Sorteggi, doni ed enigmi. I Saturnali all'origine di Xenia e Apophoreta di Marziale e degli Aenigmata Symposii

Martial’s epigrams belong in general to that ‘Saturnalian literature’ particularly suited for being used as a light and entertaining gift for this occasion: and in fact, many of Martial’s books bring traces of their publication in proximity to the December feast. But Xenia and Apophoreta have a much closer genetic relationship with the Saturnalia, given that the two collections (and in particular the second) are linked by a double thread to one of the most characteristic ritual forms of the feast: that is, to the tradition of the Saturnalian lotteries, in which gifts of very unequal value were distributed, staging the surprises of a capricious fate. This inaequalitas of the gifts, in fact, becomes the main ordering criterion of the epigrams within the Apophoreta, and in any case the only one to be made explicit by Martial for this collection, quite complex in its ordering. But already Xenia did not escape this dichotomy rich gift vs poor gift, which is often sociologically subordinated, rather than to the randomness of fate, to the concrete economic resources of the donors, or to the social norms that governed the exchange of gifts in Rome. The very close relationship between gifts and the epigrams that originally constituted their accompanying notes also constitutes, once the epigrams are removed from their “occasional” destination and are collected in a liber, the main explanation for the presence of the titles, which represent the paratextual substitute of the concrete gifts. But sometimes the lottery tickets announce the gifts in the obscure and ambiguous form of aenigmata, thus combining the Saturnalian tradition of the distribution of gifts with the ancient tradition of symposiastic riddle competitions. This coincidence between these two symposial and Saturnalian traditions leads us to the genesis of a collection of riddles such as the Aenigmata Symposii, not by chance set during the Saturnalian festival, and in which the epigrams, in the fixed size of three hexameters, constitute the enigma of which the titulus represents the solution. Even if Martial’s influence is unmistakable, the original link with the Saturnalian gift lotteries has been, from this moment on, almost completely lost.