Three Brief Poems
by Luxorius (circa A.D. 500s)
translated from Latin by Joseph S. Salemi
11. A Phalaecean poem against a lecher, because he wept that when drunk he could not perform the act of coition.
You swive too often, and too frequently—
You don’t let up, unless you’re very drunk.
You’re crying now, because you’re totally
Clobbered by too much wine to screw your punk.
I ask you this, Lucinus—skip coition.
Either drink incessantly, and weep,
Or maybe make this sundering decision:
Don’t screw at all—get poison, and drink deep.
25. Against a drunkard who eats nothing, but only drinks.
By yourself you drink more wine than all
The other men, and yet you always are
Unsatisfied, and every hour you call
For refilled cups. Your thoughts are very far
From bread, the gift that comes from mother Ceres—
For you all food’s a useless thing that wearies.
Nerfa, you’re no man—the whole world knows
You’re just a deep wide cup that overflows.
43. Against a man who loved ugly females.
Myrro is hot for ugly, misshaped chicks—
If he should see a pretty face, he’s cowed.
Your judgment, Myrro, really needs a fix.
Pontic girls don’t please you, but a crowd
Of Garamantic ladies are your picks.
But now I know why your tastes are low-class:
Those are the only girls who’ll give you ass.
A Brief Introduction
Luxorius (we have only that single name for him, and no more) was a Roman poet living in the North African city Carthage, after the fall of the Roman Empire. He seems to have been active in the period between about A.D. 490 and 550.
At that time the area was under the control of barbarian Vandalic kings, who had sailed from Spain to settle in Tunisia and Libya, and who later established a major kingdom along the North African littoral.
Luxorius writes in good Latin (he was highly influenced by the satiric poetry of Catullus and Martial), but good Latin at that time was more of a schoolbook accomplishment than a living tongue. By the year 500 Latin was morphing into Proto-Romance among the mostly illiterate populace. But a well-educated Roman like Luxorius was able to compose in standard classical Latin, and probably conversed in it among his learned colleagues and friends. In the streets one would probably have heard a mélange of Vulgar Latin, koine Greek, Punic, Vandalic German, and Berber dialects.
Luxorius was a satirist, in the harsh and biting style of Martial. His poems are short, and to the point. Each poem goes after a target, and skewers it either with invective or deeply sarcastic comment. You won’t find any sentiment, or hearts-and-flowers niceties in his work. The basic structure of these epigrammatic poems is to describe a person or a situation in the bulk of the poem, and then use the last or last two lines to deliver a savage “sting” or “slap” with an insulting or contemptuous remark.
An excellent edition of Luxorius was published in 1961 by Morris Rosenblum at Columbia University Press. It includes the original Latin texts of all poems, along with a brief prose translation of each one. There is also detailed commentary on the wider context of Vandalic North Africa, and the style and language of Luxorius. The numbers of these three poems are taken from Rosenblum’s edition.
Latin Original
11. Phalaecium in moechum quod debriatus plorabat cum coitum implere non
posset.
Saepius futuis nimisque semper,
Nec parcis, nisi forte debriatus
Effundis lacrimas quod esse moechus
Multo non valeas mero subactus.
Plura ne futuas, peto, Lucine,
Aut semper bibe taediumque plange,
Aut, numquam ut futuas, venena sume.
25. In ebriosum nihil comedentem sed solum bibentem.
Dum bibis solus pateras quot omnes,
Saepe nec totis satiaris horis
Et tibi munus Cereris resordet
Ac nihil curas nisi ferre Bacchum,
Nerfa, iam te non hominem vocabo,
Sed nimis plenam et patulam lagonam.
43. In eum qui foedas amabat.
Diligit informes et foedas Myrro puellas.
Quas aliter pulcro viderit ore, timet.
Iudicium hoc quale est oculorum, Myrro, fatere,
Ut tibi non placeat Pontica, sed Garamas.
Iam tamen agnosco cur tales quaeris amicas.
Pulcra tibi numquam, se dare foeda potest.
Translation Notes
The Latin explanatory prose titles of these poems are probably additions to the text, placed before each poem by an ancient copyist. After A.D. 500, classical Latin was being replaced in common speech by Vulgar Latin and Proto-Romance, and poems in the older language may have needed a short, simple introduction to allow readers to get the gist of what was being said.
Lucinus, Nerfa, and Myrro: the satiric target of these three poems. They might represent real persons, but might just as well have been fictive characters created as a type, as was often the case in satire.
Phalaecean poem: a poem in the hendecasyllabic line favored by Catullus and Martial in their satiric pieces. Poems 11 and 25 are both Phalaecean.
mother Ceres: the Roman goddess of fertility and vegetation, known by the Greeks as “Demeter” (earth-mother). Ceres was closely associated with the growing of grain such as wheat or spelt, and her name came to be used as a synonym for bread, just as the god’s name “Bacchus” stood for wine.
Pontic girls: Greek women from the southern shore of the Black Sea in Pontus (Asia Minor) had a reputation for great beauty. This poem (43) is in elegiac couplets.
Garamantic ladies: women from a Saharan Berber-Tuareg tribe in Roman North Africa. They were barbarians, and not considered attractive by Graeco-Roman standards of female beauty.
Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide. He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.
Although two of these poems are rather lewd, they reflect lives of those who have been screwed. The first was one who could not stay erect, since alcohol made him a derelict. I noted the archaic use of “swive” and how the drinking affected his drive. In the second, how can a man not eat and just drink wine while sitting in a seat? The lesson of the third is one of choice. Only the worst would react to his voice. Your knowledge of the classics rare indeed is sprinkled with some truths that we should heed.
Added: I love how you elucidate and your translation is first-rate.
Thank you for your commentary. Your compliments have made me merry.
These are all incisive characterizations of the persons being addressed. For sure, the final lines are all savagely insulting! I think my favorite line is, “You’re just a deep wide cup that overflows.”
When I was studying Martial, the Jesuits used to say “The last line always stings, like a scorpion.”
It boggles the mind that human nature hasn’t changed a whit in 2500 years.
Human nature never changes. What changes is the historical context in which it reveals itself.
Doctor, these translations illustrate the humanity, the biting wit, the beauty and the timelessness of classical poetry. What better place than here at the SCP to showcase the many types of poets and their artistically woven works!
Thanks, Mike. Classical texts show us our humanity in all of its varied aspects, including some that are not so nice. I’m glad the SCP doesn’t shrink from that sort of openness.
These are really entertaining poems, Joe — translated with care and intelligence — which are interesting for combining some rather satiric observations with some much-needed advice about some decidedly inelegant subject matter. In other words, the tone of the three pieces is not only educated but supremely bitchy in a way that Rome pioneered, excelled at and then bequeathed to Western civilization. The pointed comments each speaker makes to these three easily recognizable types are as fresh today as in Luxorius’ own time. Rome knew how to do satire. Is there any meaningful difference at all between Juvenal or Suetonius and the National Enquirer? I shudder to think what Romans would have done with an invention like Facebook.
I’m reminded of the famous quote by Alice Roosevelt Longworth (Teddy’s socialite daughter), who said “If you can’t say something nice about someone come sit next to me.” And she said that over 100 years ago.
Your notes are invaluable. What surprises me about these poems is not that they are in Latin but that they come at a point in history where one would have thought that scandalous topics would have been considered obsolete – particularly with the double-gut punch of the strong Christianization of the former Empire and the hegemony of Vandal tribes in North Africa where the poet lived. Neither culture — post-Empire Christian nor Vandal — sounds like a promising milieu for bitchy gossip. And yet here we are 1500 years later. That neither Christianization nor Vandal conquest discouraged Luxorius from his witty poems shows that obsolescence was never on the table. Such scandalous subject matter has always existed, no matter how dour the history books make the ancient world sound. And nothing — not even faith or societal pressure or the conquest of an Empire — can stamp it out.
And then there is the fact that the poems were written in a Latin which already would have been archaic and, therefore – as I interpret it – somewhat self-important. I’m guessing that these poems are therefore somewhat condescending to its hapless subjects much the way a 19th Century Englishman might have skewered a social adversary by scandal-mongering darkly in perfect French – a language only the cognoscenti would know. Whether or not this is a valid way of looking at Luxorius I do not know – but it something I would want to rule out. Did he write them as an intentional throwback to an earlier, more ordered – if pagan — age? The way, say, we might use an elevated and archaic form like an ode to write a mocking tribute to Greta Thunberg?
There is a savage thread that runs through the history of poetry in which this gossipy and critical voice zeroes in on many unpleasant types. Dante had his judgmental side concerning key figures in Florentine history, and Rochester skewered society in general. This vein runs up through Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker but can certainly be found in the songs of Gilbert & Sullivan or even Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.” Gossip and character skewering can certainly take place in prose but they are somehow more concentrated — and therefore more deadly — when rhyme is involved.
Thank you as always, Joe, for showing us that human beings remain much as they have always been. And that art is not – and should not be — confined to only that which some think of as elevated and noble. In my view, presenting the full range of human experience is itself elevated and noble.
Brian, thank you for this detailed commentary, which raises many interesting points. The Romans did think of themselves as pioneers in this kind of material (they claimed that the genre of satire was “totally ours, and of our making”). In fact the Greeks had produced satiric poems too, but the Romans seemed to relish and excel at the style, and thought that they had brought it to a high level of achievement. Catullus, Martial, and Juvenal were very popular writers in their day, and even Horace produced a book of Satires. It was part of the Roman character to be tough, hard-bitten, and sometimes cruel — you don’t build a far-flung empire by being mild-mannered panty-waists.
The Vandals — one rough pack of Teutons — wouldn’t have cared about literary works in what was already a learned and increasingly archaic language. As for Christianity, there might have been objections from private individuals about some of the stuff in Luxorius, but the really devout Christians of that time often were the types who would have sworn off any reading of texts by pagan authors (learned men like St. Augustine and other theologians were the exception to this). The large majority of ordinary Christians would have not cared, or were mostly illiterate anyway. Besides, in North Africa in those days Christianity was divided between the Vandalic German rulers (who were Arians) and the populace (who were mostly Catholics), so the real disputes would have been doctrinal. And in a place that was swarming with dozens of different races and tribes and sects and languages, who the hell was going to tell anybody that they couldn’t write sexy and off-color epigrams? As you say, such scandalous subject matter has always existed.
You’re absolutely right about how bitchy gossip and anger and vengefulness and sexuality have always been a part of literature, including great literature. One of the major masterpieces of medieval French literature is the “Roman de la Rose,” which is really an extended allegory about breaking a hymen. And it was written at the height of Christian influence in Europe.
I’ll never forget a line from the Renaissance scholar Daniel Heinsius, who produced an edition of the poet Horace. When it came to annotating some really bawdy passages from the poet’s Satires, Heinsius excused himself and wrote this in the notes: “Adeo obscoena sunt ista, ut salva verecundia explicari non possunt.” That means “These things are so obscene that, for the sake of modesty, they cannot be explained.” (It was about a blowjob). In other words, the guy wouldn’t even tell the scholarly readers of his edition what Horace meant. But that was from the time when Christian prudishness and governmental control had made it dangerous to be too free with sexual statements. That kind of official puritanism and prudishness is still strong in some quarters of the United States today.
Was Luxorius writing to be a throwback to more pagan times? Not consciously, in my opinion. He simply liked good Latin, and he was a fan of Martial and Catullus. We have no idea what religion he followed (if any). I think we might compare him to those English writers of the late 19th century who deliberately wrote in an 18th-century style (Austin Dobson, Andrew Lang, and even Robert Louis Stevenson with his “Treasure Island,” written in pure 18th-century idiom). If I’m right it means that Luxorius was more nostalgic than anything else, and wished to associate himself with earlier and more “classic” writers.
Thank you again for you very perceptive and appreciative comments.
Joe, I just love these translations and take great delight in their sheer audacity. Each one is quick witted, gleefully cruel, and ends with a sting – the theatrical timing makes the closing insults brutal, surprising, and highly amusing. I am in awe of the way you have made the wit feel so modern and accessible. I am relishing every unembarrassed, perfectly turned and timed insult. As a lover and writer of satire, I could learn an awful lot from Luxorius. Joe, thank you for bringing these remarkable works to our attention. They are a pleasure and a privilege to read.
Susan, I’m glad that you like these translations. Luxorius is not well known, not even among Classics scholars. His work is late, and certainly imitative, and therefore many students of the ancient world ignore him as post-classical, and also pre-medieval. He doesn’t fit in neatly to any of the cut-and-dried categories that so many academics think important.
Thank you for introducing me to Luxorius and his delightful satires. They are indeed reminiscent of Catullus, but with the bite of Juvenal. You capture both the tone and meaning of the originals well, and I applaud your decision to set them in rhyme. I think the satiric tone and subjects demand it — and indeed in the original of 11 we get a slight hint of an end-rhyme.
As a side-note, standards of beauty don’t change much. That corner of the Black Sea is famous for its beautiful women — look at how the Circassians capitalized on their women’s beauty for centuries, selling them into sex slavery to the sultans.
Adam, I’m glad the translations have pleased you. Luxorius deserves more attention, even though his surviving corpus of work is small.
Yes, it was in the cards that rhyme would become a major characteristic of poetry in the Romance languages. Even in late Latin we see it happening.
And there is no question at all that Circassian women are off-the-charts knockouts.
I don’t know whether or not I should I should be pissed-off at you for showing that my own attempts at bawdy verse are old hat. It’s hard to come up with anything new, and even harder to find venues that are willing to publish it. Believe me, Joe, I have stuff sitting in my files that would curl your hair.
Kip, don’t leave them there! Get them out to an audience. Too many “conservative” and “Christian” websites are clogged with pietistic drivel and hearts-and-flowers posturing. The only antidote is bawdiness.
Joseph
Thank you for these translations and your excellent explanatory notes. This poet Luxorius is new to me. I am interested in the period now called “Late Antiquity” and the gradual change of classical Latin into medieval Latin and proto-Romance languages. I’ve never had a solid academic grounding in the complexity of this time period.
This poet is active about 60-100 years after St. Augustine died, just as Genseric, the Arian Christian Vandal king was conquering North Africa in 430. I believe Augustine wrote in classical “academic” Latin that he had perfected during his time in Milan. Of course, he must have spoken his native Berber tongue. (Note: The Arians, Trinitarian Catholics and Donatists were all at each others’ throats. And we think our own time is turbulent!) In any event, there must be a fascinating Latin language-shift in the time between Augustine and Luxorius.
These poems are satiric, and you’ve chosen a perfect English form to capture their mocking tone. I checked the prose translations (metaphrases) provided by Rosenblum in 1961 (available on line). Your poems are so much livelier! The effect reminds me of our own stand-up “insult” comedians. Short and punchy and simply outrageous. But everybody (even prim-and-proper ladies) belly-laughs!
Note that because of the compression of the Latin, you “add” English lines. I know well this issue of “compression” from my own amateur attempts at translation of classical Latin poems. These poems are originally 6 Latin lines but you render #11 and #25 (written in hendecasyllables) in 8 English lines and #43 (written in elegiac couplets) in 7 English lines.
I applaud your perfect iambic pentameter, which is a good choice to render the original Latin meters into English. Your clever rhyme schemes enhance the comedic effect:
11: a/b/a/b/c/d/c/d;
25: a/b/a/b/c/c/d/d;
43: a/b/a/b/a/c/c.
The last 2 lines of each poem are an epigrammatic one-two punch directed at the victim of the satire. These lines summarize and intensify the insults and mischief-making of the prior 5 or 6 lines.
I press, you press, we all press for Salemi’s outrageous Luxorius!
Sincerely, Mary Jane
Thank you for your detailed and highly intelligent commentary. I can indeed translate more of Luxorius, but like Martial and Catullus some of his material is VERY raw, and might be offensive to our in-house pietists.
I too am fascinated by the shift from Classical Latin to Vulgar Latin and to Proto-Romance. We have lots of evidence for the first two, but precious little for the third. I find that if you take a simple sentence in a Romance language, and then trace every single word in it to its original Latin form, you wind up with something that must have been very much like Proto-Romance — but you can’t claim that it is Proto-Romance without putting the asterisk of “unattested” before it, as we do with all Proto-Indo-European reconstructions.
I chose to use rhyme because in English anything comical, satiric, and short almost always is done in rhyme. When I translated Martial I was using free verse, so I could pick whatever words I thought best. (I have translated some short savage satires and poems of attack from a Renaissance Latinist, and there I did not use rhyme because they were more abusive and violent than funny.) I used iambic pentameter here because it is our default meter in English, and if you use iambic fives without rhyme they turn into marmoreal blank verse.
Augustine tried to make his Latin as polished as he could, and he did love Cicero. But when he spoke Latin in the streets of Carthage he certainly must have used a simplified Vulgar Latin idiom, probably peppered with a lot of foreign words.
It’s practically inevitable when we translate from Latin to English that we need to use more words. A highly inflected language is always tighter and more concise. If you are into late Latin poetry, check out Claudian and Prudentius.