{"id":1277,"date":"2016-03-11T23:39:51","date_gmt":"2016-03-12T04:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=1277"},"modified":"2016-03-13T00:20:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T05:20:39","slug":"weve-made-it-legal-but-we-cant-make-it-right-martial-5-75","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=1277","title":{"rendered":"“We’ve Made It Legal, but We Can’t Make It Right” (Martial 5.75)"},"content":{"rendered":"

    Any problems in this little poem are exegetical \u2013 there are no significant variants:<\/p>\n

\n

Quae legis causa nupsit tibi Laelia, Quinte,
\n    uxorem potes hanc dicere legitimam.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As a punch-line, the pentameter, particularly the last word, seems rather flat. I suspect a pseudo-etymological pun: as a wife, Laelia is legitima, quia leg<\/strong>em tim<\/strong>et<\/em>. She is not only a lawful wife, but a law-fearing wife, a wife only for fear of the law.<\/p>\n

    Of course, legitimus<\/em> is no more a compound of timeo<\/em> than finitimus<\/em> or ultimus<\/em>. The only Latin word of similar formation (lex<\/em> + a verb that would govern it in a complete sentence) is Plautus’ legerupa<\/em>. On the other hand, the prevalence of disyllabic pentameter-endings in Martial might help the reader to divide legitimam<\/em> into its two pseudo-components.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Any problems in this little poem are exegetical \u2013 there are no significant variants: Quae legis causa nupsit tibi Laelia, Quinte,     uxorem potes hanc dicere legitimam. As a punch-line, the pentameter, particularly the last word, seems rather flat. I suspect … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,22,44,218],"tags":[239,316,240],"class_list":["post-1277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curculio-l","category-exegesis","category-latin-literature","category-potis","tag-marriage","tag-martial","tag-puns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1277"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1283,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions\/1283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}