Martial and Latin Epigram

Harvard FAS

This course will study selected epigrams by Martial, whose life spanned the reigns of at least ten emperors from Claudius to Trajan. Special attention will be paid to the origin and definition of "epigram"; the epigrammatic tradition inherited from Hellenistic Greece; metre and diction; literary patronage in Imperial Rome; authorial persona; epigram as social critique; the concept of "publication" in antiquity; the structure and arrangement of a book-length collection of epigrams; the…