'We Had Better Re-define Major'

R.L. Barth has been translating Martial’s epigrams for more than forty years. I think I first encountered his versions in the anthology Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands (eds. J.P. Sullivan and Peter Whigham, University of California Press, 1987), which included VI.60: “Rome praises, loves, and sings my little verses; They’re in all hands, all pockets, and all purses. Look there! One blushes, pales, gasps, longs, and curses. That’s what I want! I’m happy with my verses.” Contubernales Books has now published Pleasing the Diners: Translations from the Latin of Martial, which includes Bob’s versions of 141 of the 1,561 originals, with parallel Latin texts. In the new book, “longs” in the third line of the epigram above is replaced by “yawns,” a stronger word. Readers of Bob’s own poems, most of which are rooted in his experience as a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, and written in the epigrammatic form, will recognize his kinship with the first-century Roman from…