{"id":11032,"date":"2012-08-03T09:50:02","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T13:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/?p=11032"},"modified":"2012-12-12T11:30:02","modified_gmt":"2012-12-12T15:30:02","slug":"a-fabulous-punishment-martial-de-spectaculis-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/2012\/08\/03\/a-fabulous-punishment-martial-de-spectaculis-7\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fabulous Punishment (Martial, De Spectaculis 7)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martial De Spectaculis 9<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The epigram writer Martial describes a mythological enactment in the arena, the execution of a slave which was staged to resemble a popular mime based on the story of a notorious bandit, Laureolus. He compares his fate of being exposed to a bear to that of the mythological hero Prometheus<\/a>, punished by Zeus. It comes from a set of poems meant to commemorate the inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheater<\/a>, that is, the Colosseum in Rome.<\/p>\n

Qualiter in Scythica religatus rupe Prometheus<\/p>\n

Adsiduam nimio pectore pavit avem,<\/p>\n

Nuda Caledonio sic viscera praebuit urso<\/p>\n

Non falsa pendens in cruce Laureolus.<\/p>\n

Vivebant laceri membris stillantibus artus 5<\/p>\n

Inque omni nusquam corpore corpus erat.<\/p>\n

Denique supplicium <meruit quo crimine tantum?><\/p>\n

Vel domini iugulum foderat ense nocens,<\/p>\n

Templa vel arcano demens spoliaverat auro,<\/p>\n

Subdiderat saevas vel tibi, Roma, faces. 10<\/p>\n

Vicerat antiquae sceleratus crimina famae,<\/p>\n

In quo, quae fuerat fabula, poena fuit.<\/p>\n

The text is that of Kathleen Coleman, M. Valerii Martialis Liber Spectaculorum<\/a><\/em> \u00a0(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 82. Line 7 is defective in the manuscripts, and the supplement printed here is due to Leonfranc Holford-Strevens.<\/p>\n

Here is my translation:<\/p>\n

Think of Prometheus, tied to his Scythian crag, feeding the tireless<\/p>\n

\u00a0bird of prey with his too abundant thorax.<\/p>\n

Just so \u2018Laureolus\u2019, hanging on no mock theatrical cross,<\/p>\n

\u00a0gave his naked guts to a Scottish bear.<\/p>\n

His mangled limbs lived on, dripping gore, until on his body<\/p>\n

there was no body left at all. So, what<\/p>\n

heinous crime merited such retribution?\u00a0Either the guilty<\/p>\n

man slit his master\u2019s throat with a sword,<\/p>\n

or in his madness robbed a temple of its hidden gold, or else<\/p>\n

he put a savage torch to you, dear Rome. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 10<\/p>\n

The criminal had outdone misdeeds of ancient story, but in his case<\/p>\n

\u00a0what was fiction became a punishment quite real.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
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Martial De Spectaculis 9 The epigram writer Martial describes a mythological enactment in the arena, the execution of a slave which was staged to resemble a popular mime based on the story of a notorious bandit, Laureolus. He compares his fate of being exposed to a bear to that of the mythological hero Prometheus, punished […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[725],"tags":[5527,5526,5525],"class_list":["post-11032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-poetry-podcast","tag-epigram","tag-executions","tag-martial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/latin-poetry-podcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}