Chapter LII: Book VIII: he pretends to hesitate over multiplying epigrams—five books,

six, seven are already out and the whole collection is thumbed everywhere (_teritur noster ubique liber_), there should be some stint and limit (_sit pudor et finis_). Here the rebuke from the Comic Muse Thalia is significant: “Abandon your charming trifles! But what better thing is an idle singer (_desidiosus_) to do? Not tragic drama surely? Not epic? No, Martial’s function is to hold the mirror up to the manners of the day”:

Nay, dye your Roman booklets smart with wit
That Life may read and know the portraits fit.[1473]

The claim is also well illustrated in his objection to mythological twaddle—an objection sufficient to account for a radical lack of sympathy with Statius, the only prominent poet of the time whom he does not name:

What profit empty myths in sorry lays?
Read this of which Life says “It is my own.”
No Centaurs here, Harpies, or Gorgon face
You’ll find: my pages smack of man alone.[1474]

This confident acceptance of life as his great exemplar explains the variety and truth of Martial’s pictures. He knew that he could portray his fellows with a sure hand; and his conviction that his forte lay in light verse reflecting manners and morals gave him an assurance that his work had force enough to last. It is essentially Flavian Rome that he drew; for, though his writing continued under Nerva and the first few years of Trajan’s reign, nine books of epigrams had come out under Domitian. The repression of the Reign of Terror, which brought about the fifteen years of silence to which Tacitus alludes, did not affect the sort of verse which Martial composed. It was spicy, but not at the expense of the emperor or the imperial system. All contemporary types appear in Martial’s pages (_hominem pagina nostra sapit_). They range from Domitian himself, haloed beyond recognition, down to the vilest of characters to whom Martial owed no flattery and of whom to tell the truth was to produce a shudder. Since fun comes easiest at the expense of human weakness, there is a predominance of types in some way objectionable. Hence a multitudinous array of spongers, dinner-hunters, fortune-hunters, bores, coxcombs, charlatans, topers, freaks, stingy hosts, and incorrigible reprobates. But if there are false friends there are also firm ones, there are faithful slaves as well as faithless, moral wives as well as immoral, and genuine poets as well as poetasters. The eye for detail is remarkable: nothing is too slight for mention: the hawker of sulphur and the purchaser of broken glass are not overlooked any more than a wealthy _connoisseur_ of artistic treasures. Such pieces as the neat summary of how the hours in a Roman day were spent convince one that Martial saw things as they were, whereas Juvenal, though possessed of an unchallenged sense of picturesque realism, tended to overlay his subject with violent exaggeration or with a thesis-like treatment in the manner of the rhetorical schools.

Thus to turn over Martial’s leaves in the most casual way transports one to ancient Rome. There we find the Stoic heroine and hero, Arria and Paetus, face to face with death; and intimates of the author who have to be admonished about using life aright, or welcomed home, or reminded of the enjoyable ideals of the unambitious, or urged, on the principle of Satan reproving sin, to decide on a profession (_dum quid sis dubitas iam potes esse nihil_). We can enter a private library; we can join in the despatch of marriage greetings, or condolences under bereavement, or congratulations to a lucky person on the prospect of a long holiday which will send him back sun-burnt to the pale dwellers in town. We can see artistic triumphs in a handsomely enchased wine-bowl, or an antique bronze statuette. Again, we may listen to the author’s petition for the _ius trium liberorum_, his request for a supply of domestic water from the Aqua Marcia, or his many growls over the burdensome duty of calling on patrons, over paltry presents (some folk, he observes, send less and less each December!) and over the failure of patrons to maintain him fittingly; he is, he complains, not so well sheltered as his patron’s orchard-trees:

I’ve got a room where window-draughts do play—
One where the very North Wind wouldn’t stay![1475]

But it is not solely for town life that he has an eye. We note the almost Dutch detail in some of his sketches of rustic scenes. Especially out on Faustinus’s estate with its steading, the corn in heaps, the wine in casks, the barn-yard fowls, the labourers’ work, the rural fare, he appears to revel in “the genuine country, uncivilised” (_rure uero barbaroque_).[1476] He envisages for us a real farm in Spain free from the formal dress of Rome, and provided with shade against the summer heat, and against the winter cold with a wood fire surrounded by grubby youngsters.[1477]

True to the author’s promise, there are many figures that amuse—the dry-as-dust antiquary spoiling his wine-parties by tedious rigmaroles about the pedigree of his silver goblets, the prosy pleader in court who needs hours to make a few legal points, the counsel who sagaciously blushes in preference to stating his client’s full case, the guest who arrives too late for breakfast but too early for lunch, and the too prolific poet who finds no time to revise his hasty compositions:

You write two hundred lines ’twixt each sunrise,
But never read them, silly!—yet how wise![1478]

The element of humour in Martial was largely due to a keen sense of the incongruous. He could not help chuckling at the notion of keeping about eight birthdays each year to secure presents, or at the huge Gaul who sprained his ankle and was glad to be carried home on a pauper’s bier, or at the nuisance who rummages a shop for _objets d’art_ and gives endless trouble without buying enough to compensate for it.[1479] Again there is the decidedly plain lady who takes care to frequent the company of ladies still plainer so as to appear a beauty by comparison:

Your friends, Fabulla, either are
Old crones or beldames uglier far:
These frumps you trot around with you
To parties, plays, and galleries too:
And so, my dear, such hags among
You look quite pretty and quite young![1480]

Ailments and the medical profession are the subjects of many jests. There was the rebellious client who pretended to have gout in order to avoid calling on his patron, but who, after hobbling about swathed in wrappings, finally got the genuine disease; there was the patient who died because he dreamt of his medical man overnight; there was the ex-physician who turned undertaker and therefore had undertaken the same undertaking for the sick as before; and there was the doctor who on his clinical rounds gave a sufferer fever:

When I was ill, you came to me,
Doctor, and with great urgency
A hundred students brought with you
A most instructive case to view.
The hundred finger’d me with hands
Chill’d by the blasts of northern lands:
Fever at outset had I none—
I have it, Sir, now you have done.[1481]

Such alert perception of the incongruous made him scoff at shams—the cupboard love that acts friendship with a view to hospitable invitations, the lady whose artificial aids to beauty leave her with no face of her own, the hypocrisy of pretended philosophers who were at heart dissolute reprobates.[1482]

Ability to see the ludicrous side of things is always an entertaining social recommendation. With the literary circles of the day Martial was on familiar terms. He sends lines to Lucan’s widow on an anniversary of the poet’s birth, he records Caesonius’s fidelity to Seneca in exile, and shows patriotic pride in mentioning the Spanish birthplace of the Senecan family.[1483] Quintilian, Arruntius Stella, a writer of polished verse, and Valerius Flaccus were among his friends. Despatching poetry to the younger Pliny, he good-humouredly quizzes him on his serious work at the bar: the judicious moment of festive relaxation “when rose-leaves reign, when locks are scent-bedew’d” must be chosen for the presentation of Martial’s trivialities.[1484] With Silius Italicus he was well acquainted: would that Epic poet, “pride of the Castalian sisterhood,” he asks, deign to spare some leisure for the sportive trifles which he begs to forward? Just so, he suggests anachronistically, might Catullus have sent his _Sparrow_ to Virgil![1485] He also shows interest in Silius’s activities and expresses sympathy for him in bereavement.[1486] But no one, he felt, could embroil him with so true a friend as Juvenal, to whom he wrote after his retirement to Spain and whose distaste for long-winded epics he plainly shared.[1487] As regards Statius, who often wrote about the same things and people as Martial did, their mutual silence must have been due to incompatibility of temperament. Martial’s circle included also the orator Aquilius Regulus, whom Pliny could not bear; Antonius Primus from Toulouse, who helped as a commander to secure the Empire for Vespasian; Julius Martialis, a close intimate; Q. Ovidius, a country neighbour at Nomentum; wealthy knights like Atedius Melior and Claudius Etruscus, but also many people less prominent like the centurions Varus and Pudens. While he gives the real names of friends, it is to his credit that he uses disguised names for the victims of his satire. Disclaiming any intention of hurting (_ludimus innocui_), he declares that his concern is to attack not persons but vice (_parcere personis, dicere de uitiis_).[1488] Consequently, resentful at having scurrilous verses fathered on him, he draws a lurid picture of the punishment which ought to befall a slanderous poet.[1489] The systematic backbiter, he agrees, may be called malign; but, with a fine touch of human feeling, he adds:

_I_ think he needs our pity who likes none.[1490]

The epigram in Martial is to be distinguished from, even if related to, the epigrammatic in contemporary rhetoric, whether prose or verse. In Martial it is a short independent verse composition, not one of a series of glittering ornaments in a continuous poem, history, or oration; that is, it constitutes a miniature unity; and there is a notable freedom from the forced conceit with which the epigrammatic is often allied in writers like Lucan. The epigram reached Rome from Greece in the form of a brief poem originally inscriptional in character, as its name implies. But the Greek ἐπίγραμμα itself had gone through a wide evolution since Simonides of Ceos employed it for the tomb of the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae. Beyond its use for epitaph, memorial, dedication, or gift, the elegiac metre in particular had been devoted, with its Greek quality of delicate and finished charm, to occasions which in modern times would be considered essentially lyrical. The impression made by a passing event or inward experience found utterance in a brief poem: the poem might convey the feeling produced by a landscape, a book, a storm, an artistic work, a misfortune, a mental disturbance, a friendship, an affair of the heart. In contrast therewith, the Roman tendency, on taking over from the Greeks this ill-defined branch of lyric, was to sacrifice the poetic flavour to point, and most of all to the point that stings. Hence, losing much of the lyric charm of the Greek, the epigram was largely transferred to the service of satiric purposes. Catullus, though certainly not wanting in true lyric quality, gave to the elegiac that bent towards invective which was more definitely associated with the abusive iambic. In this latter field, it is noticeable that Diomedes,[1491] describing the bitter iambic, names, along with the Greeks Archilochus and Hipponax, the Latin writers Lucilius, Catullus, Horace and Bibaculus. Now Martial owns his obligations and traces his freedom of speech (_lasciuam uerborum ueritatem_)[1492] to Catullus, Domitius Marsus, Albinovanus Pedo, and Lentulus Gaetulicus of Caligula’s reign. Roman _dilettanti_ of the Empire liked composing such verses, and it is among the freaks of time that, though many authors like Marsus, Pedo, Gaetulicus, Seneca and Petronius wrote epigrams, too little has survived in this _genre_, outside Martial’s collection, to afford a criterion of their individual contribution. Clearly, however, the march of literature had worked changes that could not fail to affect Martial. By his days, satire and rhetoric had both played a great part. He is but following the traditions of the epigram in maintaining its essential elements of concise expression and unity of idea; but he owes a debt to satire for his width of range (Juvenal’s _farrago libelli_), his dramatic vigour, his scraps of dialogue, his reflective pieces, his mordant wit and irony. So too, although he is not enslaved by rhetorical artifice, he knows how to make use of rhetorical point, as the culmination—usually a stinging culmination—up to which the rounded whole of a short poem should lead. His satiric epigrams, then, mark the close of the evolution of this partly lyric type.[1493] Hence Martial’s individual impress on the epigram is permanent. With him it reached that fixity of form which it has retained up to modern times.

In a total of 1561 epigrams in the _Spectacula_ and fourteen other books, 1235 are in elegiac metre, 238 in hendecasyllabic, and 77 in choliambic or scazon. There are, besides, a few in hexameter and iambic verse. The elegiac distich is common, and is almost the only form among the 350 pieces of the _Xenia_ and _Apophoreta_. Often, however, his elegiac poems run to ten or a dozen lines, occasionally to twice that length. When the delights of Faustinus’s farm tempt him to write 51 scazons, or when a dinner menu needs 32 hendecasyllabics, one hesitates whether to call these epigrams at all. Vigorous and correct in versification, his metres are in felicitous accord with the theme and spirit of his various pieces. With great skill he can employ the elegiac to express tender sentiment or weighty compliment, the hendecasyllabic for sportive and ironic occasions, and the scazon for trenchant invective. But, if the mood takes him, he can equally adapt the elegiac to satiric, and both hendecasyllabics and scazons to descriptive purposes. Martial’s favourite verse-form, the elegiac, is based, though not pedantically so, on Ovid: lines and phrases are occasionally taken from him, but Martial does not adhere to the Ovidian ending of the pentameter on a disyllable. Typical endings such as _hospitibus_, _ingenio_, _undecies_, _amicitiae_ show that here, as elsewhere, he is under the influence of Catullus. It is upon Catullus principally that his hendecasyllabics and choliambics are founded, with the notable difference that Martial, departing from the Catullian freedom in the opening foot of the choliambic, restricts himself to a spondee. In style and metre we can trace some echoes of Virgil, Horace and the _Priapea_; and, to a less degree, of Tibullus and Propertius. Nor was the pointed manner of his early patrons Seneca and Lucan without effect on him.[1494] Greek authors too have their share in his sources, but, on the whole, he is remarkably independent of models. Sometimes he appears to do little more than continue the kind of popular tradition found in the smarter _graffiti_ at Pompeii. This, for example, is not unlike his manner:

I wonder, wall, that you have not gone smash—
You’ve had to bear so many scribblers’ trash.[1495]

Low life and the commonest objects came under his survey and saved him from bookish pedantry. The workaday spoken Latin of the _caballus_ type, and words which many Romans would have shrunk from uttering (as we know from Cicero), enter into his pages, alongside of language sanctioned by exalted literary usage. This range of vocabulary is proportionate to the width of his outlook, which contemplated, perhaps occasionally with too heartless an indifference, the ugly as well as the beautiful. His unabashed persistence in observation and his conscious power of natural portrayal left him free to use at will, or not to use, the literary predecessors whom he had studied. On subjects drawn direct from life he writes with a finished neatness of expression and a freshness that reads like improvisation. Over and over again, his natural themes appear to fall into natural phrases. It is a straightforwardness that gives him, for all his debt to patterns, the unmistakeable ring of originality. In literature there is only one Martial.

Rhetoric is in the main absent from one who, primarily interested in man, wrote as a realist. His most representative work is simple, with little of that Spanish note of excess which one detects or suspects in several of his compatriots, from the violent Porcius Latro onwards, not excepting Lucan and at times Seneca himself. Martial feels no attraction to mythology, though a court-poem might involve a few learned allusions. He is content that elevated epics should be praised, admired, even adored, so long as his verses are read. Hence the fundamental contrast, and therefore presumably the antipathy, to Statius[1496] already mentioned. Hence too the justification for Martial’s pronouncement: “all turgid rhetoric (_omnis uesica_) is foreign to my writings: my muse swells not in wild tragic robe.”[1497] Conformably thereto, he has a genial way of disarming criticism by making no high claims:

There are excellent bits here, you’ll find,
And bits of a so-and-so kind:
Still more than the latter
Are bad bits—no matter!
A book is of all sorts combin’d.[1498]

In another piece he admits that, while tossing off epigrams may appear simple, the crux lies in making a book; and, again, the criticism that a book of his shows marked inequalities is answered by the contention that this is in its favour, because a bad book is of uniform quality![1499] No author ever passed a more honest criticism on his work. It is just this unevenness that makes Martial a successful surprise. Alongside of plain-speaking—the plainest of the plain—the reader may chance upon poems which prove in him an exquisite sense of beauty. If the seaside or a pretty name engages his fancy, he rises to a style in keeping with the subject. There are no finer scazons in Latin than those he wrote on “the sweet strand of genial Formiae” to rival the Catullian scazons on Sirmio:

Here Thetis’ face is ruffled by
A gentle wind: the waters lie
Not in dead calm, but o’er the main
A peaceful liveliness doth reign,
Bearing gay yachts before a breeze
Cool as the air that floats with ease
From purple fan of damozel
Who would the summer heat dispel.[1500]

So the liquid consonants of the admired “Springtide Lad” (_Earinos_) seem to run over into his enthusiastic hendecasyllabics on

A name with violets and roses born,
Name that the loveliest time of year hath worn,
Fragrant of Hybla and of Attic thyme
Or of the nest where dwells the bird sublime,
A name sweet heavenly nectar to outvie,
One that fair Attis would be calléd by,
Or he that blends the cup for Jove on high,
Which, uttered once in the Parrhasian Hall,
Would make the Powers of Love sing madrigal.[1501]

So beauty of idea is combined with neatness when he sends a rose-wreath to a friend:

Go, happy rose, with thy soft chaplet bind
My own Apollinaris’ locks; and see
One far-off day, when they are white, thou wind
Rose leaves around them: so may Love love thee![1502]

There the pedigree of the opening movement in Waller’s “Go, lovely rose” and Herrick’s “Go, happy rose” is evident. Much, indeed, that might be called Herrickian comes from brief pieces like

Polla, why send me wreaths of blooms new-born?
I’d rather handle roses _you_ had worn.[1503]

This neatness in expression underlies the characteristic suspense of point until the concluding line, phrase, or even word of an epigram—the typical manner of Martial familiar to us from imitations in neo-Latin writers, in writers of our own eighteenth century and in Byron, on the bee-like principle that

The body should always be little and sweet
And the sting should be left to the tail.

Very often, whether the piece is a brief couplet or a more extended set of elegiac, choliambic, or hendecasyllabic verses, the surprise and the bite come at the end. The epigram thus constitutes an artistic “period.” Such is the force of the sharp _tussit_ of I. x.: “What is the inducement that lures Gemellus to propose marriage to Maronilla? Why does he long, plead, implore, send presents? Is she pretty? Nay, none so ugly! What is the bait and charm then? Why, her churchyard cough!”—an ugly but effective close on the attraction of a consumptive heiress for a fortune-hunter.[1504] So he retorts on a person whose absence would be a good riddance:

You ask me, Linus, what my field
Out at Nomentum is to yield:
Well, this it yields to me: the view,
My Linus, has no sign of _you_.[1505]

He makes fun of unwelcome kisses:

With half your lips, my Postumus, you kiss.
Thanks: you may take a half away from this;
But would you give me joy beyond compare?
Then keep the other half of that half-share.[1506]

Again, less briefly than, but to the same effect as, Mr. Punch’s advice to those about to marry, he writes on a debtor’s going to law to dispute a claim:

The judge expects a fee from you,
Your lawyer looks for payment too—
Best pay your creditor his due![1507]

From the idea of uniting in wedlock a much widowed widow with an equally bereaved widower he extracts grim fun:

Fabius buries all his wives:
Chrestilla ends her husbands’ lives.
The torch, which from the marriage-bed
They brandish, soon attends the dead.
O Venus, link this conquering pair!
Their match will meet with issue fair,
Whereby for such a dangerous _two_
A single funeral will do.[1508]

He introduces us smilingly to a Roman hairdresser:

There once was a barber called Smart
Who plied his tonsorial art
Over Wolfaway’s face;
But in spite of his pace
A new beard was ready to start.[1509]

He jeers at the systematic diner-out:

Philo declares he never dines at home,
And that is no exaggeration:
He has no place whereat to dine in Rome,
Unless he hooks an invitation.[1510]

This last is a frequently imitated form in which the apparent confirmation of the first statement leaves the final state of the victim worse than the first. A similar effect is got by an apparent contradiction of the original statement:

’Tis said Acerra reeks of last night’s wine:
’Tis false: he always drinks till morning-shine.[1511]

Just as elsewhere we trace the legacy of Martial in some of the gallantry of Cavalier poets, and as his “Non amo te, Sabidi” descends to “I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,” so this corrective form of epigram is the prototype of such quips as Samuel Rogers’s:

Ward has no heart, they say; but I deny it:
He _has_ a heart—and gets his speeches by it.

An engaging blend of modesty and confidence is an ingredient in the variety of Martial. At times, by way of pose, he may wish to give the impression that, like Byron, he “rattles on exactly as he’d talk” and that his verses are of little consequence:[1512] at other times, he is both proud of his popularity and confident of his permanent place in literature. The emperor read him (II. xci.): so did ministers of state and men of letters (VI. lxiv. 8-10): everybody at Rome did, in fact (VI. lx.). He was pointed out (_monstramur digito_, IX. xcvii. 4), and people whispered “There he is!” (V. xiii. 3). Such a vogue had he that it was possible to find a nuisance of a person who could repeat Martial by heart and decline to stop! (VII. li.). In mock-heroic strain he declares:

Lo! I the man for trifles unsurpassed:
You mayn’t admire me, but I hold you fast.
Great themes are for great bards: enough to see
You oft re-reading my light poetry.[1513]

His naughty jests (_nequitiae_, VI. lxxxii. 5) were known to everyone who had not a Dutchman’s ear: no wonder, then, that his circle of readers should be as wide as the world (I. i. 2; V. xiii. 3; VIII. lxi. 3). He was flattered to realize that he was a favourite in Vienne (VII. lxxxviii.): his poems might be despatched to one person, but would be read by all (_uni mitteris, omnibus legeris_, VII. xcvii. 13). Away among the Goths a centurion thumbed his Martial (_a rigido teritur centurione liber_), and Britain learned to repeat his verses (XI. iii. 3-5). His books went through different editions; they were on sale by Secundus in parchment binding (I. ii. 3, 7-8), suitable for travellers; or at Atrectus’s shop, smart in purple (I. cxvii. 13-7); or at the establishment of Tryphon (IV. lxxii.), who was Quintilian’s publisher. Furthermore, his juvenile verses could be had in collected form (I. cxiii.), and plagiarists stole from his works. Yet even a “best seller” in ancient Rome could not ensure handsome returns: Martial significantly takes satisfaction in the thought that anyone can make money, but not everyone can be a poet (V. xiii. 9-10); for he has a fine consciousness that a book, to live, must possess an indwelling spirit (VI. lxi. 10). No doubt crosses his mind about his own literary survival (X. ii. 7-12), or about the immortality which mention by him can confer (V. xv. 3-4). Nobodies, therefore, must not expect to have their names perpetuated in his verse (V. lx. 6-7).

Alongside of this confidence, however, there rings out a note of impatient fretfulness. Weariness of the bustle in the Vanity Fair of Rome brought to this merry companion his intervals of heart-searching. Surrender day by day to the solicitations of purely trivial circumstance produced a natural revulsion against such waste of time. Led by a too facile compliance into insipid society, he awakes upon occasion to a sense of paltry achievement and lost opportunity. Etiquette, he felt, wars with poetry:

I walk you out: I see you home:
I listen, sir, to all your chatter.
Your words and deeds I praise through Rome—
D’you think it really doesn’t matter?
Yet all this time I might instead
Have fashioned poems in my head....
Tell me, Labullus, is this right?
Can any call it honour bright
That just to swell _your_ client-crew
The books _I_ write should be too few?
About a month has gone so fleet
I’ve hardly filled a single sheet.
In this the poet is the sinner
If he won’t stay at home, to dinner.[1514]

The same fretful malady of the age troubled him when he wrote to his namesake Julius Martialis on making the best of time:

Defer not joys thou mayst not win from fate:
Judge only what is past to be thine own.
Cares with a linkéd chain of sorrow wait.
Mirth tarries not; but soon on wing is flown.
With both hands hold it—clasped in full embrace,
Still from thy breast it oft will glide away!
To say “I mean to live” is folly’s place:
To-morrow’s life comes late; live, then, to-day.[1515]

The same friend is reminded that social duties may hamper one in living one’s own life:

If you and I, dear Martial, might
Enjoy our days in Care’s despite,
And could control each leisure hour,
Both free to cull life’s real flower,
Then we should never know the halls
Of patrons, or law’s wearying calls,
Or troublous court or family pride;
But we should chat or read or ride,
Play games or stroll in porch or shade,
Visit the hot baths or “the Maid.”
Such haunts should lure us constantly:
Such should engage our energy.
_Now_ neither lives his life, but he
Marks precious days that pass and flee.
These days are lost, but their amount
Is surely set to our account.
Knowledge the clue to life can give:
Then wherefore hesitate to live?[1516]

Yet in spite of this discontent over a partially spoiled life, it may be doubted whether Martial was capable of more than he accomplished. He could only be himself. While he ought not to be called entirely shallow, he lacked the profundity which might have made him other than a laureate of the occasional.

The two glaring faults in Martial, servility and obscenity, brought each their own nemesis: where he is most flattering he is least simple, and where he is most indecent he is least witty. Both defects sprang from his circumstances. Never wealthy, he found in adroit dedications a more likely source of profit than in book-sales. Subservience towards patrons, on whose uncertain favours he had to rely, was inevitable. Hence adulation of the emperor, cringing to exalted personages, and continual clamour for bounty. He flattered Domitian because there was no choice. In touch with court, he could not logically keep out of his verse the official title of “Lord and God” assumed by the emperor: not belonging to the political opposition, he had no doubt a genuine belief in the imperial system; and, as the most fulsome compliments were acceptable, he resorted to mendacious homage. It is not merely that it appears historically ludicrous in Martial to apply to Domitian the epithet of chaste (_pudicus_) or to commend one of his own volumes as fit to be read without a blush by that permanently red-faced prince; but it is also, as already suggested, noticeable that he pays a literary penalty for his moral weakness herein by deviating from his usual straightforwardness of style. In the midst of his extremest sycophancy, he becomes artificial owing to the intrusion of over-ingenious conceits. Thus, it is grotesque to assert[1517] that Rome envies the barbarians with whom Domitian has been warring in person, because they were lucky enough to see the emperor’s face, whereas the poor capital had to be content with the laurel-wreathed despatch of victory. And no one can take seriously the far-fetched absurdity of his congratulations to the enemy on “seeing Domitian’s face at close quarters and in that countenance finding material for both terror and rejoicing.” Similar extravagance marks his welcome on his Majesty’s return from Dacia,

Come, Caesar, e’en by night—let stars delay;
If thou but come, thy folk will find it day.[1518]

His argument, also, in favour of making requests to the divine emperor is far too clever; “it is not the sculptor of an image who makes a god; it is the man who prays.”[1519]

Martial’s indecency palls no less than his adulation. We are not amused. The foulest epigrams force on the reader a resilient disgust as if from some sickening contagion; and repeated shocks end in boredom. Conceivably it was a salutary instinct that prompted the quaint idea of a Delphin editor to remove from their original place in the text all the unsavoury epigrams into a _musée secret_ at the end of the volume, in which might be taken one nauseating draught of concentrated impropriety. They number more than 150 or over ten per cent of the whole. Many open out vistas down by-lanes of hideous vice. It might be argued that even the foulest practices of sexual inverts had to be included in a complete picture of pagan Rome; and that there was much to which an avowed realist could not shut his eyes. Perhaps just because in their naked _Romana simplicitas_ the worst epigrams are so repulsive, they might, though filthier, be considered less pernicious than Ovid, or than a sex-encumbered modern novel, which often lacks Martial’s truth to life. Here we have a repellent rather than an erotic obscenity. The author realizes that some apology is needed for overstepping the limits of propriety. His poems are not for the prim and prudish, who are in set terms warned away with the mischievous suggestion that the warning will only whet their curiosity.[1520] Certain of his books he can recommend as respectable:[1521] in general, however, he does not address children but the seasoned onlookers at the Floralia and folk of easy morality.[1522] So the freedom of Book XI is defended by the licence of the Saturnalia.[1523] The fundamental excuse offered is one which not a few Roman writers were at pains to make by way of protest against any assumption that he who composes foul verses must himself be foul. Martial’s declaration “our page is wanton but our life is clean”[1524] is couched in terms similar to those used by Catullus and Ovid, and practically repeated by Pliny, Apuleius and Ausonius.[1525] The attitude suggests that the author had no objection to giving readers the particular spice they wanted: sometimes a fine poem is marred by a gross jest reserved as a surprise.[1526] Beside so much nauseating coarseness, the claim of _ludimus innocui_ (VII. xii. 9) may sound ironical; yet this can be said by way of comment, if not of palliation—he is not a slanderer, for in general real names are avoided. If victims were foully satirized, it was left to themselves or others to fit the cap. He resents the impudent dishonesty of a verse-writer who “vomits viperous venom” under Martial’s name.[1527]

His character is too complex to be satisfactorily analysed on psychological principles. Whether one thinks of a super-man as well as a subter-man within the same self, or thinks of the surprising contradictions in him as liberated at different crises from the oubliettes of a chequered experience, the diversity of his genius remains beyond full explanation. If one side belonged to a realm where ethics and ideals seemed contraband, he presented another side in which sentiment under various aspects prevailed. Wrapped up with the sentiment on this more kindly and genial side there is admittedly some conventionality: the Greek tradition may act in one place, and the Latin tradition through poets like Catullus in another. A certain amount of sentiment may be due to the growth of more humane feelings in his age, as is traceable in Seneca. Yet a large portion must be ascribed to Martial’s own disposition. These phases of sentiment are most observable in his attitude to the dead, his genius for friendship, and his love of nature.

His best known epitaph, that on a little girl Erotion, bespeaks for her spirit in the land of shades the sheltering protection of Flaccilla and Fronto, his parents, who had gone before. It ends:

Soft be the turf that shrouds her! Tenderly
Rest on her, earth; for she trod light on thee.[1528]

This conclusion, suggestive of the “sit terra tibi leuis” in sepulchral inscriptions, was twisted to malicious effect by Martial himself on a disreputable person:

Light may Earth’s crumbling sand be laid on thee
That dogs may dig thy bones up easily![1529]

Long afterwards it was parodied in reference to the massive buildings of the architect Vanbrugh:

Lie heavy on him, earth! for he
Laid many heavy loads on thee.

A slave-boy is thus commemorated:

Dear Alcimus, Death robbed thy lord of thee
When young, and lightly now Labican soil
Veils thee in turf: take for thy tomb to be
No tottering mass of Parian stone which toil
Vainly erects to moulder o’er the dead.
Rather let pliant box thy grave entwine;
Let the vine-tendril grateful shadow shed
O’er the green grass bedew’d with tears of mine.
Sweet youth, accept the tokens of my grief:
Here doth my tribute last as long as Time.
When Lachesis _my_ final thread shall weave,
I crave such plants above my bones may climb.[1530]

There is a manifest sense not merely of the poet’s personal loss but of the blow to the father of a youth from North Italy who has died in Asia Minor:

My Sixth Book, Rufus, thou canst never greet:
It may not look, friend, to be read by thee.
Thine ill-starred sojourn in the curséd East
Restores but bones and ashes to thy sire.
Widow’d of Rufus, come, Bologna, weep:
Ring out lament thro’ all Aemilia!
How great a love, how young a life is lost!
(_Heu qualis pietas, heu quam breuis occidit aetas!_)
He had but seen a fifth Olympiad.
Ah, Rufus, wont with mindful heart to quote
My trifles and recite my jests in full,
Accept thy sorrowing friend’s brief tear-stained song
And deem this incense offered from afar.
(_Accipe cum fletu maesti breue carmen amici_
_Atque haec absentis thura fuisse puta._)[1531]

Kindly affection towards associates came easily to Martial. Q. Ovidius’s birthday and his own he considers

Days that all others in the year transcend:
One gave me birth: the other, more—a friend.[1532]

Enthusiasm animates his admiration for Decianus:

If there be one to rank with those few friends
Whom antique faith and age-long fame attends;
If, steeped in Latin or Athenian lore,
There be a good man truthful at the core;
If one who guards the right and loves what’s fair,
Who could not utter an unworthy prayer,
If one whose prop is magnanimity,
I swear, my Decianus, thou art he.[1533]

Again, in a brief review of an intimacy of thirty-four years with Julius Martialis, he finds it has contributed on the whole to happiness, but pathetically fights against the notion of making friendship too warm, lest its loss prove overwhelming:

Good comrades, Julius, have we been
And four-and-thirty harvests seen:
We have had sweetness mix’d with sour,
Yet oftener came the happy hour.
If for each day a pebble stood,
And either black or white were hued,
Then, ranged in masses separate,
The brighter ones would dominate.
If thou wouldst shun some heartaches sore
And ward off gloom that gnaws thy core,
Grapple none closely to thy heart—
If less thy joy, then less thy smart.[1534]

Martial’s appreciation of the country was inspired by something deeper than the relief felt by a jaded town-dweller. His ideals may not have been mightily exalted, but he had the poet’s eye for landscape and colour, and therewith a gift of fancy. Nowhere does he seem more poetic in his attitude towards external nature than in his lines on Vesuvius visited some years after the terrible eruption of A.D. 79. The poem has the interest of treating volcanic soil, which made both a practical and an imaginative appeal to the Romans.[1535] The poet’s recollection of the old fertile greenery and cool shadows of the vines (_hic est pampineis uiridis modo Vesbius umbris_) contrasts with the bare desolation of the land now buried beneath the mournful ashes of the volcano (_cuncta iacent flammis et tristi mersa fauilla_). Then an exquisite touch of romantic imagination pictures the vine-slopes as once haunted by the Wine-god, near the dancing-places of the Satyrs (moderns might fancy them as gnomes and elves)—a region where Pompeii enjoyed the patronage of the Queen of Love and Herculaneum was called after the renowned demi-god:

This is Vesuvius where but late ’mid vines
Green shadows played, and noble clusters filled
The brimming vats. This is the very ridge
More dear to Bacchus e’en than Nysa’s heights.
On this same mount the Satyrs yesteryear
Did foot their frolic dance: here Venus found
A sweeter home than Lacedaemon gave.
A city here bore Hercules’ great name:
Now all lies whelm’d in fire and ashes dread,
And Heaven might well repent such fatal power.[1536]

So the poem ends in a tone of heartfelt sorrow over beauty destroyed, while other pieces are full of a healthy delight in fresh air and country scenes. A plane-tree might set his fancy roaming into fairy-land:

Oft ’neath this tree the tipsy fauns have played,
And the late pipe hath scared a silent home.
Fleeing the midnight Pan o’er lonely mead
Oft ’neath its leaves the woodland Dryad lurked.[1537]

Nature could bring him lively sensations of sight and smell, so that he scents the fragrance from the myrtle, from the vine flowering white in its first clusters, and from the grass newly nibbled by the sheep.[1538] Such images for the moment at least shut out the revolting vices of the city.

His own career in retrospect, when he left Rome for ever, contained much to dissatisfy him. But though he had fallen short of the noblest ideals, his experience enabled him to appraise aright the value of a good conscience in a review of bygone years. To this thought he has given admirable expression:

Good men make life a twofold span to last:
Twice doth he live who can enjoy his past.[1539]

The pith of style which contributed to Martial’s vogue in his own day has always kept his poems alive; for quotability favours the preservation of literary work. Among his memorable sayings, in addition to the couplet quoted, are “To live is not a life—one must live well” (_non est uiuere sed ualere uita_, VI. lxx. 15); “To-morrow’s life comes late—live then to-day” (_sera nimis uita est crastina, uiue hodie_, I. xv. 12); “Accept the lot thou hast—prefer naught else” (_quod sis esse uelis nihilque malis_, X. xlvii. 12); “He hath no home whose home is everywhere” (_quisquis ubique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat_, VII. lxxiii. 6), which suggests his curt apostrophe to the owner of a spacious but comfortless mansion, “How well you are—not housed!” (_quam bene non habitas!_ XII. l. 8.) His dislike of shams appears in “There is a gulf ’twixt goodness and pretence” (_refert sis bonus an uelis uideri_, VIII. xxxviii. 7). Many sundials have repeated his reflection on the flight of “sunny days that are lost but set to our account” (_soles ... qui nobis pereunt et imputantur_, V. xx. 12-13); and there is educational wisdom in the hint “Boys who keep fit in summer learn enough” (_aestate pueri si ualent satis discunt_, X. lxii. 12). For literary production he values patronage: “Give us but patrons—Virgils will not fail” (_sint Maecenates, non derunt, Flacce, Marones_, VIII. lvi. 5); but he goes deeper when he says “To live, a book must have a soul within” (_uicturus genium debet habere liber_, VI. lxi. 10), which is in keeping with “’Tis not a reader your books need but Apollo” (_non lectore tuis opus est sed Apolline libris_, X. xxi. 3). On the risk of publishing too many books he reminds himself “The rare delights: so early fruits please best” (_rara iuuant: primis sic maior gratia pomis_, IV. xxix. 3).

Martial’s influence began to act on Juvenal,[1540] and remained operative throughout antiquity. Fathers of the Church showed knowledge of him, and grammarians found illustrative material in his words and phrases. During the Renaissance he was much studied and edited. His hendecasyllabics were constantly imitated by the neo-Latin poets of Italy and France for satiric purposes. None followed more keenly in his steps than the Hungarian Janus Pannonius (1434-1472), who, besides modelling his epigrams in freedom of utterance upon Martial’s elegiacs and hendecasyllabics, enthusiastically praised him as a “father of wit” (_ludorum pater et pater leporum_)[1541] to be invoked in preference to Apollo and the Muses. Alongside there also flows (what is present in Martial himself) the stream of Catullian influence observable in the easy though occasionally solecistic _Basia_ of the _Pancharis_ by Jean Bonnefons (Bonefonius) printed at Paris in 1587.

Then the influence passed over from Latin into the epigrammatic writing of all modern literatures. Even the couplets of the _Xenia_ bore fruit; for from them sprang the sarcastic _Xenien_ in which Goethe and Schiller confronted dullness and satirized their literary enemies. Although in quite recent times the epigram may have been less cultivated, in his own field Martial remains, as a pattern, supreme.

MINOR FLAVIAN POETS

The minor and lost poetry of the Flavian era reaches a considerable amount. Vespasian, though an enemy to philosophers, gave financial encouragement to rhetors and poets. Both his sons, Titus and Domitian, wrote poems; but the latter, after his accession, did little for poetry, unless we put to his credit the continuance of Capitoline and Alban competitions which ministered to his pride by eliciting laudatory verse. Curiatius Maternus, best known from Tacitus’s _Dialogus_, has been included among poets of the Neronian age, when his career as dramatist began. His tragedy of _Thyestes_, however, and his _praetextae_ entitled _Domitius_ and _Cato_ belong to Vespasian’s reign. The epic poetry of Saleius Bassus may have been, like that of Valerius Flaccus, based on mythology. Statius’s father was more attracted by current themes.

Under Domitian, dilettanti might keep the path of safety, if they confined themselves to such compositions as erotic poems, conventional epic, eulogies and colourless occasional verse for recitation before friends or for public competitions or for private exchange with other literary men. The authors were the kind of persons whom we meet in Statius, Martial or the younger Pliny. A considerable list could be drawn up from these three sources; but it may suffice to select, in lyric, Vestricius Spurinna,[1542] a military commander on Otho’s side; in epic, Julius Cerealis and the Codrus or Cordus whose _Theseid_ is mentioned in Juvenal’s second line; in erotic verse, Verginius Rufus, an elderly friend of Pliny’s; Arruntius Stella, consul in 101, author of passionate poems on Violentilla, whom he afterwards married; and Calenus’s wife, Sulpicia, to whom the later so-called satire of Sulpicia in seventy hexameters should not be ascribed.[1543] Turnus succeeded in writing satire and yet surviving at the court of Domitian.[1544] His brother Scaeva or Scaev(i)us Memor, we have seen, wrote tragedies, as did Canius Rufus, along with others mentioned by Martial and Juvenal. There are also traces of lost _palliatae_ and _togatae_. Neither these, however, nor productions like the _Agaue_ by Statius prove that there was any real renascence of drama. It had fallen on evil days.

LITERATURE UNDER NERVA AND TRAJAN

A.D. 96–A.D. 117