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Notes
The Fourth Volume of the Works of Mr Thomas Brown, Serious, Moral, Comical, and Satyrical, London, 1709, p. 51.
B. Boyce, Thomas Brown of Facetious Memory, Cambridge, Mass., 1939, p. 14.
T. Forde, Foenestra in Pectore, or, Familiar Letters, London, 1660, p. 106. Forde expresses sympathy for couples who don’t like each other but does not think it constitutes a sufficient reason to divorce.
This interpretation is reflected in 17th century translations such as that of Rowland Watkyns:
I love him not, but shew no reason can
Wherefore, but this, I do not love the man.
E.g. M. Valerii Martialis epigrammatum libri XV, ed. L. Ramirez de Prado, Paris, 1607, ad loc., M. Val. Martialis epigrammaton libri, ed. T. Farnaby, London, 1615, ad loc., Ben Jonson (see B. T. Boehrer, ‘Renaissance Classicism and Roman Sexuality: Ben Jonson’s Marginalia and the Trope of Os Impurum’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 4, 1997, pp. 364–80 (373–4), M. Valerii Martialis epigrammatum libri XIV, ed. V. Collesso, Delphin edition, London, 1701, M. Valerii Martialis epigrammaton libri mit erklärenden Anmerkungen versehen, ed. L. Friedländer, Leipzig, 1886, ad loc.; H. D. Jocelyn, ‘Difficulties in Martial, Book 1’, Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 3, 1981, pp. 277–84 (278–9), S. Lorenz, ‘Catullus and Martial’, in A Companion to Catullus, ed. Marilyn B. Skinner, Malden, MA/Oxford, 2007, pp. 428–9; cf. J. P. Sullivan, ‘Martial and English poetry’, Classical Antiquity 9, 1990, pp. 149–74 (150).
Practitioners of oral sex were believed to have an impure mouth (os impurum). See H. P. Obermayer, Martial und der Diskurs über männliche “Homosexualität” in der Literatur der fruhen Kaiserzeit, Tübingen, 1998, pp. 214–31, Martial Epigrams Book 2, ed. C. A. Williams, New York, 2004, on 2.10 intro., D. Lowe, ‘Menstruation and Mamercus Scaurus (Sen. Benef. 4.31.3)’, Classical Philology 67, 2013, pp. 343–52; cf. Boehrer, ‘Renaissance Classicism’ (n. 5 above).
Showing that 1.32 is capable of an obscene interpretation in itself, 3.17 acting not to prove the case but to reinforce it retrospectively.
For a full, well documented life of John Fell, see Vivienne Larminie in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew, B. Harrison and L. Goldman, Oxford, 2004, online edn 2016, s.v. ‘Fell, John (1625–1686), Bishop of Oxford’.
J. Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1991, p. 222.
The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, antiquary, of Oxford, 1632–1695, described by Himself, ed. Andrew Clarke, Vol. 2, Oxford, 1892, p. 496.
Boyce, ‘Thomas Brown’ (n. 2 above), p. 7.
So Boyce, ‘Thomas Brown’ (n. 2 above), p. 14.
Clarke, ‘The Life and Times’ (n. 10 above), p. 83.
For Fell’s partiality towards members of his own college, see Clarke, ‘The Life and Times’ (n. 10 above), pp. 83, 139f.
James Drake, ‘A character of Mr Tho Brown and his writings’, in The works of Mr Thomas Brown, Serious, Moral, Comical, and Satyrical in 2 volumes with a Preface by James Drake, London, 1707 (no pagination given for preface).
For this reply, see Boyce, ‘Thomas Brown’ (n. 2 above), p. 13.
Brown came from a grammar school. For his comparatively lowly status, which meant he had no chance of a career at Oxford, see Drake, ‘A character of Mr Th Brown’ (n. 15 above): ‘the disadvantages of a narrow fortune, and an education in a private country-school, which intituled him to no academical preferment, would not suffer him to continue very long there, where the expence was like to be too great for him, and the prospect of preferment too little’.
For instance, many poems from the highly obscene Book 11 were either omitted or only partially reproduced (e.g. the first four lines of 11.58 are excised).
M. Val. Martialis Epigrammata: in usum scholae Westmonasteriensis, London, 1655.
Cf. 3.65, an erotic poem on a boy favourite, where the last two lines (‘hoc tua, saeve puer Diadumene, basia fragrant./quid si tota dares illa sine invidia?’, ‘such as this, cruel boy Diadumenus, is the fragrance of your kisses. What if you gave them in full, ungrudgingly?’) is changed to ‘hoc deprompta tuis loculis munuscula fragrant./quid si dona dares magna, sine invidia?’, ‘such as this is the fragrance of the little gifts fetched out from your storage boxes./what if you gave great gifts, ungrudgingly?’.
Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford, 2016, s.v. fellatio.
H. Cockeram, The English Dictionary or, An Interpretation of Hard English Words, 11th edn rev. and enlarged by H. C. Gent, London, 1658 (cited in OED (n. 21 above), s.v. fellicate.
Fellatio (also written as ‘fellation’) is not a classical Latin word: the OED (n. 20 above) describes it as ‘modern Latin’, derived from the past participle of Lat. fellare.
On 1.32 [1.33 in Farnaby’s edition], Farnaby comments ‘merito te odi, neque tamen per modestiam licet effari odii mei causam vel propter oris tui impuri graveolentiam non sustineo apud te longiorem uti sermone, hoc tantum dico, non amo te, et ad hanc expositionem facit epigramma 3.17’, ‘deservedly I hate you, but I cannot spell out the cause of my hatred due to modesty or else because of the foul smell of your impure mouth I cannot stand to have too long a conversation with you, this only I can say, I do not love you, and epigram 3.17 supports this explanation’ and on 3.17.6, ‘nemo sustinuit edere vel gustare scriblitam, impuro halitu tuo corruptam’, ‘no one could stand eating or even tasting the tart, corrupted as it was by your impure breath’.
Fellare is also used by Catullus (59.1 ‘Bononiensis Rufa Rufulum fellat’, ‘Rufa from Bononia fellates Rufulus’).
A publication dated to 1697 (Miscellanies over Claret, or, the Friends to the Tavern the best Friends to Poetry: Being a Collection of Poems, Translations, &c. to be continued monthly from the Rose-Tavern without Temple-Bar, London, 1697, p. 20), contains Brown’s translation of 12.65, which is not in the expurgated editions of Farnaby.
That it was a joke which would not have had widespread appeal is shown by the fact that in the 17th century and earlier, oral sex is not found as a satiric theme. See Boehrer, ‘Renaissance Classicism’ (n. 5 above); I have been unable to find allusions to it in the obscene works of the notorious Earl of Rochester, which contain references to masturbation, incest and sodomy (The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. David M. Vieth, Yale University Press, New Haven/London, 2002). This would not, however, have precluded students with knowledge of Martial from engaging in jokes about it among themselves.
He may also have remembered Catullus 59 (see n. 25 above), which he no doubt would have read at some stage.
I am loathe to cast aspersions on Fell’s character by suggesting that there may have been truth in the accusation. Certainly there do not seem to have been any rumours that he was guilty of irregular sexual practices, though the accusations of hypocrisy noted earlier are intriguing. The question is of course entirely unanswerable.
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Watson, P. ‘I do not love thee Dr Fell’: Tom Brown’s Reception of Martial. Int class trad 25, 355–361 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-018-0494-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-018-0494-6