean, a witty and metrically skillful poet in her own right, has seen her opportunity in Martial. Her rhymed quatrains are as sharp and pointed as Martial's own elegiacs; the Roman's insults and obscenities are preserved with style and relish. Martial has at last found a translator who not only possesses all the disparate skills needed for the job, but has clearly enjoyed herself hugely while doing it."--Peter Green, translator of Juvenal's Satires
"But you know who I recently learned makes me laugh as hard as anyone in print? Martial, the ancient Roman poet and satirist--an actual 2,000-year-old man and still funny! . . . I had never read Martial until I picked up his Selected Epigrams in a new edition with delightfully snarky translations by Susan McLean, a poet herself. . . . [Martial] would have been great on Twitter, and rappers might well appreciate his flair for the corrosive put-down."--New York Times Book Review