Il sale e il miele: sul rapporto tra epigramma e bucolica in Marziale 11, 40-42

Analysis of the sequence Mart. 11, 40-42, in which the poet proposes a revisitation of the relationship between epigram and bucolic genre, with a typical taste for varietas in the selection of epigrammatic subgenres. 11, 40 is a scomma with an initial bucolic ‘motto’; 11, 41 takes up a typical Greek theme, viz. the fatal accident in a bucolic setting: the main models are Antiphilus of Byzantium (AP 7, 622), Antipater of Thessalonica (AP 9, 302) and Bianor (AP 9, 548), who are profoundly reworked, also in the mark of Virgil’s Bucolics and Georgics and of the Roman elegists (Tibullus, Ovid). 11, 42 takes its cue from the previous epigram for a metapoetic reflection on the meaning of epigrammatic ‘sweetness’, an important element of Martial poetics even in a book characterised by the salacious (and ‘salty’) spirit of the Saturnalia.