• DOI:10.1017/S0066477400001386
• Corpus ID: 140932135

Bassa's Borborysms: on Martial and Catullus

@article{Watson2003BassasBO,
  title={Bassa's Borborysms: on Martial and Catullus},
  author={Lindsay C. Watson},
  journal={Antichthon},
  year={2003},
  volume={37},
  pages={1 - 12}
}

• Lindsay C. Watson
• Published 1 November 2003
• History
• Antichthon

Martial on a number of occasions declares himself the literary inheritor of Catullus, and repeatedly evinces that indebtedness by unmistakable echoes and adaptations of his Republican predecessor. But the Catullan legacy in Martial has not fared well at the hands of scholars. Many of the passages pertinent to the topic are industriously assembled in the secondary literature. But that literature is (it must be said) seriously deficient. Ferguson's 1963 article ‘Catullus and Martial’ is lightweight and vitiated by value judgements as to the respective worth of the two poets. Despite a disclaimer of bias, Ferguson is plainly of a mind with Muretus, who said that Martial was to Catullus as a buffoon is to a gentleman, and with Andrea Navagero, who each year burned a copy of Martial in an assertion of Catullus' superiority. A similar criticism can be levelled at Offermann's ‘Uno tibi sim minor Catullo’, which, descriptive rather than analytical, devotes a great deal of space to castigating Martial for sacrificing Catullus' intense emotionalism and to devaluing the Flavian poet in consequence; Offermann was unwilling to recognise that impassioned sincerity more Catulliano was not part of Martial's epigrammatic brief. J.K. Newman's recent treatment of Catullus and Martial, while helpful in some respects, makes much of the ‘carnivalesque’ or Saturnalian spirit which allegedly infuses the work of both poets, a claim which is valid for Martial, for the most part,8 but questionable for Catullus.