To Mr E - on His Translation of and Commentaries on Martial

To Mr E - on His Translation of and Commentaries on Martial - meaning Summary

Satire of Bad Translation

This brief satirical address criticizes a contemporary translator and commentator for mangling classical verse. The speaker imagines both poetry and prose rejecting the man, and hears a lament from Martial — the Roman epigrammatist — exclaiming that his work has been slain. The poem compresses scorn into a sharp image: the translator’s efforts are not merely poor but an offense to poetic art and to the original author. It functions as a witty, condemnatory aside aimed at scholarly incompetence and the violence of bad translation.