Mea Roma

<p>“My project started with a ‘dissenting’ translation of Martial’s <em>Book of the Spectacles</em>. I use that term not because I’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’s made the sequence somewhat of a specialty increasingly seem to be challenging that dismissive view. Coleman also considers the dating purely speculative. I’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>’ extended theme – the animal fights blood sports and execution entertainments of the Arena – is as far as I know unique in Classical poetry. Even the over-the-top adulation of the un-named games-presiding ‘Caesar’ can take on its own cynical undertone when read in the context of Martial’s ‘hare and lion’ relationship with the self-styled Dominus et Deus Emperor Domitian.” (Art Beck)</p>