[In the following excerpt from an essay first published in 1900, Boissier focuses on Martial's incisive portraits of character types in the fashionable society of his day and on the poet's attitude toward women.]

… We possess nothing of Martial's save epigrams, and probably he did not write anything else: he seems to have made a speciality of this form of verse. We know that the word epigram had among the ancients a much wider significance than it has to-day. It was, properly speaking, a short inscription of a few lines, and it denoted the epitaph on a tomb, or the dedication of an altar, as well as some malicious skit scribbled on a wall. With Martial satire predominates in the epigram. It is scarce more in his case than a few lines of verse, sprightly, vivacious and witty, which humorously tells some anecdote, banters an eccentricity, or cracks a joke. As the interest is mainly in the quip with which it concludes, he prepares his reader for it in advance, and, from the start, all leads up to the final sting. This method of proceeding, which is nearly the same in all, risks making them seem in time monotonous, and when a large number are accumulated, one upon another, the monotony grows still more sensible. Martial, as a man of taste, was aware of it, and so he is careful to apologise for his epigrams. From the outset he frankly confesses that all is not irreproachable in his works: 'There are good things in them, there are middling, there are yet more that are bad.' But we must not be too hard on epigrams. If but one half be good, that suffices; the rest must stand excused. Besides what need of reading them all at once? Do you think there are too many? then only read a few; you will turn to the others later. This counsel is sound: Martial is one of those authors who should be taken in moderate doses and at intervals.

But the true method for finding pleasure in his study is to put yourself back in his time, to pass with him for a moment into his life and that of the people with whom he associated. It was a wealthy society, restricted and select; he is very careful to tell us that he does not address himself to everybody: 'Others write for the multitude; for my part I only aim at pleasing the few'; he wishes to divert men of taste, men of wit accustomed to light conversation, who are not startled at a risky story, who pardon a piece of foolery, if it be but neatly put. His book seems to deserve another fate than that of being solemnly stored in a library cheek by jowl with works of philosophy and science, and from time to time being consulted by persons of a serious turn of mind. As it is compact in form, of agreeable aspect and quite portable, it can be carried under the toga and taken out and read under the porticoes or carried to those dinner-parties where a good company is assembled. Towards the end of the repast, when the guests are tired of talking charioteers and horses, or retailing the scandal of the day, they will pass to Martial's latest epigrams and regale themselves therewith. It is hardly a change of subject, for Martial too likes to speak of all that attracts the frivolous curiosity of the idlers of the fashionable world; he is always chatting of the minor incidents of the public games—of the snow which fell one day in the middle of the performance without either Emperor or public leaving their places; of the actor who played the part of Mucius Scavola, and so bravely held his hand in the flaming brazier; of the lion which devoured its keeper, and played with a little hare which had taken refuge between its paws; to these add the good stories current in town, naughty anecdotes and other improprieties, to which the ladies are besought not to listen, so as to make sure that they will strain their ears the better to hear them.

It cannot be said that Martial tells us much that is very new about contemporary society; he was not free enough to speak of it as he would have wished; in his position of dependence on the people about him, it was inadvisable to find fault with any one. He is constantly protesting against those who would find malicious allusions in his verses; ludimus innocue. So timid a man could not be a very profound observer. For fear of compromising himself he lingers in the commonplaces of everyday ethics; he attacks the misers and the prodigals, those who do nothing and those who do too much; the rich man who permits the belief that he is poor, for fear he may be forced to be generous; the poor man who wants to pass for being rich and at night, to defray the day's expenses, pawns his ring; the insolent upstart, for ever bragging of his fortune; the legacy-hunter; the parasite in quest of a dinner; the poet who assassinates every one in his verses, and so on. These are real and vital figures, but of slight originality and not drawn in strong relief.

His painting of women is not carried to the point of blackness as in Juvenal. At bottom, however, he forms pretty nearly the same estimate of them. It is clear from what he says that they are quite emancipated from the servitude and seclusion of old; they go into society, they accompany their husbands to banquets; seated on their high chairs, they await their visitors who come to pay their respects and tell them the news. What caused their independence was that they held their fortune apart from their husbands', and guarded it jealously,¹ so as to be able to carry it off on the day of divorce—and divorces were so frequent! To administer their property they selected a steward, and, if we are to believe that evil tongue of Martial's, this steward was sometimes a very pretty boy: 'Tell me, my dear Marianus, who is that little curled darling, who never quits your wife's side, who leans on the back of her chair, and is for ever bending down to whisper some sweet nothing in her ear? His legs are free of every hair, and dainty rings crowd his every finger. You answer me that he is her steward. Poor fool!—how fit are you to play the part of simpleton at the theatre by the side of Latinus! 'Tis not your wife's business that he does, but rather yours.'² It is evident that the women were not content to use the independence they had won; many abused it. To prove conclusively to themselves and convince the whole world that there was no inequality between themselves and men, they assumed their weaknesses, made a display of their absurdities, and invaded their professions; they affected no longer to speak anything but Greek, they posed as bluestockings and pedants, they studied philosophy, they wrote poems, even love poems. One of them, Sulpicia, the wife of Calenus, was famous for her terribly passionate poems; it is true they were addressed to her husband, which disarms the severest critic. Martial admires her like every one else, he compares her to Sappho and the nymph Egeria.³ But, in speaking thus, he does not quite express what he thinks: in reality these talents which women are seeking to acquire cause him disquietude. He longs, for his own part, that she whom he marries—if he ever does marry—will not be too learned; the equality they would fain establish betwixt men and women is to him of no good omen, and he avails himself of old Cato's saying: 'On the day they are our equals they shall be our masters':—

'Inferior matrona suo sit, Prisce, marito.
    Non aliter fient femina virque pares.

To complete this picture of fashionable life of which Martial affords us a glimpse, we must place beside the woman who tricks herself out, who bedizens herself, who paints her face, 'who dreads the rain because she has powdered herself, and the sun because she has laid on rouge'—her companion, the man of fashion, whom the poet calls the coxcomb or the curled exquisite, bellus homo, crispulus. He is somewhat of a newcomer in Roman society; he was almost unknown at the Republican epoch, and so he never figures in the comedies of that age. Perhaps we might find him in the mimes of the Augustan epoch, when private life was readily put on the stage, where you could see the lover, surprised by the unexpected return of the husband, taking refuge in a chest. There are already some traces of his presence in Ovid's Art of Love, but it is Martial who has depicted him to the life. 'A coxcomb is a man whose hair has a well-made parting always smelling of perfumes, who hums between his teeth the ditties of Egypt and Spain, and can beat time with his hairless arms; who never, the whole day, stirs from the ladies' chairs and has always something to tell them, who reads through the letters they have received from various quarters and undertakes to reply to them; whose one great object in life is to preserve his clothes from being rumpled by his neighbour's elbow, who knows the tattle of the town and will tell you the name of the woman of whom such an one is enamoured, who is a constant diner-out and can rehearse the whole pedigree of the horse Hirpinus.'⁴ Here, in a few lines, we have a finished portrait, which puts the fellow before our eyes.

People have been right in trying to discover who the persons are to whom Martial addresses his epigrams⁵: they consist of nearly the whole of the distinguished society of the time. We first come across the servants, the freedmen of the prince, those, that is to say, who, under his name, govern the Empire; then, what remains of the old aristocracy, much diminished and sorely impoverished by the tyranny of the Cæsars, and the new nobility in course of replacing it; provincial governors, generals of armies, senators who have for long held high place; others, less known but already making their mark, like that Palfurius Sura, Trajan's friend, for whom the future reserved so brilliant a fortune. Add to these the wealthy patrons of the arts, the amateurs, the collectors, the lettered men of the world of society—Silius Italicus, who had written an epic poem, and that Arruntius Stella, a king of fashion and a writer of precious little poems, 'into which he put as many pearls and brilliants as he wore upon his fingers.' Tacitus is not included in the list; he was too serious a person for that, and must have been mildly horrified by Martial's playful muse; but we find in it his friend, the younger Pliny, whom the poet only approaches with respect, and who reminds him of Cato. One of the most curious in the list is that Antonius Primus who had his hour of celebrity. He belonged to Toulouse, and his compatriots had, in the patois of their country, surnamed him Becco (the man with the big nose). Condemned under Nero for the crime of forgery, he had found means to remount the saddle, and, on the death of Otho, he commanded a legion in the army of Pannonia. He resolutely declared for Vespasian, threw himself upon Italy, though he had been ordered to do nothing of the kind, defeated Vitellius in defiance of everybody, pillaged and burnt Cremona, and took Rome by storm. His soldiers worshipped him, and would follow no other leader; he fascinated them by his audacity, by his ready tongue. In the councils of war he talked more loudly than the others, so as to be heard by the centurions outside the tent. In the thickest of the fight he passed through the ranks, finding a word for each, encouraging the brave, treating the cowards as pékins (pagani), always ready, if he saw them wavering, to snatch up the eagle and throw himself upon the foe. He was one of those heroic soldiers of fortune whom factions use during a struggle, and who are given the cold shoulder after success has been won. He, the war at an end, disappears from history, and we should not know what became of him, did we not find him again in Martial. He had gone back to Toulouse and was peacefully waxing old there. As he was well pleased that accounts of the life of Rome should still reach him in his retirement, he read Martial's epigrams; the poet had been careful to forward them to him himself, remarking that a book has more value when it comes directly from the author than when it is purchased at the bookseller's. This individual truly deserves to be never forgotten; he is the first Gascon whose memory has been kept green.

Notes

¹ From the praise accorded by Martial to one of them who merged her fortune in her husband's, we find that was a very rare exception.

² v. 61

³ x. 35; vii. 69.

⁴ iii. 63.

⁵ See Giese, De personis a Martiale commemoratis. See also the index nominum, which Mommsen has inserted in the second edition of Keil's letters of Pliny. The persons of whom Martial speaks are often to be found in Pliny.