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About The Book
Description
Author
<p>&ldquo;My project started with a &lsquo;dissenting&rsquo; translation of Martial&rsquo;s <em>Book of the Spectacles</em>. I use that term not because I&rsquo;m adapting or appropriating the text but because the <em>Spectacles</em> sequence has a history of being dismissed as sub-par early work commemorating the opening of the Colosseum. Current scholars including Kathleen Coleman who&rsquo;s made the sequence somewhat of a specialty increasingly seem to be challenging that dismissive view. Coleman also considers the dating purely speculative. I&rsquo;m not attempting to join a technical and arcane historical debate. But strictly from a literary standpoint her views on the dating free a poetic translator to exploit the same irony double-entendre and polyvalence that imbues the greater Martial canon. The <em>Spectacles</em>&rsquo; extended theme &ndash; the animal fights blood sports and execution entertainments of the Arena &ndash; is as far as I know unique in Classical poetry. Even the over-the-top adulation of the un-named games-presiding &lsquo;Caesar&rsquo; can take on its own cynical undertone when read in the context of Martial&rsquo;s &lsquo;hare and lion&rsquo; relationship with the self-styled Dominus et Deus Emperor Domitian.&rdquo; (Art Beck)</p>