63 Colloquial and Li.. - Ganino.com

324 nigel m. kay
In what follows I will however concentrate on Martial’s use of
euphemistic obscenity. The frequency of such idioms in Martial’s work
and elsewhere, and their tendency to use words of basic, everyday vocabulary,
strongly suggest they were a feature of everyday speech; 17 I will look at
some frequently used verbs as they feature in Martial’s sexual vocabulary,
in the order negare, dare, facere, posse and velle.
3.1 negare
The basic reference of negare in this sense is a refusal to perform a sexual
act with another person. It is usually a female who refuses a male, and
the act refused is generally unspecified, though it can be assumed to be
fututio. 18 This is 4.38: Galla, nega: satiatur amor nisi gaudia torquent: |
sed noli nimium, Galla, negare diu, ‘Galla, say no: love is satiated unless
its pleasures torment: but don’t say no, Galla, for too long’; and see also
1.106.7, 2.25.2, 3.54.2, 4.12.1, 4.71.2–6. The verb is used once, humorously,
of a male refusing a female (10.75.14). When the refusal relates to an act
other than fututio, the act has to be specified in some way for the sake
of clarity. Thus 11.104.17 pedicare negas, where Martial’s ‘wife’ denies him
pedicatio; and 4.7.1 cur, here quod dederas, hodie, puer Hylle, negasti...?
‘why, Hyllus my boy, do you refuse today what you gave yesterday?’, where
a boy who offered pedicatio one day refuses it the next, because he has
become a man.
The phrase nil negare ‘to say no to nothing’ is closely related and is
usually understood to refer to agreement to perform fellatio, largely on the
evidence of 12.79.4 quisquis nil negat, Atticilla, fellat ‘whoever says no to
nothing, Atticilla, sucks’. 19 This is evidently one meaning, but the phrase
17 Note e.g. Adams 1981a: 127: ‘there is a widely attested group of verbs (do, rogo, nego, promitto) used in
the pregnant sense “grant etc. intercourse” without a complement expressed. The frequency of these
elliptical usages is such that they were undoubtedly well established in the ordinary language.’ This
article is the starting point for this section of my chapter, in which I aim to provide a survey of the
sexual meanings of some such common verbs in Martial and to demonstrate how widespread and
entrenched they are in his work. I have not detailed their appearances in other relevant colloquial
sources because that information can be found in Adams’s article: thus posse (122), velle/nolle (122),
facere (123 with n. 4), dare/negare (127–8).
18 The ellipse in this type of phrase is likely to be of e.g. negare futuere/fututionem and of dare
futuere/fututionem (rather than of e.g. dare se alicui); note the phrases pedicare dare and pedicare
negare at 11.78.5 and 11.104.17. I sometimes use the terms fututio and pedicatio in what follows because
they are more precise and concise than English equivalents.
19 I would also interpret non negat at 4.71.6 as meaning fellat, as the following translation is intended
to make clear. This epigram contains three of the verbs with which I am and will be dealing in this
section (negare, dare, facere) and is worth quoting in full: quaero diu totam, Safroni Rufe, per urbem,
| si qua puella neget: nulla puella negat. | tamquam fas non sit, tamquam sit turpe negare, | tamquam