SOURCE: "Martial" in Post-Augustan Poetry, from Seneca to Juvenal, Clarendon Press, 1909, pp. 251-86.

[In the essay below, Butler offers a variety of judgments regarding Martial's life and work. He complains that Martial lacks seriousness and is guilty of lewdness, yet he credits the poet with an elegant style and a realistic view of his own abilities.]

Marcus Valerius Martialis, like Quintilian, Seneca, and Lucan, was a Spaniard by birth, and, unlike those writers, never became thoroughly reconciled to life at Rome. He was born at Bilbilis,¹ a small town of Hispania Tarraconensis. The exact year of his birth is uncertain; but as the tenth book of his epigrams, written between 95 and 98 A.D., contains a reference (x. 24) to his fifty-seventh birthday, he must have been born between 38 and 41 A.D. His birthday was the 1st of March, a fact to which he owes his name Martialis.² Of the position of his parents, Valerius Fronto and Flaccilla,³ we have no evidence. That they were not wealthy is clear from the circumstances of their son. But they were able to give him a regular literary education,⁴ although, unlike his fellow-countrymen whom we have mentioned above, he was educated in his native province. But the life of a provincial did not satisfy him. Conscious, perhaps, of his literary gifts, he went, in 64 A.D.,⁵ like so many a young provincial, to make his fortune at Rome. There he attached himself as client to the powerful Spanish family of the Senecas, and found a friendly reception also in the house of Calpurnius Piso.⁶ But fortune was against him; as he was congratulating himself on his good luck in starting life at Rome under such favourable auspices, the Pisonian conspiracy (65 A.D.) failed, and his patrons fell before the wrath of Nero.⁷ His career must be commenced anew. Of his life from this point to the reign of Domitian we know little. But this much is certain, that he endured all the indignities and hardships of a client's life,⁸ and that he chose this degrading career in preference to the active career of the Roman bar. He had no taste for oratory, and rejected the advice of his friend Gaius⁹ and his distinguished compatriot Quintilian to seek a livelihood as an advocate or as a politician. 'That is not life!' he replies to Quintilian:

vivere quod propero pauper nec inutilis annis,
  da veniam: properat vivere nemo satis.
differat hoc patrios optat qui vincere census
  atriaque immodicis artat imaginibus.
(ii. 90. 3)

His ideals and ambitions were low, and his choice had, as we shall see, a degrading effect upon his poetry. He chose rather to live on such modest fortune as he may have possessed, on the client's dole, and such gifts as his complimentary epigrams may have won from his patrons. These gifts must have been in many cases of a trifling description,¹⁰ but they may occasionally have been on a more generous scale. At any rate, by the year 94 A.D., we find him the possessor of a little farm at Nomentum,¹¹ and a house on the Quirinal.¹² Although he must presumably have written a considerable quantity of verse in his earlier years, it is not till 80 A.D. that he makes an appearance on the stage of literature. In that year the Flavian amphitheatre was consecrated by the Emperor Titus, and Martial celebrated the fact by the publication of his first book, the Spectaculorum Liber. It is of small literary value, but it was his first step on the ladder of fame. Titus conferred on him the ius trium liberorum, although he seems not to have entered on the enjoyment of this privilege till the reign of Domitian.¹³ He thus first came in touch with the imperial circle. From this time forward we get a continual stream of verse in fulsome praise of Domitian and his freedman. But his flattery met with small reward. There are many poems belauding the princeps, but few that thank him. The most that he acquired by his flattery was the honorary military tribunate and his elevation to the equestrian order.¹⁴ Of material profit he got little,¹⁵ save such as his improved social position may have conferred on him indirectly.

Four years after the publication of the Spectaculorum Liber (i.e. later in 84 and 85)¹⁶ he published two books, the thirteenth and fourteenth, composed of neat but trifling poems on the presents (Xenia and Apophoreta) which it was customary to give at the feast of the Saturnalia. From this point his output was continuous and steady, as the following table will show:¹⁷

• I, 11. 85 or early in 86.
• III. 87 or early in 88.
• IV. December (Satumalia) 88.
• V. Autumn, 89.
• VI. Summer or Autumn, 90.
• VII. December, 92.
• VIII. 93.
• IX. Summer, 94.
• X. 1. December, 95.
• X. 2. 98.
• XI. 97.
• XII. Late in 101.

His life during this period was uneventful. He lived expensively and continually complains of lack of funds and of the miseries of a client's life. Once only (about 88) the discomfort of his existence seems to have induced him to abandon Rome. He took up his residence at Forum Cornelii, the modern Imola, but soon returned to Rome.¹⁸ It was not till 98 that he decided to leave the capital for good and to return to his Spanish home. A new princeps was on the throne. Martial had associated his work too closely with Domitian and his court to feel at his ease with Nerva. He sent the new emperor a selection from his tenth and eleventh books, which we may, perhaps, conjecture to have been expurgated. He denounced the dead Domitian in a brilliant epigram which may have formed part of that selection, but which has only been preserved to us by the scholiast on Juvenal (iv. 38):

Flavia gens, quantum tibi tertius abstulit heres!
  paene fuit tanti non habuisse duos.

How much thy third has wronged thee,
 Flavian race!
'Twere better ne'er to have bred the other
  brace.
Anon.

But he felt that times were changed and that there was no place now for his peculiar talent for flattery (x. 72. 8):

non est hic dominus sed imperator,
sed iustissimus omnium senator,
per quem de Stygia domo reducta est
siccis rustica Veritas capillis.
hoc sub principe, si sapis, caveto
verbis, Roma, prioribus loquaris.

                an emperor
Is ours, no master as of yore,
Himself the Senate's very crown

Of justice, who has called from down
In her deep Stygian duress
The hoyden Truth, with tangled tress.
Be wise, Rome, see you shape anew
Your tongue; your prince would have it true.
A. E. Street

Let flattery fly to Parthia. Rome is no place for her (x. 4). Martial had made his name: he was read far and wide throughout the Empire.¹⁹ He could afford to retire from the city that had given him much fame and much pleasure, but had balanced its gifts by a thousand vexations and indignities. Pliny assisted him with journey-money, and after a thirty-four years' sojourn in Italy he returned to Bilbilis to live a life of dolce far niente. The kindness of a wealthy friend, a Spanish lady named Marcella,²⁰ gave him an estate on which he lived in comfort, if not in affluence. He published but one book in Spain, the twelfth, written, he says in the preface, in a very few days. He lived in peace and happiness, though at times he sighed for the welcome of the public for whom he had catered so long,²¹ and chafed under the lack of sympathy and culture among his Spanish neighbours.²² He died in 104. 'Martial is dead,' says Pliny, 'and I am grieved to hear it. He was a man of genius, with a shrewd and vigorous wit. His verses are full of point and sting, and as frank as they are witty. I provided him with money for his journey when he left Rome; I owed it to my friendship for him, and to the verses which he wrote in my honour'—then follows Mart. x. 20—'Was I not right to speed him on his way, and am I not justified in mourning his death, seeing that he wrote thus concerning me? He gave me what he could, he would have given more had he been able. And yet what greater gift can one man give another than by handing down his name and fame to all eternity. I hear you say that Martial's verses will not live to all eternity? You may be right; at any rate, he hoped for their immortality when he wrote them' (Plin. Ep. iii. 21).

Of Martial's character we shall have occasion to speak later. There is nothing in the slight, but generous, tribute of Pliny that has to be unsaid.

Of the circles in which he moved his epigrams give us a brilliant picture; of his exact relations with the persons whom he addresses it is hard to speak with certainty. Many distinguished figures of the day appear as the objects of his flattery. There are Spaniards, Quintilian, Lucinianus Maternus and Canius Rufus, all distinguished men of letters, the poets Silius Italicus, Stertinius Avitus, Arruntius Stella, the younger Pliny, the orator Aquilius Regulus, Lentulus Sura, the friend of Trajan, the rich knights, Atedius Melior, and Claudius Etruscus, the soldier Norbanus, and many others. With Juvenal also he seems to have enjoyed a certain intimacy. Statius he never mentions, although he must have moved in the same circles.²³ His intimates—as might be expected—are for the most part, as far as we can guess, of lower rank. There are the centurions Varus and Pudens, Terentius Priscus his compatriot, Decianus the Stoic from the Spanish town of Emerita, the self-sacrificing Quintus Ovidius, Martial's neighbour at Nomentum and a fellow-client of Seneca, and, above all, Julius Martialis. His enemies and envious rivals are attacked and bespattered with filth in many an epigram, but Martial, true to his promise in the preface to his first book, conceals their true names from us.

Of his vie intime he tells us little. As far as we may judge, he was unmarried. It is true that several of his epigrams purport to be addressed to his wife. But two facts show clearly that this lady is wholly imaginary. Even Martial could not have spoken of his wife in such disgusting language as, for instance, he uses in xi. 104, while in another poem (ii. 92) he clearly expresses his intention not to marry:

natorum mihi ius trium roganti
Musarum pretium dedit mearum
solus qui poterat. valebis, uxor,
non debet domini perire munus.

The honorary ius trium liberorum had given him, he says, all that marriage could have brought him. He has no intention of making the emperor's generosity superfluous by taking a wife. He preferred the untrammelled life of a bachelor. So only could he enjoy the pleasures which for him meant 'life'. He is neither an impressive nor a very interesting figure. He has many qualities that repel, even if we do not take him too seriously; and though he may have been a pleasant and in many respects most amiable companion, he has few characteristics that arrest our attention or compel our respect. More will be said of his virtues and his vices in the pages that follow. It is the artist rather than the man that wakens our interest.

In Martial we have a poet who devoted himself to the one class of poetry which, apart from satire, the conditions of the Silver Age were qualified to produce in any real excellence—the epigram. In a period when rhetorical smartness and point were the predominant features of literature, the epigram was almost certain to flourish. But Roman poets in general, and Martial in particular, gave a character to the epigram which has clung to it ever since, and has actually changed the significance of the word itself.

In the best days of the Greek epigram the prime consideration was not that a poem should be pointed, but that it should be what is summed up in the untranslatable French epithet lapidaire; that is to say, it should possess the conciseness, finish, and relevance required for an inscription on a monument. Its range was wide; it might express the lover's passion, the mourner's grief, the artist's skill, the cynic's laughter, the satirist's scorn. It was all poetry in miniature. Point is not wanting, but its chief characteristics are delicacy and charm. 'No good epigram sacrifices its finer poetical substance to the desire of making a point, and none of the best depend on having a point at all.'²⁴ Transplanted to the soil of Italy the epigram changes. The less poetic Roman, with his coarse tastes, his brutality, his tendency to satire, his appreciation of the incisive, wrought it to his own use. In his hands it loses most of its sensuous and lyrical elements and makes up for the loss by the cultivation of point. Above all, it becomes the instrument of satire, stinging like a wasp where the satirist pure and simple uses the deadlier weapons of the bludgeon and the rapier.

The epigram must have been exceedingly plentiful from the very dawn of the movement which was to make Rome a city of belles-lettres. It is the plaything of the dilettante litterateur, so plentiful under the empire.²⁵ Apart from the work of Martial, curiously few epigrams have come down to us; nevertheless, in the vast majority of the very limited number we possess the same Roman characteristics may be traced. In the non-lyrical epigrams of Catullus, in the shorter poems of the Appendix Vergiliana, there is the same vigour, the same coarse humour, the same pungency that find their best expression in Martial. Even in the epigrams attributed to Seneca in the Anthologia Latina,²⁶ something of this may be observed, though for the most part they lack the personal note and leave the impression of mere juggling with words. It is in this last respect, the attention to point, that they show most affinity with Martial. Only the epigrams in the same collection attributed to Petronius²⁷ seem to preserve something of the Greek spirit of beauty untainted by the hard, unlovely, incisive spirit of Rome.

Martial was destined to fix the type of the epigram for the future. For pure poetry he had small gifts. He was endowed with a warm heart, a real love for simplicity of life and for the beauties of nature. But he had no lyrical enthusiasm, and was incapable of genuine passion. He entered heartwhole on all his amatory adventures, and left them with indifference. Even the cynical profligacy of Ovid shows more capacity for true love. At their best Martial's erotic epigrams attain to a certain shallow prettiness,²⁸ for the most part they do not rise above the pornographic. And even though he shows a real capacity for friendship, he also reveals an infinite capacity for cringing or impudent vulgarity in his relations with those who were merely patrons or acquaintances. His needy circumstances led him, as we shall see, to continual expressions of a peevish mendicancy, while the artificiality and pettiness of the life in which he moved induced an excessive triviality and narrowness of outlook.

He makes no great struggle after originality. The slightness of his themes and of his genre relieved him of that necessity. Some of his prettiest poems are mere variations on some of the most famous lyrics of Catullus.²⁹ He pilfers whole lines from Ovid.³⁰ Phrase after phrase suggests something that has gone before. But his plagiarism is effected with such perfect frankness and such perfect art, that it might well be pardoned, even if Martial had greater claims to be taken seriously. As it is, his freedom in borrowing need scarcely be taken into account in the consideration of our verdict. At the worst his crime is no more than petty larceny. With all his faults, he has gifts such as few poets have possessed, a perfect facility and a perfect finish. Alone of poets of the period he rarely gives the impression of labouring a point. Compared with Martial, Seneca and Lucan, Statius and Juvenal are, at their worst, stylistic acrobats. But Martial, however silly or offensive, however complicated or prosaic his theme, handles his material with supreme ease. His points may often not be worth making; they could not be better made. Moreover, he has a perfect ear; his music may be trivial, but within its narrow limits it is faultless.³¹ He knows what is required of him and he knows his own powers. He knows that his range is limited, that his sphere is comparatively humble, but he is proud to excel in it. He has the artist's self-respect without his vanity.

His themes are manifold. He might have said, with even greater truth than Juvenal, 'quidquid agunt homines, nostri est farrago libelli.' He does not go beneath the surface, but almost every aspect of the kaleidoscopic world of Rome receives his attention at one time or another. His attitude is, on the whole, satirical, though his satire is not inspired by deep or sincere indignation. He is too easy in his morals and too good-humoured by temperament. He is often insulting, but there is scarcely a line that breathes fierce resentment, while his almost unparalleled obscenity precludes the intrusion of any genuine earnestness of moral scorn in a very large number of his satiric epigrams. On these points he shall speak for himself; he makes no exacting claims.

'I hope,' he says in the preface to his first book, 'that I have exercised such restraint in my writings that no one who is possessed of the least self-respect may have cause to complain of them. My jests are never outrageous, even when directed against persons of the meanest consideration. My practice in this respect is very different from that of early writers, who abused persons without veiling their invective under a pseudonym. Nay more, their victims were men of the highest renown. My jeux d 'esprit have no arrières-pensées, and I hope that no one will put an evil interpretation on them, nor rewrite my epigrams by infusing his own malignance into his reading of them. It is a scandalous injustice to exercise such ingenuity on what another has written. I would offer some excuse for the freedom and frankness of my language—which is, after all, the language of epigram—if I were setting any new precedent. But all epigrammatists, Catullus, Marsus, Pedo, Gaetulicus, have availed themselves of this licence of speech. But if any one wishes to acquire notoriety by prudish severity, and refuses to permit me to write after the good Roman fashion in so much as a single page of my work, he may stop short at the preface, or even at the title. Epigrams are written for such persons as derive pleasure from the games at the Feast of Flowers. Cato should not enter my theatre, but if he does enter it, let him be content to look on at the sport which I provide. I think I shall be justified in closing my preface with an epigram

To Cato

Once more the merry feast of Flora's come,
With wanton jest to split the sides of Rome;
Yet come you, prince of prudes, to view the
 show.
Why come you? merely to be shocked and
 go?'

He reasserts the kindliness of his heart and the excellence of his intentions elsewhere:

hunc servare modum nostri novere libelli;
 parcere personis, dicere de vitiis.
(x. 33)

For in my verses 'tis my constant care
To lash the vices, but the persons spare.
Hay

Malignant critics had exercised their ingenuity in the manner which he deprecated.³² Worse still, libellous verse had been falsely circulated as his:

quid prodest, cupiant cum quidam nostra
  videri
  si qua Lycambeo sanguine tela madent,
vipereumque vomant nostro sub nomine virus
  qui Phoebi radios ferre diemque negant?
(vii. 12. 5)

             But what does't avail,
If in bloodfetching lines others do rail,
And vomit viperous poison in my name,
Such as the sun themselves to own do shame?
Anon., 1695

In this respect his defence of himself is just. When he writes in a vein of invective his victim is never mentioned by name. And we cannot assert in any given case that his pseudonyms mask a real person. He may do no more than satirize a vice embodied and typified in an imaginary personality.

He is equally concerned to defend himself against the obvious charges of prurience and immorality:

innocuos censura potest permittere lusus:
   lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba.³³
(i. 4. 7)

Let not these harmless sports your censure
 taste!
My lines are wanton, but my life is chaste.
Anon., seventeenth century

This is no real defence, and even though we need not take Martial at his word, when he accuses himself of the foulest vices, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that chastity was one of his virtues. In Juvenal's case we have reason to believe that, whatever his weaknesses, he was a man of genuinely high ideals. Martial at his best shows himself a man capable of fine feeling, but he gives no evidence of moral earnestness or strength of character. On the other hand, to give him his due, we must remember the standard of his age. Although he is lavish with the vilest obscenities, and has no scruples about accusing acquaintances of every variety of unnatural vice, it must be pointed out that such accusations were regarded at Rome as mere matter for laughter. The traditions of the old Fescennina locutio survived, and with the decay of private morality its obscenity increased. Caesar's veterans could sing ribald verses unrebuked at their general's triumph, verses unquotably obscene and casting the foulest aspersions on the character of one whom they worshipped almost as a god. Caesar could invite Catullus to dine in spite of the fact that such accusations formed the matter of his lampoons. Catullus could insert similar charges against the bridegroom for whom he was writing an epithalamium. The writing of Priapeia was regarded as a reputable diversion. Martial's defence of his obscenities is therefore in all probability sincere, and may have approved itself to many reputable persons of his day. It was a defence that had already been made in very similar language by Ovid and Catullus,³⁴ and Martial was not the last to make it. But the fact that Martial felt it necessary to defend himself shows that a body of public opinion—even if not large or representative—did exist which refused to condone this fashionable lubricity. Extenuating circumstances may be urged in Martial's defence, but even to have conformed to the standard of his day is sufficient condemnation; and it is hard to resist the suspicion that he fell below it. His obscenities, though couched in the most easy and pointed language, have rarely even the grace—if grace it be—of wit; they are puerile in conception and infinitely disgusting.

It is pleasant to turn to the better side of Martial's character. No writer has ever given more charming expression to his affection for his friends. It is for Decianus and Julius Martialis that he keeps the warmest place in his heart. In poems like the following there is no doubting the sincerity of his feeling or questioning the perfection of its expression:

si quis erit raros inter numerandus amicos,
  quales prisca fides famaque novit anus,
si quis Cecropiae madidus Latiaeque Minervae
  artibus et vera simplicitate bonus,
si quis erit recti custos, mirator honesti,
  et nihil arcano qui roget ore deos,
si quis erit magnae subnixus robore mentis:
  dispeream si non hic Decianus erit.
(i. 39)

Is there a man whose friendship rare
With antique friendship may compare;
In learning steeped, both old and new,
Yet unpedantic, simple, true;
Whose soul, ingenuous and upright,
Ne'er formed a wish that shunned the light,
Whose sense is sound? If such there be,
My Decianus, thou art he.
Professor Goldwin Smith

Even more charming, if less intense, is the exhortation to Julius Martialis to live while he may, ere the long night come that knows no waking:

o mihi post nullos, luli, memorande sodales,
  si quid longa fides canaque iura valent,
bis iam paene tibi consul tricensimus instat,
  et numerat paucos vix tua vita dies,
non bene distuleris videas quae posse negari,
  et solum hoc ducas, quod fuit, esse tuum.
exspectant curaeque catenatique labores:
  gaudia non remanent, sed fugitiva volant,
haec utraque manu complexuque adsere toto:
  saepe fluunt imo sic quoque lapsa sinu.
non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere 'vivam'.
  sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie.
(i. 15)

Friend of my heart—and none of all the band
  Has to that name older or better right:
Julius, thy sixtieth winter is at hand,
  Far-spent is now life's day and near the night.
Delay not what thou would'st recall too late;
  That which is past, that only call thine own:
Cares without end and tribulations wait,
  Joy tarrieth not, but scarcely come, is flown.
Then grasp it quickly firmly to thy heart,—
  Though firmly grasped, too oft it slips away;—
To talk of living is not wisdom's part:
  To-morrow is too late: live thou to-day!
Professor Goldwin Smith

Best of all is the retrospect of the long friendship which has united him to Julius. It is as frank as it is touching:

triginta mihi quattuorque messes
tecum, si memini, fuere, luli.
quarum dulcia mixta sunt amaris
sed iucunda tamen fuere plura;
et si calculus omnis huc et illuc
diversus bicolorque digeratur,
vincet candida turba nigriorem.
si vitare voles acerba quaedam
et tristes animi cavere morsus,
nulli te facias nimis sodalem:
gaudebis minus et minus dolebis.
(xii. 34)³⁵

My friend, since thou and I first met,
 This is the thirty-fourth December;
Some things there are we'd fain forget,
 More that 'tis pleasant to remember.
Let for each pain a black ball stand,
 For every pleasure past a white one,
And thou wilt find, when all are scanned,
 The major part will be the bright one.

He who would heartache never know,
 He who serene composure treasures,
Must friendship's chequered bliss forego;
 Who has no pain hath fewer pleasures.
Professor Goldwin Smith

He does not pour the treasure of his heart at his friend's feet, as Persius does in his burning tribute to Cornutus. He has no treasure of great price to pour. But it is only natural that in the poems addressed to his friends we should find the statement of his ideals of life:

vitam quae faciunt beatiorem,
iucundissime Martialis, haec sunt:
res non parta labore sed relicta;
non ingratus ager, focus perennis;
lis numquam, toga rara, mens quieta;
vires ingenuae, salubre corpus;
prudens simplicitas, pares amici,
convictus facilis, sine arte mensa;
nox non ebria sed soluta curis.
non tristis torus et tamen pudicus;
somnus qui faciat breves tenebras:

quod sis esse velis nihilque malis;
summum nec metuas diem nec optes.
(x. 47)

What makes a happy life, dear friend,
If thou would'st briefly learn, attend—
An income left, not earned by toil;
Some acres of a kindly soil;
The pot unfailing on the fire;
No lawsuits; seldom town attire;
Health; strength with grace; a peaceful
  mind;
Shrewdness with honesty combined;
Plain living; equal friends and free;
Evenings of temperate gaiety;
A wife discreet, yet blythe and bright;
Sound slumber, that lends wings to night.
With all thy heart embrace thy lot,
Wish not for death and fear it not.
Professor Goldwin Smith

This exquisite echo of the Horatian 'beatus ille qui procul negotiis' sets forth no very lofty ideal. It is frankly, though restrainedly, hedonistic. But it depicts a life that is full of charm and free from evil. Martial, in his heart of hearts, hates the Rome that he depicts so vividly. Rome with its noise, its expense, its bustling snobbery, its triviality, and its vice, where he and his friend Julius waste their days:

nunc vivit necuter sibi, bonosque
soles effugere atque abire sentit,
qui nobis pereunt et imputantur.
(v. 20. 11)

Dead to our better selves we see
  The golden hours take flight,
Still scored against us as they flee.
  Then haste to live aright.
Professor Goldwin Smith

He longs to escape from the world of the professional lounger and the parasite to an ampler air, where he can breathe freely and find rest. He is no philosopher, but it is at times a relief to get away from the rarified atmosphere and the sense of strain that permeates so much of the aspirations towards virtue in this strange age of contradictions.

Martial at last found the ease and quiet that his soul desired in his Spanish home:

hic pigri colimus labore dulci
Boterdum Plateamque (Celtiberis
haec sunt nomina crassiora terris):
ingenti fruor inproboque somno
quem nec tertia saepe rumpit hora,
et totum mihi nunc repono quidquid
ter denos vigilaveram per annos.
ignota est toga, sed datur petenti
rupta proxima vestis a cathedra,
surgentem focus excipit superba
vicini strue cultus iliceti, …

sic me vivere, sic iuvat perire.
(xii. 18. 10)

Busy but pleas'd and idly taking pains,
Here Lewes Downs I till and Ringmer plains,
Names that to each South Saxon well are
  known,
Though they sound harsh to powdered beaux
  in town.
None can enjoy a sounder sleep than mine;
I often do not wake till after nine;
And midnight hours with interest repay
For years in town diversions thrown away.
Stranger to finery, myself I dress
In the first coat from an old broken press.
My fire, as soon as I am up, I see
Bright with the ruins of some neighbouring
  tree.…

Such is my life, a life of liberty;
So would I wish to live and so to die.
Hay

Martial has a genuine love for the country. Born at a time when detailed descriptions of the charms of scenery had become fashionable, and the cultivated landscape at least found many painters, he succeeds far better than any of his contemporaries in conveying to the reader his sense of the beauties which his eyes beheld. That sense is limited, but exquisite. It does not go deep; there is nothing of the almost mystical background that Vergil at times suggests; there is nothing of the feeling of the open air and the wild life that is sometimes wafted to us in the sensuous verse of Theocritus. But Martial sees what he sees clearly, and he describes it perfectly. Compare his work with the affected prettiness of Pliny's description of the source of the Clitumnus or with the more sensuous, but over-elaborate, craftsmanship of Statius in the Silvae. Martial is incomparably their superior. He speaks a more human language, and has a far clearer vision. Both Statius and Martial described villas by the sea. We have already mentioned Statius' description of the villa of Pollius at Sorrento; Martial shall speak in his turn:

o temperatae dulce Formiae litus,
vos, cum severi fugit oppidum Martis
et inquietas fessus exuit curas,
Apollinaris omnibus locis praefert.…

hic summa leni stringitur Thetis vento:
nec languet aequor, viva sed quies ponti
pictam phaselon adiuvante fert aura,
sicut puellae non amantis aestatem
mota salubre purpura venit frigus.
nec saeta longo quaerit in mari praedam,
sed a cubili lectuloque iactatam
spectatus alte lineam trahit piscis.…

frui sed istis quando, Roma, permittis?
quot Formianos imputat dies annus
negotiosis rebus urbis haerenti?
o ianitores vilicique felices!
dominis parantur ista, serviunt vobis.³⁶
(x. 30)

O strand of Formiae, sweet with genial air,
Who art Apollinaris' chosen home
When, taking flight from his task-mistress
 Rome,
The tired man doffs his load of troubling
 care.…

Here the sea's bosom quivers in the wind;
'Tis no dead calm, but sweet serenity,
Which bears the painted boat before the
 breeze,
As though some maid at pains the heat to ban,
Should waft a genial zephyr with her fan.
No fisher needs to buffet the high seas,
But whiles from bed or couch his line he
 casts,
May see his captive in the toils below.…

But, niggard Rome, thou giv'st how
 grudgingly!
What the year's tale of days at Formiae
For him who tied by work in town must stay?
Stewards and lacqueys, happy your employ,
Your lords prepare enjoyment, you enjoy.
A. E. Street

These are surely the most beautiful scazons³⁷ in the Latin tongue; the metre limps no more; a master-hand has wrought it to exquisite melody; the quiet undulation of the sea, the yacht's easy gliding over its surface, live before us in its music. Even more delicate is the homelier description of the gardens of Julius Martialis on the slopes of the Janiculum. It is animated by the sincerity that never fails Martial when he writes to his friend:

Iuli iugera pauca Martialis
hortis Hesperidum beatiora
longo laniculi iugo recumbunt:
lati collibus imminent recessus
et planus modico tumore vertex
caelo perfruitur sereniore
et curvas nebula tegente valles
solus luce nitet peculiari:
puris leniter admoventur astris
celsae culmina delicata villae.
hinc septem dominos videre montes
et totam licet aestimare Romam,
Albanos quoque Tusculosque colles
et quodcumque iacet sub urbe frigus.
(iv.64)

Martial's few acres, e'en more blest
Than those famed gardens of the West,
Lie on Janiculum's long crest;
Above the slopes wide reaches hang recessed.
The level, gently swelling crown
Breathes air from purer heavens blown;
When mists the hollow valleys drown
'Tis radiant with a light that's all its own.
The clear stars almost seem to lie
On the wrought roof that's built so high;
The seven hills stand in majesty,
And Rome is summed in one wide sweep of
 eye.
Tusculan, Alban hills unfold,
Each nook which holds its store of cold.
A. E. Street

Such a picture is unsurpassed in any language.³⁸ Statius, with all his brilliance, never came near such perfect success; he lacks sincerity; he can juggle with words against any one, but he never learned their truest and noblest use.

There are many other themes beside landscape painting in which the Silvae of Statius challenge comparison with the epigrams of Martial. Both use the same servile flattery to the emperor, both celebrate the same patrons,³⁹ both console their noble friends for the loss of relatives, or favourite slaves; both write propemptica. Even in the most trivial of these poems, those addressed to the emperor, Statius is easily surpassed by his humbler rival. His inferiority lies largely in the fact that he is more ambitious. He wrote on a larger scale. When the infinitely trivial is a theme for verse, the epigrammatist has the advantage of the author of the more lengthy Silvae. Perfect neatness vanquishes dexterous elaboration. Moreover, if taste can be said to enter into such poems at all, Martial errs less grossly. Even Domitian—one might conjecture—may have felt that Statius' flattery was 'laid on with a trowel'. Martial may have used the same instrument, but had the art to conceal it.⁴⁰ There are even occasions where his flattery ceases to revolt the reader, and where we forget the object of the flattery. In a poem describing the suicide of a certain Festus he succeeds in combining the dignity of a funeral laudatio with the subtlest and most graceful flattery of the princeps:

indignas premeret pestis cum tabida fauces,
  inque suos voltus serperet atra lues,
siccis ipse genis flentes hortatus amicos
  decrevit Stygios Festus adire lacus.
nec tamen obscuro pia polluit ora veneno
  aut torsit lenta tristia fata fame,
sanctam Romana vitam sed morte peregit
  dimisitque animam nobiliore via.
hanc mortem fatis magni praeferre Catonis
  fama potest; huius Caesar amicus erat.
(i. 78)

When the dire quinsy choked his guiltless
 breath,
 And o'er his face the blackening venom
 stole,
Festus disdained to wait a lingering death,
 Cheered his sad friends and freed his
 dauntless soul.
No meagre famine's slowly-wasting force,
 Nor hemlock's gradual chillness he endured,
But like a Roman chose the nobler course,
 And by one blow his liberty secured.
His death was nobler far than Cato's end,
For Caesar to the last was Festus' friend.
Hodgson (slightly altered)

The unctuous dexterity of Statius never achieved such a master-stroke.

So, too, in laments for the dead, the superior brevity and simplicity of Martial bear the palm away. Both poets bewailed the death of Glaucias, the child favourite of Atedius Melior. Statius has already been quoted in this connexion; Martial's poems on the subject,⁴¹ though not quite among his best, yet ring truer than the verse of Statius. And Martial's epitaphs and epicedia at their best have in their slight way an almost unique charm. We must go to the best work of the Greek Anthology to surpass the epitaph on Erotion (v. 34):

hanc tibi, Fronto pater, genetrix Flaccilla,
  puellam
  oscula commendo deliciasque meas,
parvola ne nigras horrescat Erotion umbras
  oraque Tartarei prodigiosa canis.
inpletura fuit sextae modo frigora brumae,
  vixisset totidem ni minus illa dies,
inter tam veteres ludat lasciva patronos
  et nomen blaeso garriat ore meum.
mollia non rigidus caespes tegat ossa nec illi,
  terra, gravis fueris: non fuit illa tibi.

Fronto, and you, Flaccilla, to you, my father
  and mother,
  Here I commend this child, once my delight
  and my pet,
So may the darkling shades and deep-mouthed
  baying of hellhound
  Touch not with horror of dread little Erotion
  dear.
Now was her sixth year ending, and melting
  the snows of the winter,
  Only a brief six days lacked to the tale of
  the years.
Young, amid dull old age, let her wanton and
  frolic and gambol,
  Babble of me that was, tenderly lisping my
  name.
Soft were her tiny bones, then soft be the sod
  that enshrouds her,
  Gentle thy touch, mother Earth, gently she
  rested on thee!
A. E. Street.

Another poem on a like theme shows a different and more fantastic, but scarcely less pleasing vein (v. 37):

puella senibus dulcior mihi cycnis,
agna Galaesi mollior Phalantini,
concha Lucrini delicatior stagni,
cui nec lapillos praeferas Erythraeos
nec modo politum pecudis Indicae dentem
nivesque primas liliumque non tactum;
quae crine vicit Baetici gregis vellus
Rhenique nodos aureamque nitellam;
fragravit ore quod rosarium Paesti,
quod Atticarum prima mella cerarum,
quod sucinorum rapta de manu gleba;
cui conparatus indecens erat pavo,
inamabilis sciurus et frequens phoenix,
adhuc recenti tepet Erotion busto,
quam pessimorum lex amara fatorum
sexta peregit hieme, nec tamen tota,
nostros amores gaudiumque lususque.

Little maiden sweeter far to me
   Than the swans are with their vaunted
  snows,
Maid more tender than the lambkins be
  Where Galaesus by Phalantus flows;
Daintier than the daintiest shells that lie
  By the ripples of the Lucrine wave;
Choicer than new-polished ivory
  That the herds in Indian jungles gave;
Choicer than Erythrae's marbles white,
  Snows new-fallen, lilies yet unsoiled:
Softer were your tresses and more bright
  Than the locks by German maidens coiled:
Than the finest fleeces Baetis shows,
  Than the dormouse with her golden hue:
Lips more fragrant than the Paestan rose,
   Than the Attic bees' first honey-dew,
Or an amber ball, new-pressed and warm;
  Paled the peacock's sheen in your compare;

E'en the winsome squirrel lost his charm,
   And the Phoenix seemed no longer rare.
Scarce Erotion's ashes yet are cold;
   Greedily grim fate ordained to smite
E'er her sixth brief winter had grown old—
   Little love, my bliss, my heart's delight.
A. D. Innes

Through all the playful affectations of the lines we get the portrait of a fairy-like child, light-footed as the squirrel, golden-haired and fair as ivory or lilies.⁴² Martial was a child-lover before he was a man of letters.

Beautiful as these little poems are, there is in Martial little trace of feeling for the sorrows of humanity in general. He can feel for his intimate friends, and his tears are ready to flow for his patron's sorrows. But the general impression given by his poetry is that of a certain hardness and lack of feeling, of a limited sympathy, and an unemotional temperament. It is a relief to come upon a poem such as that in which he describes a father's poignant anguish for the loss of his son (ix. 74):

effigiem tantum pueri pictura Camoni
   servat, et infantis parva figura manet.
florentes nulla signavit imagine voltus,
   dum timet ora pius muta videre pater.

Here as in happy infancy he smiled
Behold Camonus—painted as a child;
For on his face as seen in manhood's days
His sorrowing father would not dare to gaze.
W. S. B.

or to find a sudden outbreak of sympathy with the sorrows of the slave (iii. 21):

proscriptum famulus servavit fronte notata,
  non fuit haec domini vita sed invidia.⁴³

When scarred with cruel brand, the slave
  Snatched from the murderer's hand
His proscript lord, not life he gave
  His tyrant, but the brand.
Professor Goldwin Smith

Of the gravitas or dignity of character specially associated with Rome he shows equally few traces. His outlook on life is not sufficiently serious, he shows little interest in Rome of the past, and has nothing of the retrospective note so prominent in Lucan, Juvenal, or Tacitus; he lives in and for the present. He writes, it is true, of the famous suicide of Arria and Caecina Paetus,⁴⁴ of the death of Portia the wife of Brutus,⁴⁶ of the bravery of Mucius Scaevola.⁴⁵ But in none of these poems does he give us of his best. They lack, if not sincerity, at least enthusiasm; emotion is sacrificed to point. He is out of sympathy with Stoicism, and the suicide doctrinaire does not interest him. 'Live while you may' is his motto, 'and make the best of circumstances.' It is possible to live a reasonably virtuous life without going to the lengths of Thrasea:

quod magni Thraseae consummatique Catonis
  dogmata sic sequeris salvus ut esse velis,
pectore nec nudo strictos incurris in enses,
   quod fecisse velim te, Deciane, facis.
nolo virum facili redimit qui sanguine famam;
  hunc volo, laudari qui sine morte potest.
(i. 8)

That you, like Thrasea or Cato, great,
Pursue their maxims, but decline their fate;
Nor rashly point the dagger to your heart;
More to my wish you act a Roman's part.
I like not him who fame by death retrieves,
Give me the man who merits praise and lives.
Hay

The sentiment is full of common sense, but it is undeniably unheroic. Martial is not quixotic, and refuses to treat life more seriously than is necessary. Our complaint against him is that he scarcely takes it seriously enough. It would be unjust to demand a deep fund of earnestness from a professed epigrammatist dowered with a gift of humour and a turn for satire. But it is doing Martial no injustice to style him the laureate of triviality. For his satire is neither genial nor earnest. His kindly temper led him to avoid direct personalities, but his invective is directed against vice, not primarily because it is wicked, but rather because it is grotesque or not comme il faut. His humour, too, though often sparkling enough, is more often strained and most often filthy. Many of his epigrams were not worth writing, by whatever standard they be judged.⁴⁷ The point is hard to illustrate, since a large proportion of his inferior work is fatuously obscene. But the following may be taken at random from two books:

Eutrapelus tonsor dum circuit ora Luperci
  expingitque genas, altera barba subit.
(vii. 83)

Eutrapelus the barber works so slow,
That while he shaves, the beard anew does
  grow.
Anon., 1695

invitas ad aprum, ponis mihi, Gallice, porcum.
  hybrida sum, si das, Gallice, verba mihi.
(viii. 22)

You invite me to partake of a wild boar, you set before me a home-grown pig. I'm half-boar, half-pig, if you can cheat me thus.

pars maxillarum tonsa est tibi, pars tibi rasa
  est,
  pars volsa est. unum quis putet esse caput?
(viii. 47)

Part of your jaws is shaven, part clipped, part has the hair pulled out. Who'd think you'd only one head?

tres habuit dentes, pariter quos expuit omnes,
  ad tumulum Picens dum sedet ipse suum;
collegitque sinu fragmenta novissima laxi
  oris et adgesta contumulavit humo.
ossa licet quondam defuncti non legat heres;
  hoc sibi iam Picens praestitit officium.
(viii. 57)

Picens had three teeth, which he spat out altogether while he was sitting at the spot he had chosen for his tomb. He gathered in his robe the last fragments of his loose jaw and interred them in a heap of earth. His heir need not gather his bones when he is dead, Picens has performed that office for himself.

summa Palatini poteras aequare Colossi,
  si fieres brevior, Claudia, sesquipede.
(viii. 60)

Had you been eighteen inches shorter, Claudia, you would have been as tall as the Colossus on the Palatine.

Without wishing to break a butterfly on the wheel, we may well quote against Martial the remark made in a different context to a worthless poet:

tanti non erat esse te disertum.
(xii. 43)

'Twas scarce worth while to be thus eloquent.

There is much also which, without being precisely pointless or silly, is too petty and mean to be tolerable to modern taste. Most noticeable in this respect are the epigrams in which Martial solicits the liberality of his patrons. The amazing relations existing at this period between patron and client had worked a painful revolution in the manners and tone of society, a revolution which meant scarcely less than the pauperization of the middle class. The old sacred and almost feudal tie uniting client and patron had long since disappeared, and had been replaced by relations of a professional and commercial character. Wealth was concentrated in comparatively few hands, and with the decrease of the number of the patrons the throng of clients proportionately increased. The crowd of clients bustling to the early morning salutatio of the patronus, and struggling with one another for the sportula is familiar to us in the pages of Juvenal and receives fresh and equally vivid illustration from Martial. The worst results of these unnatural relations were a general loss of independence of character and a lamentable growth of bad manners and cynical snobbery. The patron, owing to the increasingly heavy demands upon his purse, naturally tended to become close-fisted and stingy, the needy client too often was grasping and discontented. The patron, if he asked his client to dine, would regale him with food and drink of a coarser and inferior quality to that with which he himself was served.⁴⁸ The client, on the other hand, could not be trusted to behave himself; he would steal the table fittings, make outrageous demands on his patron, and employ every act of servile and cringing flattery to improve his position.⁴⁹ The poor poet was in a sense doubly dependent. He would stand in the ordinary relation of cliens to a patronus, and would be dependent also for his livelihood on the generosity of his literary patrons. For, in spite of the comparative facilities for the publication and circulation of books, he could make little by the public sale of his works, and living at Rome was abnormally expensive. The worst feature of all was that such a life of servile dependence was not clearly felt to be degrading. It was disliked for its hardship, annoyance, and monotony, but the client too often seems to have regarded it as beneath his dignity to attempt to escape from it by industry and manly independence.

As a result of these conditions, we find the pages of Martial full of allusions to the miserable life of the client. His skill does not fail him, but the theme is ugly and the historical interest necessarily predominates over the literary, though the reader's patience is at times rewarded with shrewd observations on human nature, as, for instance, the bitter expression of the truth that 'To him that hath shall be given'—

semper pauper eris, si pauper es, Aemiliane;
  dantur opes nullis nunc nisi divitibus;
(v. 81)

Poor once and poor for ever, Nat, I fear,
None but the rich get place and pension here.
N. B. Halhead

or the even more incisive

pauper videri Cinna, vult: et est pauper
(viii. 19)

I have no money, Regulus, at home. Only one thing is left to do—sell the gifts you gave me. Will you buy?

But we soon weary of the continual reference to dinners and parasites, to the snobbery and indifference of the rich, to the tricks of toadyism on the part of needy client or legacy hunter. It is a mean world, and the wit and raillery of Martial cannot make it palatable. Without a moral background, such as is provided by the indignation of Juvenal, the picture soon palls, and the reader sickens. Most unpleasing of all are the epigrams where Martial himself speaks as client in a language of mingled impertinence and servility. His flattery of the emperor we may pass by. It was no doubt interested, but it was universal, and Martial's flattery is more dexterous without being either more or less offensive than that of his contemporaries. His relations towards less exalted patrons cannot be thus easily condoned. He feels no shame in begging, nor in abusing those who will not give or whose gifts are not sufficient for his needs. His purse is empty; he must sell the gifts that Regulus has given him. Will Regulus buy?

aera domi non sunt, superest hoc, Regule,
  solum
  ut tua vendamus munera: numquid emis?
(vii. 16)

Stella has given him some tiles to roof his house; he would like a cloak as well:

cum pluvias madidumque lovem perferre
  negaret
  et rudis hibemis villa nataret aquis,
plurima, quae posset subitos effundere nimbos,
  muneribus venit tegula missa tuis.
horridus ecce sonat Boreae stridore December:
  Stella, tegis villam, non tegis agricolam.
(vii. 36)⁵⁰

When my crased house heaven's showers
  could not sustain,
But flooded with vast deluges of rain,
Thou shingles, Stella, seasonably didst send,
Which from the impetuous storms did me
  defend:
Now fierce loud-sounding Boreas rocks doth
  cleave,
Dost clothe the farm, and farmer naked leave?
Anon., 1695

This is not the way a gentleman thanks a friend, nor can modern taste appreciate at its antique value abuse such as—

primum est ut praestes, si quid te, Cinna,
  rogabo;
  illud deinde sequens ut cito, Cinna, neges.
diligo praestantem; non odi, Cinna, negantem:
  sed tu nec praestas nec cito, Cinna, negas.
(vii. 43)

The kindest thing of all is to comply:
The next kind thing is quickly to deny.
I love performance nor denial hate:
Your 'Shall I, shall I?' is the cursed state.

The poet's poverty is no real excuse for this petulant mendicancy.⁵¹ He had refused to adopt a profession,⁵² though professional employment would assuredly have left him time for writing, and no one would have complained if his output had been somewhat smaller. Instead, he chose a life which involved moving in society, and was necessarily expensive. We can hardly attribute his choice merely to the love of his art. If he must beg, he might have done so with better taste and some show of finer feeling. Macaulay's criticism is just: 'I can make large allowance for the difference of manners; but it can never have been comme il faut in any age or nation for a man of note—an accomplished man—a man living with the great—to be constantly asking for money, clothes, and dainties, and to pursue with volleys of abuse those who would give him nothing.'

In spite, however, of the obscenity, meanness, and exaggerated triviality of much of his work, there have been few poets who could turn a prettier compliment, make a neater jest, or enshrine the trivial in a more exquisite setting. Take the beautifully finished poem to Flaccus in the eighth book (viii. 56), wherein Martial complains that times have altered since Vergil's day. 'Now there are no patrons and consequently no poets'—

ergo ego Vergilius, si munera Maecenatis
  des mihi? Vergilius non ero, Marsus ero.

Shall I then be a Vergil, if you give me such gifts as Maecenas gave? No, I shall not be a Vergil, but a Marsus.

Here, at least, Martial shows that he could complain of his poverty with decency, and speak of himself and his work with becoming modesty. Or take a poem of a different type, an indirect plea for the recall of an exile (viii. 32):

aera per tacitum delapsa sedentis in ipsos
  fluxit Aratullae blanda columba sinus,
luserat hoc casus, nisi inobservata maneret
  permissaque sibi nollet abire fuga.
si meliora piae fas est sperare sorori
  et dominum mundi flectere vota valent,
haec a Sardois tibi forsitan exulis oris,
  fratre reversuro, nuntia venit avis.

A gentle dove glided down through the silent air and settled even in Aratulla's bosom as she was sitting. This might have seemed but the sport of chance had it not rested there, though undetained, and refused to part even when flight was free. If it is granted to the loving sister to hope for better things, and if prayers can move the lord of the world, this bird perchance has come to thee from Sardinia's shore of exile to announce the speedy return of thy brother.

Nothing could be more conventional, nothing more perfect in form, more full of music, more delicate in expression. The same felicity is shown in his epigrams on curiosities of art or nature, a fashionable and, it must be confessed, an easy theme.⁵³ Fish carved by Phidias' hand, a lizard cast by Mentor, a fly enclosed in amber, are all given immortality:

artis Phidiacae toreuma clarum
pisces aspicis: adde aquam, natabunt.
(iii. 35)

These fishes Phidias wrought: with life by
 him
They are endowed: add water and they swim.
Professor Goldwin Smith

inserta phialae Mentoris manu ducta
lacerta vivit et timetur argentum.
(iii. 41)

That lizard on the goblet makes thee start.
Fear not: it lives only by Mentor's art.
Professor Goldwin Smith

et latet et lucet Phaethontide condita gutta,
  ut videatur apis nectare clusa suo.
dignum tantorum pretium tulit illa laborum:
  credibile est ipsam sic voluisse mori.
(iv. 32)

Here shines a bee closed in an amber tomb,
As if interred in her own honey-comb.
A fit reward fate to her labours gave;
No other death would she have wished to
 have.
May

Always at home in describing the trifling amenities of life, he is at his best equally successful in dealing with its trifling follies. An acquaintance has given his cook the absurd name of Mistyllos in allusion to [a] Homeric phrase … Martial's comment is inimitable:

si tibi Mistyllos cocus, Aemiliane, vocatur,
    dicatur quare non Taratalla mihi?
(i. 50)

He complains of the wine given him at a dinner-party with a finished whimsicality:

potavi modo consulare vinum.
quaeris quam vetus atque liberale?
Prisco consule conditum: sed ipse
qui ponebat erat, Severe, consul.
(vii. 79)

I have just drunk some consular wine. How old, you ask, and how generous? It was bottled in Priscus' consulship: and he who set it before me was the consul himself.

Polycharmus has returned Caietanus his IOU's. 'Little good will that do you, and Caietanus will not even be grateful':

quod Caietano reddis, Polycharme, tabellas,
 milia te centum num tribuisse putas?
'debuit haec' inquis. tibi habe, Polycharme,
  tabellas
 et Caietano milia crede duo.
(viii. 37)

In giving back Caietanus his IOU's, Polycharmus, do you think you are giving him 100,000 sesterces? 'He owed me that sum,' you say. Keep the IOU's and lend him two thousand more!

Chloe, the murderess of her seven husbands, erects monuments to their memory, and inscribes fecit Chloe on the tombstones:

inscripsit tumulis septem scelerata virorum
  'se fecisse' Chloe. quid pote simplicius?
(ix. 15)

On her seven husbands' tombs she doth impress
'This Chloe did.' What more can she confess?
Wright

Vacerra admires the old poets only. What shall Martial do?

miraris veteres, Vacerra, solos
nec laudas nisi mortuos poetas.
ignoscas petimus, Vacerra: tanti
non est, ut placeam tibi, perire.
(viii. 69)

Vacerra lauds no living poet's lays,
But for departed genius keeps his praise.
I, alas, live, nor deem it worth my while
To die that I may win Vacerra's smile.
Professor Goldwin Smith

All this is very slight, merae nugae; but even if the humour be not of the first water, it will compare well with the humour of epigrams of any age. Martial knows he is not a great poet.⁵⁴ He knows, too, that his work is uneven:

iactat inaequalem Matho me fecisse libellum:
    si verum est, laudat carmina nostra Matho.
aequales scribit libros Calvinus et Vmber:
   aequalis liber est, Cretice, qui malus est.
(vii. 90)

Matho makes game of my unequal verse;
If it's unequal it might well be worse.
Calvinus, Umber, write on one dead level,
The book that's got no up and down's the
  devil!

If there are thirty good epigrams in a book, he is satisfied (vii. 81). His defence hardly answers the question, 'Why publish so many?' but should at least mollify our judgement. Few poets read better in selections than Martial, and of few poets does selection give so inadequate an idea. For few poets of his undoubted genius have left such a large bulk of work which, in spite of its formal perfection, is morally repulsive or, from the purely literary standpoint, uninteresting. But he is an important figure in the history of literature, for he is the father of the modern epigram. Alone of Silver Latin poets is he a perfect stylist. He has the gift of felicitas to the full, but it is not curiosa. Inferior to Horace in all other points, he has greater spontaneity. And he is free from the faults of his age. He is no virtuoso, eaten up with self-conscious vanity; he attempts no impossible feats of language; he is clear, and uses his mythological and geographical knowledge neatly and picturesquely; but he makes no display of obscure learning. 'I would please schoolmasters,' he says, 'but not qua schoolmasters' (x. 21. 5). So, too, he complains of his own education:

at me litterulas stulti docuere parentes:
  quid cum grammaticis rhetoribusque mihi?
(ix. 73. 7)

My learning only proves my father fool!
Why would he send me to a grammar school?
Hay

As a result, perhaps, of this lack of sympathy with the education of his day, we find that, while he knows and admires the great poets of the past, and can flatter the rich poetasters of the present, his bent is curiously unliterary. He gives us practically no literary criticism. It is with the surface qualities of life that he is concerned, with its pleasures and its follies, guilty or innocent. He has a marvellously quick and clear power of observation, and of vivid presentation. He is in this sense above all others the poet of his age. He either does not see or chooses to ignore many of the best and most interesting features of his time, but the picture which he presents, for all its incompleteness, is wider and more varied than any other. We both hate him and read him for the sake of the world he depicts. 'Ugliness is always bad art, and Martial often failed as a poet from his choice of subject.'⁵⁵ There are comparatively few of his poems which we read for their own sake. Remarkable as these few poems are, the main attraction of Martial is to be found not in his wit or finish, so much as in the vividness with which he has portrayed the life of the brilliant yet corrupt society in which his lot was cast. It lives before us in all its splendour and in all its squalor. The court, with its atmosphere of grovelling flattery, its gross vices veiled and tricked out in the garb of respectability; the wealthy official class, with their villas, their favourites, their circle of dependants, men of culture, wit, and urbanity, through all which runs, strangely intermingled, a vein of extreme coarseness, vulgarity, and meanness; the lounger and the reciter, the diner-out and the legacy-hunter; the clients struggling to win their patrons' favour and to rise in the social scale, enduring the hardships and discomfort of a sordid life unillumined by lofty ideals or strength of will, a life that under cold northern skies would have been intolerable; the freedman and the slave, with all the riff-raff that support a parasitic existence on the vices of the upper classes; the noise and bustle of Rome, its sleepless nights, its cheerless tenements, its noisy streets, loud with the sound of traffic or of revelry; the shows in the theatre, the races in the circus, the interchange of presents at the Saturnalia; the pleasant life in the country villa, the simplicity of rural Italy, the sights and sounds of the park and the farm-yard; and dimly seen beyond all, the provinces, a great ocean which absorbs from time to time the rulers of Rome and the leaders of society, and from which come faint and confused echoes of frontier wars; all are there. It is a great pageant lacking order and coherence, a scene that shifts continually, but never lacks brilliance of detail and sharply defined presentment. Martial was the child of the age; it gave him his strength and his weakness. If we hate him or despise him, it is because he is the faithful representative of the life of his times; his gifts we cannot question. He practised a form of poetry that at its best is not exalted, and must, even more than other branches of art, be conditioned by social circumstance. Within its limited sphere Martial stands, not faultless, but yet supreme.

Notes

¹ On the modern Cerro de Bambola near the Moorish town of El Calatayud.

² Cp. ix. 52, x. 24, xii. 60.

³ Cp. v. 34.

⁴ ix. 73. 7.

⁵ In x. 103. 7, written in 98 A.D., he tells us that it is thirty-four years since he left Spain.

⁶ iv. 40, xii. 36.

⁷ He is found rendering poetic homage to Polla, the wife of Lucan, as late as 96 A.D., X. 64, vii. 21-3. For his reverence for the memory of Lucan, cp. i. 61. 7; vii. 21, 22; xiv. 194.

⁸ Cp. his regrets for the ease of his earlier clienthood and the generosity of the Senecas, xii. 36.

⁹ ii. 30; cp. 1. 5:

is mihi 'dives eris, si causas egeris' inquit.
   quod peto da, Gai: non peto consilium.

¹⁰ Vide his epigrams passim.

¹¹ xiii. 42, xiii. 119. Perhaps the gift of Seneca, cp. Friedländer on Mart. i. 105.

¹² ix. 18, ix. 97. 7, x. 58. 9.

¹³ Such is the most plausible interpretation of iii. 95. 5, ix. 97. 5:

             tribuit quod Caesar uterque
ius mihi natorum (uterque, i.e. Titus and
  Domitian).

¹⁴ iii. 95, v. 13, ix. 49, xii. 26.

¹⁵ iii. 95. 11, Vi. 10. 1.

¹⁶ xiii. 4 gives Domitian his title of Germanicus, assumed after war with Chatti in 84; xiv. 34 alludes to peace; no allusion to subsequent wars.

• ¹⁷ I, II. Perhaps published together. This would account for length of preface. II. Largely composed of poems referring to reigns of Vespasian and Titus. Reference to Domitian's censorship shows that I was not published before 85. There is no hint of outbreak of Dacian War, which raged in 86.
• III. Since bk. IV contains allusion to outbreak of revolt of Antonius Saturninus towards end of 88 (11) and is published at Rome, whereas III was published at Cornelii forum (1), III probably appeared in 87 or 88.
• IV. Contains reference to birthday of Domitian, Oct. 24 (1. 7), and seems then to allude to ludi saeculares (Sept. 88). Reference to snowfall at Rome (2 and 13) suggests winter. Perhaps therefore published in Saturnalia of 88.
• V. Domitian has returned to Italy (1) from Dacian War, but there is no reference to his triumph (Oct. 1, 89 A.D.). Book therefore probably published in early autumn of 89.
• VI. Domitian has held his triumph (4. 2 and 10. 7). Julia (13) is dead (end of 89). Book probably published in 90, perhaps in summer. Friedlander sees allusion to Agon Capitolinus (Summer, 90) in vi. 77.
• VII. 5-8 refer to Domitian's return from Sarmatic War. He has not yet arrived. These epigrams are among last in book. He returned in January 93. His return was announced as imminent in Dec. 92.
• VIII. 21 describes Domitian's arrival; 26, 30, and others deal with festivities in this connexion. 65 speaks of temple of Fortuna Redux and triumphal arch built in Domitian's honour. They are mentioned as if completed. 66 speaks of consulate of Silius Italicus' son beginning Sept. 1, 93.
• IX. 84 is addressed to Appius Norbanus Maximus, who has been six years absent from Rome. He went to Upper Germany to crush Antonius Satuminus in 88. 35 refers to Agon Capitolinus in summer of 94.
• X. Two editions published. We possess later and larger. Cp. x. 2. 70. 1 suggests a year's interval between IX and X. X, ed. 1 was therefore perhaps published in Dec. 95. X, ed. 2 has references to accession of Trajan, Jan. 25, 98 A.D. (6, 7 and 34). Martial's departure for Spain is imminent.
• XI. 1 is addressed to Parthenius, executed in middle of 97 A.D. xii. 5 refers to a selection made from X and XI, perhaps from presentation to Nerva; cp. xii. 11.
• XII. In preface Martial apologizes for three years' silence (1. 9) from publication of X, ed. 2. xii. 3. 10 refers to Stella's consulship, Oct. 101 or 102. Three years' interval points to 101. It was published late in the year; cp. I and 62. Some epigrams in this book were written at Rome. But M. says that it was written paucissimis diebus. This must refer only to Spanish epigrams, or the book must have been enlarged after M.'s death.

For the whole question see Friedlander Introd., pp. 50 sqq.

¹⁸ iii. 1 and 4.

¹⁹ Cp. xi. 3.

²⁰ xii. 21, xii. 31. There is no reason to suppose with some critics that she was his wife.

²¹ xii. praef. 'civitatis aures quibus adsueveram quaero.'

²² lb. 'accedit his municipalium robigo dentium.'

²³ See p. 271. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this silence was due to dislike or jealousy.

²⁴ Mackail, Greek Anthol., Introd., p. 5.

²⁵ Domitius Marsus was famous for his epigrams, as also Calvus, Gactulicus, Pedo, and others.

²⁶ See p. 36.

²⁷ See p. 134.

²⁸ The best of his erotic poems is the pretty vi. 34, but it is far from original; cp. the last couplet:

nolo quot (sc. basia) arguto dedit exorata
  Catullo
  Lesbia: pauca cupit qui numerare potest.

²⁹ Cp. Cat. 5 and 7; Mart. vi. 34; Cat. 2 and 3; Mart, i. 7 and 109 (it is noteworthy that this last poem has itself been exquisitely imitated by du Bellay in his poem on his little dog Peloton).

³⁰ Cp. Ov. Tr. ii. 166; Mart. vi. 3. 4; Ov. F. iii. 192; Mart. vi. 16. 2; Ov. A. i. 1. 20; Mart. vi. 16. 4; Ov. Tr. i. 5. 1, iv. 13. 1; Mart. i. 15. 1. His imitations of other poets are not nearly so marked. There are a good many trifling echoes of Vergil, but little wholesale borrowing. A very large proportion of the parallel passages cited by Friedländer are unjust to Martial. No poet could be original judged by such a test.

³¹ There is little of any importance to be said about Martial's metre. The metres most often employed are elegiac, hendecasyllabic, and the seazon. In the elegiac he is, on the whole, Ovidian, though he is naturally freer, especially in the matter of endings both of hexameter and pentameter. He makes his points as well, but is less sustainedly pointed. His verse, moreover, has greater variety and less formal symmetry than that of Ovid. On the other hand his effects are less sparkling, owing to his more sparing use of rhetoric. In the hendecasyllable he is smoother and more polished. It invariably opens with a spondee.

³² Cp. vii. 72. 12, x. 3.

³³ Cp. vii. 12. 9, iii. 99. 3.

³⁴ Catull. xvi. 5; Ov. Tr. ii. 354; Apul. Apol. 11; Auson. 28, cento nup.; Plin. Ep. vii. 8.

³⁵ We might also quote the beautiful

extra fortunam est quidquid donatur amicis:
 quas dederis solas semper habebis opes.
(v. 42)

What thou hast given to friends, and that
 alone,
Defies misfortune, and is still thine own.
Professor Goidwin Smith

But the needy poet may have had some arrière-pensée. We do not know to whom the poem is addressed.

³⁶ Cp. the description of the villa of Faustinus, iii. 58.

³⁷ Their only rival is the famous Sirmio poem of Catullus.

³⁸ Even Tennyson's remarkable poem addressed to F. D. Maurice fails to reach greater perfection.

³⁹ e. g. Arruntius Stella and Atedius Melior. Cp. p. 205.

⁴⁰ Cp. the poems on the subject of Earinus, Mart, ix, 11, 12, 13, and esp. 16; Stat. Silv. iii. 4.

⁴¹ Mart. vi. 28 and 29.

⁴² The remaining lines of the poem are tasteless and unworthy of the portion quoted, and raise a doubt as to the poet's sincerity in the particular case. But this does not affect his general sympathy for childhood.

⁴³ i. 101 provides an instance of Martial's sympathy for his own slaves, Cp. 1. 5:—

ne tamen ad Stygias famulus descenderet
  umbras,
  ureret implicitum cum scelerate lues,
cavimus et domini ius omne remisimus aegro;
  munere dignus erat convaluisse meo.
sensit deficiens mea praemia meque patronum
  dixit ad infernas liber iturus aquas.

⁴⁴ i. 13.

⁴⁵ i. 42.

⁴⁶ i. 21. He is perhaps at his best on the death of Otho (vi. 32):

cum dubitaret adhue belli civilis Enyo
  forsitan et posset vincere mollis Otho,
damnavit multo staturum sanguine Martem
  et fodit certa pectora tota manu.
sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Caesare maior:
  dum moritur, numquid maior Othone fuit?

When doubtful was the chance of civil war,
And victory for Otho might declare;
That no more Roman blood for him might
  flow,
He gave his breast the great decisive blow.
Caesar's superior you may Cato call:
Was he so great as Otho in his fall?
Hay

⁴⁷ It is to be noted that even in the most worthless of his epigrams he never loses his sense of style. If childish epigrams are to be given to the world, they cannot be better written.

⁴¹ Cp. Juv. 5; Mart. iii. 60, vi. 11, x. 49; Plin. Ep. ii. 6.

⁴⁹ v. 18. 6.

⁵⁰ This is doubly offensive if addressed to the poor Cinna of viii. 19. Cp. the similar vii. 53, or the yet more offensive viii. 33 and v. 36.

⁵¹ More excusable are poems such as x. 57, where he attacks one Gaius, an old friend (cp. ii. 30), for failing to fulfil his promise, or the exceedingly pointed poem (iv. 40) where he reproaches Postumus, an old friend, for forgetting him. Cp. also v. 52.

⁵² See p. 252.

⁵³ Cp. the elaborate and long-winded poem of Statius on a statuette of Hercules (Silv. iv. 6) with Martial on the same subject, ix. 43 and 44.

⁵⁴ Cp. viii. 3 and 56.

⁵⁵ Bridge and Lake, Introd., Select Epigrams of Martial.