Concerning an American View of Latin Sexual Humour

CONCERNING AN AMERICAN VIEW OF LATIN SEXUAL HUMOUR Amy Richlin's The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (Yale University Press, New Haven Conn., 1983, $28.00, ISBN 0-300-02902-0) wears an arresting jacket of bordello purple. It contains English translations of many passages of Greek and Latin verse set out to catch the eye of the hasty reader. It is attractively printed. Despite the total absence of illustrations it wi II have a good sale among a certain kind of public. It seems to have originated in an academic dissertation (Sexual Terms and Themes in Roman Satire and Related Genres [Yale University 1978]) but one wonders why it comes out under the imprint of an academic press. The serious enquirer will take no fruit from this garden. He may even feel he has suffered from the attentions of Priapus himself. The translations are Amy Richlin's own work. A striking feature of the translations is the way that some (but not all) 1 references to specifically Roman places, professions, institutions, modes of dress and the like are replaced with references to the life of present-day New York (e.g. pp.45 "underwear" [tunica], 82 IIdollars", 108 "red-light lipsll, 1142nd Street window ll , 135 II wives of 42nd Streetll , 152 limy shorts and my trousers ll , 161 lithe brothers in the pillbox hatsll , 176 lI unbuttoned shirtll , 181 IIc hampagnell , 188 "terry cloth", 206 "the milkman"). There are some who will find this enlivening or even amusing. It gets in the way, however, of straight thinking l Cf. pp.6 the goddess Flora, 8 fillets, 41 sesterces, 119 and 208 consuls, 127 Saturnal ian nuts, 198 the Flaminian and Latin roads, 204 the god Siluanus. H. D. JOCELYN about an alien society and leads directly to absurd notions about what lay in the minds of the writers being surveyed. On Horace Serm.1.2.127-33 Richlin says: "the lover found in adultery, running madly away, resembles her (i.e. the prostitute) . 'with underclothes unfastened (discincta tunica) and with naked foot'; he is thus reduced to the dishabille so attractive in a woman - not an acceptable situation for him" (p.176). She fails here, on the one hand, to visualise properly the Horatian escapee (lacking his ~ as well as his calcei and not having his tunica belted) and, on the other hand, to ask herself whether an ancient woman in a loose tunica could have had the same erotic effect as a modern woman in a slip. Many words still indecent in upper-class New York English appear in the translations. Sometimes appropriately but often not. "Tits", "balls", "ass", "asshole", "slut", "whore" have a tone quite lacking in papilli (pp.173, 204),2 mammae (p.ll0), testiculi (p.187), dunes (p.54), podex (p.22), scortum (p.15; cf. p.232, n.4). Crepitus at Cicero Fam.9.22.5 is a euphemism; almost anything would be better than "farts" (p. 21) . Landica, on the other hand, seems to have been as gross a word as any in the Latin sexual register. Richlin turns it with the medical "clitoris" (p.23). It is hard to believe that 42nd Street has no term of its own. Occasionally we get explanation rather than translation (e.g. at p.207 "like a lying Stoic parasite" for ut mendax aretalogus) or more concentration on the figure than on the sense (e.g. at p.148 "a big bad prick" for mentula magna minax). Most of Richlin's versions, however, are extremely literal. For what purpose I do not see. The effect can be ludicrous. The individual words of "this sceptre ... will now be able to grow green with no leaf" (p.122 [PriapI 25.1-2 hoc sceptrum ... nulla iam poterit uirere fronde)) are not to be faulted, but the whole is a nonsense. "00 I ever demand from you a 2More aptly 'nipples' at p. 107. LATIN SEXUAL HUMOUR cunt ... when my anger seethes?" (p. 119 r Horace Serm. 1.2.70-71] ) puts something quite opaque in the place of an interesting extension of the semantic field of ~. "With your hard mouth you rub the...