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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
The height of the building in which the fire has broken out, the location of the poor man's dwelling in it, and the relevance of both to Juvenal's sketch, have often been misunderstood. This misunderstanding, handed down from the early commentators, still lingers in such commonly consulted works as those of Mayor, Duff, Ramsay (Loeb), and, more recently, Peter Green (Penguin). These assume that verse 199 indicates a house that has three storeys and that the poor man lives in the third: e.g. ‘smoke is pouring out of your third-floor attic’ (Ramsay). The poor man's inexplicable ignorance (tu nescis) of the alarming events about him, of the inevitable din and commotion, even of the very smoke in his own home, has been astonishingly ascribed by some (so Mayor and Green) to his being asleep. Of this the poet gives no hint; that the fire may be nocturnal has scant relevance.
1. Martial 1. 117. 7, ‘et scalis habito tribus sed altis’, quoted here by some commentators (e.g. Duff), does not tell us much more than that Martial lived on the third floor and that, like people living on the third floor today, disapproved of the stairs.
2. The attic rooms were commonly let to the pauperes: cf. Juv. 10. 18; Hor. Epist. 1. 1. 91Google Scholar, ‘(pauper) mutat cenacula’; Mart. 7. 20. 20 (see below).
3. Cf. Meiggs, R., Roman Ostia 2 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 240 f.Google Scholar
4. e.g. Forcellini-De Vit, Benoist-Goelzer, Lewis and Short, Georges; the latter's ascription of the meaning also to Schol. luv. 3.200, si gradibus … ab imis ‘id est: si a prima scala …’ is but arbitrary.
5. Though the above instance is particularly striking, ducenti, like other such numerals (sescenti etc.), is, however, sometimes used to indicate a large number (see Thes, Ling. Lat. s. ducenti 2134. 50 ff.Google Scholar); cf. Mart. 3. 93. 18, ‘audes ducentas nuptuire post mortes’.