Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Jul 19, 2019 18:30:18 GMT
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/05/10/cooking-with-martial-and-catullus/
By Valerie Stivers May 10, 2019 EAT YOUR WORDS
In Valerie Stivers’s Eat Your Words series, she cooks up recipes drawn from the works of various writers.
In ancient Rome, poetry was pop culture, and being a poet was a viable living of sorts—you attached yourself to a patron and wrote flattering words about him, nasty verse about his enemies, and humorous epigrams to enliven his dinner parties. You kissed political ass, stuck in well-timed barbs, snarked about fashion and stupid food trends, and called out friends, foes, and former lovers. And while many wrote elevated, epic work, there was a thriving culture of poets like Martial (A.D. 40–103) and Catullus (84–54 B.C.), whose catty, witty, often obscene poems reflect daily life and circulated first through gossipy word-of-mouth and graffiti.