This paper examines the cultural antagonisms of Martial's Apophoreta 170–82, a unique series of epigrammatic gift-tags for artworks to be given away during the Saturnalia. In these poems, I argue, Martial thematizes and enacts Rome's transformative appropriation of cultural capital from Greece and elsewhere. First, he adopts the Hellenistic trope of the ekphrastic gallery tour in order to evoke the “museum spaces” of the Flavian city, where artworks became testaments to the power and culture of Rome. While evoking these masterpiece (...) collections, however, the epigrams in fact describe miniatures changing hands at a banquet. Martial thus tropes a second Roman practice of appropriation, namely the widespread consumption of transmedial miniature copies. Third and finally, the epigrams dramatize the vulnerability of plundered objects by reevaluating their significance within the Roman frameworks of Latin literature and the Saturnalia. In this miniature ekphrastic series, then, Martial's apophoretic poetics converge with Roman forms of appropriation both imperial and domestic, concrete and conceptual. (shrink)

The canonical statue known as the Barberini Faun is roundly viewed as a mysterious anomaly. The challenge to interpret it is intensified not only by uncertainties about its date and origin but also by the persistent idea that it represents a generic satyr. This paper tackles this assumption and identifies the statue with the satyr that King Midas captured in the well-known myth. Iconographic analysis of the statue's pose supports this view. In particular, the arm bent above the head, the (...) twist of the torso, and the splay of the legs are paralleled in many well-understood figures and furnish keys to interpreting the Barberini Faun as an extraordinary sleeping beast, intoxicated and fit for capture. The paper then explores the links between kings and satyrs in the Hellenistic age and finds grounds for understanding the statue within the context of royal patronage before the mid-second century BC. (shrink)