Epigram 1.115: A Poetic Analysis

Love in the 21st century is, quite frankly, painful. Loving others has never been more challenging, with dating apps commodifying organic attraction and reducing humans to merely "yes or no" decisions. And, even worse, loving oneself is now an incessant uphill battle. Our world has turned into one in which beauty standards are broadcast by algorithms and readily accepted by impressionable young people, who are all too willing to sacrifice everything in order to conform to their paradigm. With mainstream beauty so confined, desiring outside it and retaining self-confidence despite not adhering to it is deemed incorrect and, at the very least, futile. Indeed, social media pages constantly push the supremacy of idealized whiteness; the obsession with smoothness and symmetry is concocting a world in which true love is swiftly perishing.

Yet, although 21st-century advances have without a doubt amplified that problem, the issue of unhealthy beauty standards dates back to Ancient Rome and even earlier. In fact, Martial's Epigram 1.115 serves as one of the first pieces of literature speaking directly out against the beauty standards of his day. Across just seven lines, Martial flips the expected script of Roman erotic idealism and, by doing so, exposes the reader to the ridiculousness of attempting to categorize beauty. This epigram, while inviting us into a private, scandalous moment of self-reflection, also stands as a snarky critique that forces us readers to challenge our society's definition of "beautiful." His words are needed now more than ever.

The Poem Itself

*The English translation is provided by A. S. Kline, Poetry in Translation's chief translator

Latin Text

Quaedam me cupit invide Procille

loto candidior puella cycno

argento nive lilio ligustro

sed quandam volo nocte nigriorem

formica pice graculo cicada.

Iam suspendia saeva cogitabas

si novi bene te Procille vives

English Translation

She desires me – Procillus, envy me! –

one whiter than a new-wet swan,

than privet, lilies, silver, snow:

but I desire one dark as night,

cicada, black ant, pitch, or crow.

You thought to hang yourself:

I know you well, Procillus, oh, you’ll live.

Part I: Theme & Voice

At its core, Epigram 1.115 is a critique of the disjunction between social correctness and personal desire-- how they should, but are not, one in the same. The speaker (Martial himself) is, to Roman society, an incredibly lucky man, for he is desired by a woman who encompasses every Roman poetic standard of beauty. She is white as snow, graceful as a swan, and docile (not unlike a certain fairytale princess), and the embodiment of elite, Venusian attraction. And yet, he confesses that he prefers someone her complete opposite; he yearns not for the perfect, polished woman but her darker and more authentic counterpart. This confession isn't merely an innocuous musing. Instead, it's a subversion of Roman social hierarchy, rejecting Roman literature's elevation of the soft, pale princess. Unlike them. Martial yearns for someone untouched by society, someone he can only think to describe with references to nature's blackest, least glamorous, but most tenacious creatures. This earthy, slightly uncomfortable imagery gives his love an unconstrained, animated feeling, sharply contrasted to the celestial metaphors adorning Roman society's woman of choice.

To enhance his message, Martial adopts a tone that is both defiant and intimate, addressing broader claims about beauty while directly writing to and taunting his friend, Procillus. In doing so, he makes his romantic desire an almost manifesto of poetic individualism, in which he urges all to refuse to succumb to expectation and instead follow their heart, to whomever it may lead. Rather than preach, Martial instead mocks his friend and, by extension, every reader who balks at the idea of desiring outside of accepted Roman standards. This tonal complexity reveals the dual voice Martial adopts: lover and writer. As a lover himself, he yearns to be romantic and confessional, but as a writer, he must also do his job of exposing society's flaws. Balancing both objectives,  Epigram 1.115 transcends its role as a love poem and instead becomes a rejection of performative desire, which, when all else is stripped away, contains a very simple message: love cannot and should not be confined.

Part II: Meter

Epigram 1.115 is composed in elegiac couplets (one line of hexameter followed by one line of pentameter), the standard meter of Martial's epigrams and Latin love poetry writ large. This meter is traditionally meant to lend dignity and emotional depth to romantic themes due to its strict, confining nature (the meter, in a sense, tames the romance and eroticism of the poetry). However, in Epigram 1.115, Martial flips this relationship on its head, using the tension between meter and content to amplify his humor and critique.

Indeed, Martial uses the juxtaposition between the smooth, flowing line of hexameter that invites gravitas and self-reflection and the shorter, sharper pentameter to mirror the poem itself. The lofty first half of the poem, which reads as pure praise of an ideal woman, complete with glowing imagery and sweet compliments, takes on the role of the hexameter. And the second half of the poem, which by line four has stunned the reader by its confession of love for a woman characterized by night-dark metaphors, serves as the pentameter--the storm that follows the calm. Each individual couplet is therefore a microcosm of the larger poem and its themes, reflecting the epigram's thematic inversion: just like the pentameter upends the hexameter, so too does desire upend expectation.

Part III: Rhetoric

Investigating Desire: Antithesis & Metaphor

At the heart of Martial's rhetorical strategy in Epigram 1.115 is antithesis: the sharp juxtaposition between a conventional beauty and the girl his heart truly desires. In order to contrast the two, he employs metaphors to signal their radical differences. Describing these women through color-based similes, Martial uses an almost ekphrastic technique. His language is tactile and visual, with the woman who loves him being "loto candidior puella cycno" (translated as "one whiter than a new-wet swan"). By describing her this way, he inextricably links this woman to the color white itself, making the differences between her and his love all the more apparent when the latter is linked to the absence of white: black. Indeed, she is "nocte nigriorem," or "as dark as night."

Additionally, Martial strengthens the antithesis by varying the intensity of his metaphors. When describing the "white" woman, he is almost humorous in his overkill, continuously piling on more and more praise excessively. His redundant repetition of visual whiteness, seen in his listing of "argento nive lilio ligustro" ("privet, lilies, silver, snow"), helps suggest that her beauty is so perfect and unrealistic that it borders on the artificial. However, when referring to the woman he loves, Martial prefers shadowed, natural similes that, although descriptive, are also realistic. His love reminds him of "the night" and the animals that operate within it; she is not transcending nature, but instead represents an integral characteristic of it: authenticity.

Subtle Backlash: Symmetry & Asyndeton

Although we previously discussed the sharp contrast Martial highlights in Epigram 1.115, he uses similar poetic structures when he writes of both women, serving to subtly collapse the expected hierarchy of value that society's standards create. For example, Martial uses successive similes to describe each woman: four for the "perfect" woman: "cygno argento nive (lilio ligustro)" ("privet, lilies, silver, snow"), and four for Martial's love: "formica pice graculo cicada" ("cicada, black ant, pitch, crow.)" By creating this balance, Martial brings the two women to the same level-- they both deserve the same number of characterizers-- and in doing so, rips the pedestal society gives to "perfect" women who meet their standards out from under them.

Importantly, when listing these four similes per woman, Martial invokes asyndeton: a lack of conjunctions (ie, et or vel; and or but). This choice helps to speed up the rhythm of the epigram, creating a quicker feel to the verse. The faster pace serves a drastically different purpose for the different women. For the "white", pristine, society-accepted woman, the brisk pace of her descriptors serves to undermine her status. Martial knows that society deems her beautiful and just wants to get through his mandatory praise. To the contrary, the quick succession of similes when referencing Martial's true, "darker" love reads as his adoration of her spilling out; he doesn't have time for conjunctions and must express his overwhelming desire for her in that exact moment.

Intimacy & Mockery: Apostrophe & Hyperbole

In Epigram 1.115, Martial repeatedly uses apostrophe when directly addressing his friend Procillus. In doing so, he draws the reader into his world and creates an intimate atmosphere, implicitly suggesting that discussions of romance should be contained to one's closest confidants. Yet, the presence of this dialogue within a published epigram makes it inherently performative-- this private conversation is commercialized for public entertainment. By creating this contradiction, Martial is subtly mocking how love itself has also been commercialized, with society's beauty standards defining who deserves to be desired. His argument is clear: if you yearn for intimacy, you must reject the public's doctrine of beauty.

Martial also uses apostrophe as coupled with hyperbole, most notably in his dramatic final lines: "Iam suspendia saeva cogitabas / si novi bene te Procille vives," which can be translated as "You thought to hang yourself:/ I know you well, Procillus, oh, you’ll live." With his mock-tragic tone, Martial makes it clear that he never believed that Procillus would genuinely threaten his life. Instead, he is parodying the thought that being rejected by someone "beautiful" in society's eyes is just as "saeva" ("savage") as war. Indeed, the threat of suicide is just a setup for Martial to leave his audience with one last witty line.

Part IV: Audience Reception

A Roman audience reading this epigram would likely be familiar with Martial's work (especially if they read the previous 114 epigrams) and, knowing his tendency for mocking critique, would laugh. But this laughter would be mixed with discomfort. Every elite reader would absolutely be familiar with and likely subscribe to cultural expectations around feminine beauty. Martial's blatant attack on the "perfect" woman is therefore also an attack on the elite's markers of femininity (fair skin, passivity, and refinement) and the lengths that many will go to find or become a woman like Epigram 1.115's first subject. Indeed, Martial's desire for a woman "dark as night" would read not only as intentionally scandalous, but also as an attack on the very paradigm that his readers cherish.

In Conclusion...

Martial's Epigram 1.115 is an attack on societal beauty standards that was just as poignant in ancient Rome as it is today. His glaring mockery of societal beauty standards and argument on behalf of genuine attraction is one we cannot afford to forget now. Today, just as it did back then, desire resists regulation, and beauty resists definition. But we, as cogs in the larger societal machine, must do our part and resist as well. We must continue to love who we wish, despite what society deems as correct. And we must continue to love ourselves, even if we don't match a commercialized idea of beauty. Because embracing our humanity, complete with every flaw and imperfection, is the most beautiful thing we can do.

We hope you enjoyed this poetic analysis of Epigram 1.115. Please leave any comments, questions, or concerns below, and be sure to recommend future poems for us to dive into!