Poetry under Pressure: The Impact of Imperial Regime Change on Martial, Book 10

Abstract

This dissertation examines the interaction between sociopolitical factors and authorial autonomy in the production of literature in classical antiquity. It does so through a study of the tenth book of epigrams composed by M. Valerius Martialis (Martial). While Martial has attracted increasing scholarly attention over the last few decades, his tenth book of epigrams remains understudied. Book 10 provides a fascinating case study because Martial openly declares that it is a revised and reissued work. The original edition, published near the end of Domitian’s regime in December 95 CE, is now lost to us; the edition that we have was published in 98 CE. The years intervening between the two collections saw an emperor assassinated and his memory sanctioned; the beginning and end of Nerva’s rule, all within sixteen months; and the accession of Trajan, who would remain outside of Rome for the first two years of his reign. It thus affords us a unique opportunity to consider how an author might adapt the content of a work initially intended to appeal to one audience – one emperor and the sociocultural elite – in order to make it acceptable to another. I begin by establishing the contextual framework necessary to understand discussion of Martial’s epigrams, and particularly Book 10 (Chapter 1). This introductory section also examines the nature of the publication and circulation of books in antiquity, the role of patronage in literary production in ancient Rome, and the various factors that may encourage or dissuade an author from composing work on a particular topic, a system which I call “guided speech production” or “soft censorship” (Chapter 2). I then turn to three “case study” chapters, each of which focuses on a motif that I have determined to be unusually over- or under- represented in Book 10 compared to Martial’s other Domitianic and Trajanic volumes. Chapter 3 examines imperial poems, or the ways in which Martial portrays an emperor; it asks whether he employs distinct content and diction when characterizing different rulers. Chapters 4 and 5 turn to less overtly political motifs to determine if these, too, are affected by regime change. Chapter 4 studies the epigrams in Book 10 about marriage, matronae, and morality, and Chapter 5 focuses on the poems in the volume that concern travel and the poet’s ability to overcome the challenge posed by geographic distance in order to maintain social connectivity with elite audiences in Rome. I argue that these case studies, taken together, demonstrate that Martial navigated imperial regime transition – and, importantly, the loss of a carefully cultivated relationship with Domitian – not by attempting to establish a relationship with Trajan, but by re-orienting his poetic project toward the cultivation of a broader network of non-imperial patrons.