Abstract
The way in which the Roman army, as a major factor contributing to relative mobility of individuals within the Roman Empire, may be thought of as a driver behind the diffusion and general dynamic of Roman poetry and song, has not sufficiently been explored. Similarly, regionalized approaches to poetry and song as a cultural practice, subject to local, ethnic, social, and cultural variation and change, have not yet been pursued in a research context in which Roman poetry has largely remained a domain of study in upper-class entertainment and intertextuality. Not only is the common approach at odds with a methodology that has long, and successfully, been adopted otherwise in historical and linguistic research: it also excludes the vast majority of surviving poems from the Roman world, the Carmina Latina Epigraphica, from consideration – a body of texts that provides us with information about a cultural practice that, subject to substantial regional variation, literary poets stylized and drove to its artistic extremes.
Highlights
Reflecting on the usefulness of popularity to a poet, when esteem alone is not enough to pay one’s bills, Martial writes: Non urbana mea tantum Pipleide gaudent otia nec uacuis auribus ista damus, sed meus in Geticis ad Martia signa pruinis a rigido teritur centurione liber, dicitur et nostros cantare Britannia uersus
The circulation of his works is attributed to the Roman military
That circulation is imagined to reach the very extremes of the Roman Empire,[3] from the ‘Getic frosts’ to – allegedly – Roman Britain, where Martial believed that his verses were recited.[4]
Summary
Reflecting on the usefulness of popularity to a poet, when esteem alone is not enough to pay one’s bills, Martial writes: Non urbana mea tantum Pipleide gaudent otia nec uacuis auribus ista damus, sed meus in Geticis ad Martia signa pruinis a rigido teritur centurione liber, dicitur et nostros cantare Britannia uersus.
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