Social Inferiority and Poetic Inferiority—Martial’s Revenge in his Epigrams

Abstract

In Epigrams 5.13, Martial addresses his self-portrait to a certain Callistratus, a freed slave of Greek origin who shamelessly flaunts his wealth. The initial stark contrast with the poet’s poverty in economic terms, however, is gradually overcome through a demonstration of the superiority of poetic fame over material possessions. This chapter charts how this poem negotiates a string of interrelated questions regarding social status, ethnic background, and centre versus periphery dynamics, and traces how Martial marshals his popular success with Rome’s urban readership to confront his own disadvantaged position within socio-economic, ethnic, and generic hierarchies so as to fashion a positive poetic identity for himself. Martial’s riposte to Callistratus, involving all of these inferiorities, takes its full significance in the defence of the epigram, a genre traditionally considered as a ‘weaker voice’ in and of itself.