Patricia LARASH
Martial's Lectrix Studiosa: What Men Can Learn by Watching Women
Read in Book Three of the Epigrams
This paper will look at how Martial uses the figure
of a specific category of reader--the female reader--to think
about the role of the general reader and the activity of reading
in Flavian Rome. For Martial, the published text is
the primary act of communication, rather than a transcript of an
oral performance. Recent
scholarship has focused on his new (to elite Latin literary
culture) way of thinking about the book (Citroni, Arachnion
1: 1995; Roman, JRS 2001). This, in turn, leads to a new way of
thinking about the anonymous general reader.
What does a poet now gain by representing his readers as
readers?
Martial has inherited from Ovid's exile poetry (an
important intertext for the Epigrams--Pitcher in Grewing,
ed., 1998, with references) the topos of the female reader
who can be corrupted by reading lascivious poetry. The female reader allows poets to
talk about who should read their poetry and who actually does. Through a cycle of epigrams in book
3 (3.68, 3.69, and 3.86), Martial addresses an anonymous
matrona who has been reading the text of Book 3. In the first epigram (3.68), she
represents, at first glance, prudishness, but Martial debunks this
myth when he has her disobey his mock-warning not to read further.
She becomes a figure for any reader who responds libidinally,
not aesthetically, to a text. By
reading in private, a reader can indulge his or her involuntary
reactions to a text without being seen by any other readers.
The following epigram (3.69) is supposed to represent the
first of the epigrams in the ìobsceneî second half of
book 3 that the matrona goes on to read, but in fact does
more to talk about obscenity (lascivia) than to represent
it. In the last epigram of
the cycle (3.86), Martial pretends to be able to
ìseeî the matrona when she reads the obscene
section of Book 3. This gives all of his readers the
sense that they can know something about one another and that they
are engaged in the same private activity.
Martial uses the female reader and her desire to
read obscene poetry as a way to talk about censorship and
reception in an apolitical context.
Sex is a ìforbiddenî topic for a matrona
to read about. Once the matrona reads the
forbidden epigrams, Martial negotiates her reception of them by
saying that his epigrams are no worse than the mime actors the
matrona may have watched. Ever since Ovid, a poet needs to
defend lascivious poetry against charges that it will corrupt
certain types of readers (especially respectable women).
The topic of obscenity and its reception is a
ìsafeî forbidden topic that serves as an alternative
to the real, unspoken forbidden topic under Domitian--political
criticism. The Romans of the
Principate lived in a climate in which they could not talk about
certain things, and, furthermore, could not even talk about the
fact of censorship (Bartsch, Actors in the Audience, 1995). The figure of the female reader
indulging in the libertas of obscenity gives elite readers
of Martial a safe, apolitical sphere into which to transfer and
play with their anxieties about censorship and repression.
Abstracts
Index