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This article discusses elements of the (meta-)poetics of Martial's epigrams that are directly or implicitly linked with the Roman festival of the Saturnalia. Particular attention is given to Roman-Callimachean features within this Saturnalian discourse, both with regard to individual epigrams and to the layout of entire books. The focus is on metapoetic buzzwords or images, within their contexts, and on metapoetic structural patterns. Poems that will be discussed in greater detail include, among others,

r THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 31 account for such variations in terms of date, genre, or situation. C. Villa writes interestingly about the MS. tradition in the 9th and 12th centuries, showing, inter alia, how texts copied in Verona and Milan travelled across the Brenner Pass into Germany. In Carm. Saec. 41 L. Braccesi takes sinefraude with ardentem Troiam in the sense of'without treachery'. According to B., H. is opposing the tradition, alive in the Greek East and used against Octavian/Augustus, that Aeneas had betrayed Troy. If B. is right, it is easier to take sine fraude with the whole clause cui...iter. But is he right? I rather doubt it. For if, as most people other than B. believe, H. already knew the Aeneid (see Carm. Saec. 39-44 and 50-52), it would have been superfluous to reject the hostile version. Worse: given the occasion, it would have been rhetorically crass even to mention that version. So, better take sinefraude a s ' without harm'.' But B.'s suggestion, supported by calculations, that the Ludi Saeculares were meant to recall the fall of Troy is attractive. The collection ends with a very lucid account by A. Stazio of the coinage issued in S. Italy in the 4th to 3rd centuries B.C. and in Rome in the late republic and early empire. One wishes all success to this tribute paid by Venosa to her most famous son.

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