Martial song

What concern of yours is the abyss of a woman, Gallus Baeticus?

This tongue of yours is fit to lick the middle of men. Why was your dick cut off with a Samian sherd, if a cunt was so pleasing to you, Baeticus?

Your head should be emasculated: for although you're a Gallus in your crotch, nevertheless you cheat the sacred rites of Cybele: you're a man with your mouth.

The joke in this poem that Baeticus is still a man because he interacts with female bodies, even though the act of cunnilingus itself is considered degrading for a man to perform. The poet offers another edit for Baeticus' body: that he remove the offending part—his head—because he is not using it correctly, according to his gendered role as a Gallus. The term Gallus brings with it a sense of intentionality: Baeticus has chosen to be emasculated, or perhaps has even emasculated himself. Death is the only solution for the man who has chosen to voluntarily remove his phallic power, for the man who still tries to use his non-masculine body for penetrating. Removal of phallic (generative) power from a body negates self-control and the personhood of the body. The type of sexual violence representative of altering the epigrammatic text that we shall see in chapter 2 will not usually apply to the text represented by the female body (although in certain cases, specifically prior to publication, the text is figured as a vulnerable body, e.g., a woman or puer, who are figured as having less control over their bodies than men).

Since Martial's poetry has taken much from Ovid's poetic corpus, we consider here an example of sexual violence as it represents the author and his work. The body as a gendered, editable text (especially representing the author) in tension with genre is on display in Ovid's

Metamorphoses in the story of Procne and Philomela (Ov. Met. 6.412–674), which has, among other things, been interpreted as the poet responding to censure and criticism of his text. This story puts on display the fundamental vulnerability of the female body. Philomela's safety should by all social conventions be assured while she visits her sister's family. She is, however, put into peril, not during her journey, but when she arrives by her sister's husband, a man who is

effectively a family member. The poet or the text may be represented as a similar body-type with this specific vulnerability. This showcases for the reader the potential social danger toward the text and the poet's reputation. The reader may choose to safeguard the text for the poet or to abuse the text. There is also a stated anxiety within the text of punishment against the poet by a ruler or other authority. The poet attempts to mitigate this by describing his life and poetry in completely opposite terms. When a poet experiences punishment as a result of a social mistake that comes from his text, he is being punished physically and silenced metaphorically, which is represented by the text in a strictly physical way: the poet Ovid made a mistake in his text (carmen et error, Ov. Trist. 2.1.207), suffers the consequence of being exiled, and has written himself into his text in the figure of Philomela, who is physically punished (the removal of her tongue) for threatening to make a public accusation against Tereus for raping her.

Talibus ira feri postquam commota tyranni

nec minor hac metus est, causa stimulatus utraque, quo fuit accinctus, vagina liberat ensem arreptamque coma fixis post terga lacertis vincla pati cogit; iugulum Philomela parabat spemque suae mortis viso conceperat ense: 550

ille indignantem et nomen patris usque vocantem luctantemque loqui conprensam forcipe linguam abstulit ense fero. radix micat ultima linguae, ipsa iacet terraeque tremens inmurmurat atrae, utque salire solet mutilatae cauda colubrae, 555

palpitat et moriens dominae vestigia quaerit. hoc quoque post facinus (vix ausim credere) fertur 560

saepe sua lacerum repetisse libidine corpus. (Ov. Met. 6.549–562)

Then, by these words the rage of the brutal tyrant was incited and no less than this, his fear, goaded on by both reasons, he draws from its sheath the sword with which he was equipped and he grabs her by her hair and forces her, arms behind her back, to endure chains; Philomela was offering her throat and conceived a hope for her own death when she saw the sword:

The tongue, indignant and continuously calling the name of her father and struggling to speak, grasped by pincers that man removed with his brutal blade.

The remaining part of the root of the tongue quivers, trembling it lies on the dark earth and murmurs, just like the tail of a maimed serpent is accustomed to spasm, the dying part pulses and seeks the footsteps of its mistress. After this deed it is also said—I scarcely dare to believe it—that he returned often to the mangled body with his own desire.

This description of added violence immediately follows Philomela's declaration to make a public accusation of rape against Tereus. Tereus responds with rage and fear to Philomela's threat with more physical violence against her body: he removes her tongue so that she will not be able to speak against him. Her disembodied tongue is endowed with human characteristics as it moves, makes sounds, and seeks to be reunited with Phlomela (6.558–560); Philomela, on the other hand, is reduced to a "mangled body" (lacerum… corpus, 6.562) having lost the power of speech. This is a metaphorical emasculation because the tongue represents speech, which is a masculine power particularly in Rome. The tongue is one of the most powerful organs a person can possess, but women misuse it. We see a similar event played out in Martial's epigrams with the power of speech being equated to the power of the mentula particularly with its associations with obscenity and obscene speech. Ovid figures the tongue as the organ of poetry, but Martial figures the penis as the organ of poetry. If the text is expurgated or bowdlerized, the poet is emasculated. When Tereus removes Philomela's tongue, he is rewriting (bowdlerizing) her body, making it into something that he prefers. Tereus tries to rewrite the narrative of his physical violence against Philomela by rewriting her body (i.e., cutting out her tongue), but she uses other means (weaving, a women's craft) in order to tell her story and the truth of the events. Both poets

reject—just as Philomela does—this fashioning by another of one's own self and one's own narrative. Ovid writes a character that tells her narrative any way that she is able: first, with her words, and when that ability is taken from, with her weaving. Martial fashions his own textual world and populates it with people needing correction, like his text (1.3). The poet acts as an educator, a praeceptor omnium. The poet is the ultimate authority of textual alteration, and he may alter other bodies and texts, but may not be altered by others.

The story of Procne and Philomela demonstrates the power of the voice represented by the tongue as well as the power of the material object on which a narrative is represented.

Philomela's rape, exile, and mutilation is analogous to Ovid's exile. Tereus attempts to remove every piece of power that she has, but nevertheless she persisted telling her story by any means available to her (weaving). So too Ovid uses his poetry in an attempt to mitigate his punishment.

We shall see that Martial makes reference to Ovid's exile and uses key themes of mutilation in Book 3 of his poetry to make a joke on censorship, Romaness, and obscenity (chapter 3).

In the surviving examples of inscribed bullets from the glandes Perusinae, text-objectbody intersect among many examples of obscenely inscribed bullets. Two examples of these bullets will suffice.

FVLVIAE / <L>ANDICAM / PET<O> / (image of a thunderbolt) (=CIL XI 6721.5)

I seek the clitoris of Fulvia.

PET<O> / OCTAVIA / CVLVM (=CIL XI 6721.7)

I seek the asshole of Octavian.

The glandes are relevant to this discussion because they are texts that are phallically aggressive (in a metaphorical sense) and physically threatening in a literal sense. Both of these texts present themselves as a penetrator with the first-person verb (pet<o>) and the obscene description of the body part being sexually engaged (landicam, "clitoris" and culum, "asshole"). These two bullets come from opposing sides of the siege; one figuratively attacks Fulvia, the wife of Mark Antony, and the other insults Octavian, represented as effeminate with a feminine form of his name. The physicality of these object-texts is felt more than most texts that are contained in a roll or codex.

Bodily interaction with the text as an object is also felt in Catullus, for example: si qui forte mearum ineptiarum / lectores eritis manusque vestras / non horrebitis admovere nobis, … ("if by chance you who will be readers of my trifles and will not shudder to put your hands on us, …" Catull. 14b). This poem is considered fragmentary, but the nobis at the end indicates a conflating of text with author. When the lectores hold the book, they hold the author himself and interact with him. The poet-text-reader interaction becomes a sensual experience. The poet cautions against conflating himself with the text two poems later and threatens another type of bodily interaction in poem 16, demonstrating that while the poems are trifles, the poet is not one to be trifled with.

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,

Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi, qui me ex versiculis meis putastis, quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum. nam castum esse decet pium poetam 5 ipsum, versiculos nihil necessest; qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem, si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici et quod pruriat incitare possunt, non dico pueris, sed his pilosis, 10 qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos. vos, quod milia multa basiorum legistis, male me marem putatis?

pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo. (Catull. 16)

I will buttfuck and facefuck you, Aurelius the bottom and Furius the twink, you who think me excessively immodest from my little verses, which are small and soft.

For it's fitting for a pious poet to be chaste himself, but it's not at all necessary for his little verses; which precisely have wit and charm, if they are soft and immodest and if they are able to excite that which itches,

I'm not talking about boys, but about those hairy men, who can't move their inflexible loins.

You think that I'm a bad man because you read about my many thousands of kisses?

I'll buttfuck and facefuck you.

The mistake of Aurelius and Furius is to equate the poet with his text too much: a phenomenon that later poets (including Martial) will generally encourage—though not in a monolithic way— because the description of later epigram changes. In this poem, the poet becomes aggressively

masculine whereas he allows for his text to be soft and pleasant. This description of the text conforms to the elegiac idea that the text stands in for the beloved (puella, puer), who ought to be tender, an idea that does not find a home in the later epigrammatists, namely Martial, the Carmina Priapea, and Ausonius. The text as a body becomes solidly masculinized after Catullus, with the emergence of the CP and Martial's epigrams. Martial's epigrams will be pleasing as well, but in the way that a husband's mentula ("dick") pleases his wife (1.35): a soft dick will not cut it. Catullus, conversely, describes his poems as "soft" (mollis) and contrasts this with his own life, which he calls modest and pious (nam castum esse decet pium poetam / ipsum, 16.5–6). In epigrammatic poetry, the text as a body loses its softness, and it becomes a stand-in for the poet or subject of the text: a phallically penetrative man. Martial himself does not use the language of mollitia ("softness") to describe his text. The text is still playful (lasciva, Mart. 1.4.8). The text representing a phallic man can be gleaned from Catullus' poetry when it represents the male body or the text as a defender of the poet or as a surrogate of the poet threatening the suitors of his beloved. In poem 37, the relationship between pictorial representation of the body and the text as a body coalesce.

Salax taberna vosque contubernales, a pilleatis nona fratribus pila, solis putatis esse mentulas vobis, solis licere, quidquid est puellarum,

confutuere et putare ceteros hircos? 5

an, continenter quod sedetis insulsi centum an ducenti, non putatis ausurum me una ducentos irrumare sessores? atqui putate: namque totius vobis

frontem tabernae sopionibus scribam. 10

puella nam mi, quae meo sinu fugit, amata tantum quantum amabitur nulla, pro qua mihi sunt magna bella pugnata, consedit istic. hanc boni beatique

omnes amatis, et quidem, quod indignum est, omnes pusilli et semitarii moechi; tu praeter omnes une de capillatis, cuniculosae Celtiberiae fili,

Egnati, opaca quem bonum facit barba 15

et dens Hibera defricatus urina. 20 (Catull. 37)

Lusty tavern and you frequenters,

nine doors down from the pillars of the brothers with hats, you think that dicks are yours alone and that only you are allowed to fuck whichever of the girls and to think the rest of us are goats?

Or because you sit together awkwardly in a group of one or two hundred, you don't think that I would dare to facefuck two hundred of you sitters one-at-a-time?

But think it if you want:

for I will completely cover the front of the tavern with dicks. For, my girl, who fled my lap,

one loved as much as no girl will ever be loved, because of her I fought great battles, she lays up in that shithole. All you good and fortunate men love her, and indeed, what's really harsh, all the petty and wandering side-pieces love her; you beyond all one among the long-haired men,

son of rabbit-infested Celtiberia, Egnatius, whom a thick beard and a tooth brushed with Spanish piss makes into a good man.

Catullus has lost his girl (puella… mi, 37.11) to the brothel and other men pay to enjoy her company (perhaps an analogy for his text). Much like poem 16, the poet denounces his rivals/critics as men who would submit to his sexual aggression (non putatis ausurum / me una

ducentos irrumare sessores? 37.7–8). The poet's boast of being able to penetrate orally 200 people sequentially (una, 37.8) makes his phallic aggression hyperbolic. Perhaps he means for his drawings of dicks or writings about dicks to assist him in the next lines (namque totius vobis / frontem tabernae sopionibus scribam, 37.9–10). With the phrase "scribble dicks all over the tavern," by using a term that also appears in graffiti, the poet could be referring to insulting poetry that calls out his rivals by name using graphic illustrations, words, or perhaps a