Social Commentaries
Book IV, Epigram 49 (Ker)
Translated by Walter C. A. Ker (1919–20) · From Epigrams (Loeb, 1919–20)
He does not know, believe me, what epigrams are, Flaccus, who styles them only frivolities and quips. He is more frivolous who writes of the meal of savage Tereus, or of thy banquet, dyspeptic Thyestes, or of Daedalus fitting to his son melting wings, or of Polyphemus pasturing Sicilian sheep. Far from poems of mine is all turgescence, nor does my Muse swell with frenzied tragic train. "Yet all men praise those tragedies, admire, worship them." I grant it: those they praise, but they read the others.
This translation is printed as prose in its source edition.
Cite this poem
MLA
Martial. “Book IV, Epigram 49 (Ker).” Translated by Walter C. A. Ker. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/martial/679/.
Chicago
Martial. “Book IV, Epigram 49 (Ker).” Translated by Walter C. A. Ker. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/martial/679/.
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