SOURCE: "Martial and Formal Literary Criticism," Classical Philology, Vol. XV, No. 4, October, 1920, pp. 340-52.

[In this essay, Preston assesses Martial's opinions—as expressed in the epigrams—of his artistic predecessors, and compares them to the more formal literary commentary offered by some of Martial's contemporaries.]

What constitutes real literary criticism is always debatable, in the case of Martial as much perhaps as anywhere. Martial does not give us the masses of criticism that we find in Horace, nor are his critical ideas systematized as Horace's are. No doubt this is what is meant by Mr. H. E. Butler¹ when he says in his essay on Martial, "He gives us practically no literary criticism." But Martial, at first sight not a bookish poet, has a surprising amount of informal literary comment and reflection. Along certain lines he imitated largely, and imitation is at least the softer side of criticism. His imitations, collected in special studies and swallowed, if not bolted, in Friedlander's commentary, are a field in themselves. In specific references to Greek and Latin writers as well as to theories of composition Martial also richly repays sifting. On contemporaries he is as uncritical as Pliny; both, for slightly different reasons, must be subject to heavy discount. But on the elder writers, and on writing in general, Martial's views have interest and value, especially for comparison with Quintilian, Tacitus, and Pliny. Not only did these three have forensic interests to which their criticism was in some degree adapted, but they represented, much more directly than Martial could, one phase at least of the cultivated or school tradition of the age. Martial, as but slightly interested in oratory, and professedly popular in his appeal, might be expected to supply an independent, if not insurgent, critical position. How far he does so is what we wish to determine.

The archaist movement was making itself felt in Martial's time. Quintilian, as a moderate Ciceronian, posts himself midway between Horace and the professional "lovers of Lucilius" (Inst. x. 1. 93-94), but he prefers the work of Horace in satire. Martial exceeds Quintilian or even Horace in his opposition to the archaists and their chief fetish. Adopting Horace's comparison of the muddy torrent, to which Quintilian had filed a mild objection, Martial condemns the early satirist for his bumpy style, cascading over rocks. He takes pains to submit his lemma, xi. 90. 1-4:

Carmina nulla probas molli quae limite currunt,
 Sed quae per salebras altaque saxa cadunt,
et tibi Maeonio quoque carmine maius habetur,
  "Lucili columella hic situst Metrophanes."²

Lucilius is, however, the representative of satire (Martial xii. 94. 7). In the cited epigram, flinging out a tag of Ennius, terrai frugiferai, Martial fleers at the cult of Ennius, to which Quintilian (Inst. x. 1. 88) accords respect without adherence. Ennius is contracted unfavorably with Vergil (Mart. v. 10. 7). On Accius and Pacuvius, two more totems of the archaists, Martial (xi. 90. 6) is frankly spiteful,

Accius et quidquid Pacuviusque vomunt.3

To these, Quintilian (Inst. x. 1. 97) allows perfunctory praise, excusing blemishes of form as the fault of their times. An interesting feature of Martial's criticism of the archaists is his associating with the antiquaries in literature those who affected a similar taste in architecture (Mart. v. 10. 3-6):

Hi sunt invidiae nimirum, Regule, mores,
  praeferat antiquos semper ut illa novis.
sic veterem ingrati Pompei quaerimus umbram,
  sic laudant Catuli vilia templa senes.⁴

In this case as elsewhere when Martial reflects on old fogies a compliment to Domitian is implied. How far old-fashioned tastes in art went with political intransigence is an interesting question. In general Martial seems opposed to the ancients as a smooth joiner of verses would naturally despise a clumsy craftsman. With this reasoned prejudice blends the usual anger of moderns against such critics as demand the seasoned classic, a feeling which comes out very well in the pert epigram to Vacerra who "liked his poets high," Mart. viii. 69.

Not far from the archaists, and in some cases identical, stood the obscurantists or over-learned poets, with whom Martial had nothing in common. Quintilian, who was no pedant, sneers civilly at this class (Inst. x. 1. 97). Virium tamen Attio plus tribuitur; Pacuvium videri doctiorem, qui esse docti affectant, volunt. Martial x. 21, attacks a gentleman who prefers Cinna to Vergil and whose works require a corps of grammarians, nay, Apollo himself, to interpret them. Mere learning, he says, can save no poem from oblivion (vi. 61 [60]):

nescioquid plus est, quod donat saecula
  chartis:
  victurus genium debet habere liber.

Hoping he may change to please the grammarians, Martial notwithstanding aims to win his public without benefit of grammarians (x. 21. 5-6):

 mea carmina, Sexte,
grammaticis placeant, ut sine grammaticis.

Sotadean juggling, echo verses, trick stuff of any kind, Martial sensibly pronounces trivial. Even the Attis of Catullus with its galliambies, a brilliant tour de force (luculentus), so Martial concedes to general opinion, has no message for him:

Turpe est difficiles habere nugas
Et stultus labor est ineptiarum.⁵

Much erudition was at this time going into various mythological confections, such as the star myths, … done into flowing elegiacs by Pliny's young friend Calpurnius Piso, eruditam sane luculentamque materiam, as Pliny remarks, with many other encomiums (v. 17. 1). Such things as this, along with the parlor epic and the closet drama, Martial condemns alike for bombast (Mart. iv. 49. 7-8), and for the deadly staleness of the themes. They are the lucubrations of long-faced dullards and the bane of school children (viii. 3. 15-18). The man who would be completely dead to the world of reality is urged to bury himself n the Aetia of Callimachus (Mart. x. 4. 11-12). Listing repeatedly the stock epic and tragic themes, Martial pronounces them a waste of time and paper.⁶ Whether any of this vehemence was aimed at Statius, whom Martial does not directly mention, has been much and uselessly discussed. Certainly Martial does not admire the genre. Mythology serves him mostly as a kind of shorthand, by the Ovidian system. Orestes and Pylades suggest friendship, Hecuba and Andromache, sorrow, Nestor, Priam, Pelias, or Hecuba, age, and so through a wide range of types. Few obscure myths find reference in the epigrams, though Martial seems particularly well primed on the myths of Hercules, in whose cult Domitian had a peculiar interest (cf. Mart. ix. 64; ix. 65; ix. 101; and v. 65). In tributes, dedications, bread-and-butter poetry generally, Martial falls into myth easily and with his eyes open. For his compliments to Domitian it made by far the best vehicle. In estimating the element of flattery in Martial, one should consider the coin in which he renders payment to Caesar. As the coin of compliment, mythological comparisons were as cheap as Russian rubles. Quintilian flatters quite as grossly and with a clumsier touch. Despite his contempt for stale erudition and for anything resembling pedantry, Martial respects learning. The epithet doctus on his lips seems sincerely though vaguely complimentary.⁷ He covets this quality in his own work (x. 20 [19]. 1), courts learned criticism (iv. 86. 1-3), and affects dread of the grammarian Probus iii. 2. 12. His deferebtuak address to Quintilian has perhaps little value as evidence. More informing are his mentions of the Attic tradition; Attic charm and Attic salt are frequently on Martial's lips. He flares up at a pretender to Atticism, vi. 64. 16 ff.

Sed tibi plus mentis, tibi cor limante Minerva
acrius et tenues finxerunt pectus Athenae.
Ne valeam etc.⁸

Mention of particular writers and types of writing is exceedingly common in Martial but often quite perfunctory. On the Greek side, his provincial education left him well enough read in Homer to play with Homeric tags, as in i. 45 and i. 50 and to allude intelligently. Homer he couples with Vergil, and Vergil with Silius Italicus.⁹ Archilochus comes in with the conventional reference to the sensitive and high-strung Lycambes (Mart. vii. 12. 6). Sappho, whom Quintilian ignores, presumably on moral grounds,¹⁰ Martial calls amatrix, comparing Lesbian morals unfavorably with those of the chaste Theophila (vii. 69. 9-10). If Sappho could have had lessons from the poetess Sulpicia she would have been more learned and less experienced (Mart. x. 35. 15-16). Of Greek tragedians, Martial mentions only Sophocles. Martial, like Quintilian, rates Menander high, making him, not incompatibly, share a distich with Ovid (Mart. v. 10. 9-10). A neat play on the comic rule of three actors occurs (Mart. vi. 6). Callimachus, otherwise the "limbo of learned poets," is first among the Greeks in epigram, but the comparison to Martial's friend Brutianus does not flatter the Greek (Mart. iv. 23. 4-5).¹¹ Excepting for his knowledge of Homer, a few imitations of the late Greek epigrammatist Lucillius, and a propensity for feeble punning on Greek proper names, Martial's information on Greek letters might have come at second hand.

On the Latin side, we have seen that Martial, rating form even before content, rejects the older poets as far down as Catullus, who was, along with Domitius Marsus, Martial's avowed model and master. His epithets for Catullus are doctus, tenuis, argutus, lepidus, and tener. ¹² His imitations and references go mostly to the shorter poems of Catullus, especially to his hendecasyllabics, which are certainly straightforward and unassuming. In slighting the more ambitious work of Catullus, Martial is like Quintilian, who passes judgment on Catullus only as an iambic poet, commending his acerbitas (Inst. x. 1. 96), and Pliny, who quotes Catullus in -defense of epigrammatic license (iv. 14. 5). Martial defends his own drastic vein by the same precedent. The deftness of Catullus shows in several details of Martial's technique. For example, the type of epigram which consists of a piling up of comparisons, sometimes agreeable, and sometimes, as in ix. 57, quite the reverse, seems a direct legacy from Catullus. Martial and his contemporaries admired the "pet" poems of Catullus extravagantly.¹³ The Lesbia cycle also delighted Martial, but real passion was foreign to his experience. Lesbia, says Martial (viii. 73. 7), inspired Catullus; love made the elegists and Vergil; give me a Corinna or an Alexis, and neither Ovid nor Vergil will have cause to scorn me. Compare, however, Mart. viii. 55. (56) and xi. 3. 7-10, where the fatal lack is leisure and a patron like Maecenas.

To Martial, as to others of his age, Vergil was unique, above criticism. His appropriate epithets are sacer, cothurnatus. The Aeneid is often referred to, and quoted, Mart. viii. 55 (56). 19 and xiv. 185. 1; for a reference to the Ecologues cf. viii. 55 (56). 17-18. We are indebted to Martial for a testimony on the Culex with a suggestion of criticism viii. 55 (56). 20:

Qui modo vix Culicem fleverat ore rudi

cf. also xiv. 185, where the Culex is recommended as light verse for after-dinner consumption. That technique of citation which coupled the elegiac poets regularly with their amorous inspirations, Martial extends to Vergil, persistently associating him with the boy Alexis.¹⁴ Vergil could have shone first in any field of poetry (Mart. viii. 18. 5-8).

To Martial, as to Quintilian, Horace is the type of Latin lyric poetry (Mart. xii. 94. 5), fila lyrae movi Calabris exculta Camenis. Reminiscences, not confined to the odes, are fairly common, including some of Martial's few touches of parody¹⁵ (cf. Martial iv. 55. 5-7 and xii. 17), where Fever mounts behind the horseman, bathes beside the bather, and trenches on the trencher man (because there is no verbal handle this reminiscence seems to have slipped the commentators). Martial's odd impression that Horace was a Calabrian (v. 30. 2, viii. 18. 5, and xii. 94. 5), is one of several blunders in literary history. This one may go back to a blurred recollection of Horace, Odes ii. 6. 9-16.

A much more lively personal interest on Martial's part seems indicated for Domitius Marsus and the elegiac group. Marsus was Martial's master no less than Catullus, and his debt to the former was undoubtedly large. Had Martial found a Maecenas, he would not have been a Vergil but a Marsus (viii. 55 [56]. 21-22). He modestly deprecates comparison with Marsus and Catullus (ii. 71. 3). Marsus, along with Catullus, Pedo, and Gaetulicus, supplies sanction for calling a spade a spade (Mart. i. pref. 12). Martial, consistently enough, slights Marsus' epic, the Amazonis (Mart. iv. 29. 8). As for Marsus' elegies, Martial lets us know that they were addressed to a pronounced brunette, fusca Melaenis (Mart. vii. 29. 8). The epigrams, Cicuta, seem to have inspired Martial's regard for Marsus. Tibullus, as we have seen, Martial rates high, agreeing in this with Quintilian, x. 1. 93, who calls him first in elegy, tersus atque elegans.¹⁶ References to Gallus, and to Propertius, lascivus (Mart. viii. 73. 5), and facundus (xiv. 189. 1) are not particularly significant. Much more to Martial's liking was Ovid, all of whose works he seems to have read and assimilated. Metrical dexterity, smooth and polished phrasing, and verbal prettiness¹⁷ were his chief lines of imitation. Ovid's excesses in rhetoric he sensibly avoids, but the whimsical way with myths which is so pleasant in Ovid appealed to Martial (cf. Ovid Met. i. 173, Ibis 81, with Mart. viii. 49 [50]. 3-4).¹⁸

The poets so far considered include those who did most to influence Martial's style. He approves also the vogue of Persius (iv. 29. 7), as does Quintilian (x. 1. 94). Both comments remark the fact that Persius was a "one book" wonder. On Lucan, Martial seems to recognize and differ from the academic verdict. Quintilian, praising Lucan's rhetoric, declares him a model for orators rather than poets (Inst. x. 1. 90). Martial (i. 61. 7), calls Lucan unicus, citing also (xiv. 194), the "best seller" argument for his poetical pre-eminence:

Sunt quidam qui me dicunt non esse poetam:
 Sed qui me vendit bibliopola putat.

Of course Martial had personal grounds for a kindness toward Lucan. A clear allusion to formal criticism comes in Martial's distich for a copy of Sallust, xiv. 191:

Hic erit, ut perhibent doctorum corda virorum,
 primus Romana Crispus in historia.

Cf. Quint. Inst. x. 1. 32. The series of little book mottoes in Martial's Apophoreta xiv. 183-96 might be called the beginning of book advertising and tabloid reviewing.

Coming now to epigram, a field in which Martial's critical views deserve peculiar respect, we may first consider the status of the type as Martial found it. Epigram was one variety, not too clearly defined, of that brief occasional verse, lusus, nugae, ineptiae, the vogue of which Pliny amply attests. Pliny defines the genre (vii. 9. 9-10): Fas est et carmine remitti, non dico continuo et longo (id enim perfici nisi in otio non potest) sed hoc arguto et brevi, quod apte quantas libet occupationes distinguit. Lusus vocantur. Collections of such verse went under a variety of titles, as Pliny notes when considering a title for his own collection; Pliny iv. 14. 9-10: Proinde sive epigrammata sive idyllia sive eclogas sive, ut multi, poematia seu quod aliud vocare malueris licebit voces, ego tantum hendecasyllabos praesto. Pliny chose to call his poems "Hendecasyllabics" because "this title is bound by no law but that of meter." Sentius Augurinus, Pliny iv. 27, entitled a similar collection poematia. The content was as various as the titles. A lively play of shifting emotions was desirable (cf. Pliny iv. 14. 3; iv. 27. 1). The honorific element was large. For example, the estimable Capito, Pliny i. 17, besides collecting portraits of distinguished republicans, wrote verse in praise of great men, quite possibly to go with the portraits.¹⁹

Epigram, then, was one name for a short poem on almost any subject. Neither Pliny nor Martial pays much attention to Greek epigram, though both mention the epigrams of Callimachus and contemporary imitations. Pliny, in discussing his hendecasyllabics, and Martial, on his epigrams, stress Roman tradition and Roman examples. According to this tradition epigram was characterized by sal Romanum, which differed from Attic salt chiefly by a superior crudity. More specifically, Latin epigram had developed license of tone and theme, lascivia, petulantia, sharpness and asperity, amaritudo, acerbitas, bilis, and a brutal directness of language, simplicitas.²⁰ Both Martial and Pliny eagerly defend these qualities, on much the same sanction. Pliny, as an orator, cites mainly those statesmen and orators who had composed epigrams in odd moments (cf Pliny v. 3. 5-6). He admits that by giving a public reading of his verses he had perhaps gone farther than his precedents. Martial cites mainly poets in his own defense. Catullus, Gaetulicus, Lucan, and the Emperor Augustus are cited by both. The matter of definite personalities in epigram was treated similarly by Pliny and Martial. Though Pliny has nothing to say of his own practice we can hardly suspect him of hurting anyone's feelings, and his theory comes out in comment on the plays of Vergilius Romanus.²¹ Martial abstained from definite personalities, following the procedure which had long been a convention for satire (Mart. vii. 12; x. 33. 9-10):

Hunc servare modum nostri novere libelli,
 parcere personis, dicere de vitiis.

Yet Martial abhorred the saccharine type of epigram, vii. 25:

Dulcia cum tantum scribas epigrammata
 semper
 et cerussata candidiora cute,
          nullaque mica salis nec amari fellis
 in illis
 gutta sit, O demens, vis tamen illa legi!
           Nec cibus ipse iuvat morsu
 fraudatus aceti,
 nec grata est facies cui gelasinus abest.
         Infanti melimela dato fatuasque
 mariscas:
 nam mihi, quae novit pungere, Chia sapit.

Martial was himself criticized for saccharine tendencies, probably in his flattering epigrams (Mart. x. 45):

          Si quid lene mei dicunt et dulce
 libelli,
 si quid honorificum pagina blanda sonat,
hoc tu pingue putas

Martial makes no very satisfactory defense. It is worth recalling that Pliny also was criticized for puffing his friends.²²

We have been at some pains to compare the light verse of Pliny and Martial, not that Pliny's hendecasyllabics were probably worth their salt, but for evidence on the convention of Roman epigram. It appears that epigram was a popular medium, saddled firmly with certain conventions of crudity, which required constant apology, and held lightly or rather not handled at all by the higher critical opinion. Pliny made some effort to assert the dignity of epigram; cf. his comment on Martial, Pliny iii. 21, and ix. 25. 2. Incipio enim ex hoc genere studiorum non solum oblectationem verum etiam gloriam petere post iudicium tuum. Martial seems rather hopeless of critical approval for his medium. In addition to the conventions already noted we might add a convention of meter. Martial himself regarded hendecasyllabics and elegiacs as his principal meters (Mart. x. 9. 1). But he makes exceptions and finds precedent for them (Mart. vi. 65. 1-2):

"Hexametris epigramma facis" scio dicere
  Tuccam.
Tucca, solet fieri, denique, Tucca, licet.

The convention of brevity in epigram was clearly recognized and when Martial exceeds average length he meets criticism by citing precedents (Mart. vi. 65. 3).

"Sed tamen hoc longum est." Solet hoc quoque, Tucca, licetque: Marsus and Pedo, says he, often wrote one epigram to fill two pages (Mart. ii. 77. 5-6). Curiously enough, Martial does not seem conscious of originality in that insistence upon point which is the peculiar virtue of his epigrams. He is annoyed with the spoiled reader who demands nothing but point. All point and no padding is hard on the artist, Mart. x. 59:

Non opus est nobis nimium lectore guloso;
 hunc volo, non fiat qui sine pane satur.

This epigram asserts that body is necessary to explain and develop the subject, lemma; it also insists on the intrinsic merit of this exegesis. Martial speaks as a lecturer who suspects that his audience wants nothing but the slides. He sneers at the popular demand for distichs, nothing but distichs (Mart. vi. 65. 4; viii. 29. 1 -2). On the other hand, belittled by a critic because of his brevity, Martial hotly defends his genre, comparing the miniature in plastic art (Mart. ix. 50. 5-6):

Nos facimus Bruti puerum,²³ nos Langona
 vivum:
 tu magnus luteum, Gaure, Giganta facis.

With so much that was conventional in his literary creed, Martial was and felt himself to be original in some very important respects. The choice of live subjects was his first tenet (cf. xi. 42. 1-2):

Vivida cum poscas epigrammata, mortua ponis
 lemmata. Qui fieri, Caeciliane, potest?

The colors of life must be in his work, viii. 3. 19-22:

At tu Romano lepidos sale tinge libellos:
 adgnoscat mores vita legatque suos.
Angusta cantare licet videaris avena,
 dum tua multorum vincat avena tubas'.

Cf. also x. 4. 9-12,

non hic Centauros, non Gorgonas Harpyiasque
 invenies: hominem pagina nostra sapit.
Sed non vis, Mamurra, tuos cognoscere mores
 nec te scire: legas Aetia Callimachi.

Martial appreciates to the full the essentially personal nature of epigram (ii. pref. 4-8), "I can see why tragedy or comedy should carry a letter of introduction, for they may not speak for themselves: epigrams need no herald and are pleased to hail you with their own saucy tongue." Martial's book expresses him better than a picture (vii. 84. 6). In all of this we have a code of realism, modernism, and personal expression perhaps unique in Martial's time. By no means all his epigrams fit the creed, as he was the first to recognize, vii. 81:

Triginta toto mala sunt epigrammata libro.
 Si totidem bona sunt, Lause, bonus liber est.

Martial does not subscribe to Quintilian's doctrine of aequalitas (Mart. vii. 90):²⁴

lactat inaequalem Matho me fecisse libellum:
  si verum est, laudat carmina nostra Matho.
Aequales scribit libros Calvinus et Umber:
 aequalis liber est, Cretice, qui malus est.

As the seamy side of Martial's modernism may be urged his insistence on popularity, his use of booksellers' arguments, and his admission that mime had influenced his technique. The aims that Martial ascribes to the harlequin Latinus (Mart. ix. 28) are essentially his own (cf. ix. prefatory poem lines 5-8; I. pref. 15-21; 1. 4. 5-6).²⁵ But on the whole Martial represents an entirely wholesome reaction against a stagnant literary age. Despite this reaction he shows himself docile as regards literary tradition and amenable to the best critical opinion.

Notes

¹ H. E. Butler, Post-Augustan Poetry from Seneca to Juvenal (Oxford, 1909), p. 284. [Classical Philology XV, October, 1920]

²Salebrae was already technical in criticism, as the citations show. Cf. the adjective salebrosus, Martial xi. 2. 7: Lectores tetrici salebrosum ediscite Santram. Friedlander infers from this passage that Santra must have done verse as well as prose, but the supposition is not essential.

³ This extreme position toward the archaists appears also, Tac. Or. 21: Pacuvium certe et Accium non solum tragoediis sed etiam in orationibus suis expressit; adeo durus et siccus est ibid. 23 isti qui Lucilium pro Horatio et Lucretium pro Vergilio legunt. It is worth noting that Quintilian is much more drastic in his comment on the old masters in his own field of oratory than he is where poetry is concerned. Cf. his warning against the Gracchi and Cato (Inst. ii. 5. 21).

⁴ The two arts are conjoined also, Tac. Or. 20. Quid enim, si infirmiora horum temporum templa credas, quia non rudi caemento et informibus tegulis extruuntur, sed marmore nitent et auro radiantur? Tacitus also illustrates archaism from the stage, ibid. 20, nec magis perfert in iudiciis tristem et impexam antiquitatem quam si quis in scena Roscii aut Turpionis Ambivii exprimere gestus velit. The tendency to associate the arts in criticism seems especially strong in this age. Pliny compares sculpture and painting to literature. i. 20. 5; iii. 13. 4. Martial compares epigram and figurines, ix. 50. 5. Comparisons from the gastronomic art are very common in Quintilian, Martial, and Pliny.

⁵ Cf. Mart. ii. 86. 1-12, with Friedlander's excellent note on ingenious poetry. On the same ground, pettiness, Martial (xii. 43. 1-11) condemns some didactic poetry of licentious content, which he compares to Elephantis. Martial would not have cared for the hokku.

⁶ Cf. Mart. iii. 45. 1-2; iv. 49. 3-6; v. 53. 1-2; x. 4. 1-10; x. 35. 5-7; xiv. 1. 11.

⁷Doctus is applied by Martial to Homer, Catullus, Sappho, Nero, Pedo, and Seneca as well as to various contemporaries. In this connection we even suspect Martial of conferring the Doctorate in commerce.

⁸ The epithet tenues recognizes the doctrine of Attic tenuitas or the plain style, cf. Quint (Inst. xii. 10. 21). Quapropter mihi falli multum videntur, qui solos esse Atticos credunt tenues et lucidos (ibid., 25-26). Quid est igitur, cur in iis demum qui tenui venula per calculos fluunt, Atticum saporem putent?.… Melius de hoc nomine sentiant credantque Attice dicere esse optime dicere. Martial's idea of Atticism would be close enough to this last (cf. 1. 25. 3; iii. 20. 9; iv. 23. 6; iv. 86. 1).

⁹ Pliny speaks his real mind about Silius, who does not seem to have been an intimate, but Pliny's friend Paulus does elegies that are true-Propertian, and lyrics you couldn't tell from Horace; cf. Pliny ix. 22. 2.

¹⁰ A bias against the erotic suggests itself throughout Quintilian's catalogue, cf. his remarks on Afranius (Inst. x. 1. 100). Martial takes high ground on such themes as Scylla and Biblis, x. 35. 7-8, commending the castos etprobos amores of Sulpicia, but he can hardly qualify as a consistent purity advocate.

¹¹ Pliny also compares a friend's epigrams to Callimachus iv. 3. 3-4 (Quintilian x. 1. 58 considers only his elegies). These comparisons have a certain interest as characteristic of an age of logrollers.

¹² On doctus cf. Friedlander's note on Mart. i. 61. 1. Tenuis is high praise, cf. supra p. 5 n. 1. Martial employs the word tenuis for Tibullus and for Nerva "the Tibullus of our time" cf. viii. 70. 5 tenui corona (compare viii. 3. 21) of himself, angusta avena. Tenuis connotes a proud simplicity. Argutus, a hard word to pin down (Martial uses it of a painter's deft brush work), is applied also to Tibullus and to Martial's own epigrams.

¹³ Cf. Stella's Columba (Mart. i. 7), Martial's Issa. (i. 109), Statius Silv. ii. 4 and 5.

¹⁴ Cf. Martial v. 16. 12 with Friedlander's note.

¹⁵ The lack of parody in Martial is really surprising, seeing that he was fairly well read and could turn the trick when he wished to. A neat parody of the elegiac style occurs ix. 49:

Haec est illa meis multum cantata libellis,Quam meus edidicit lector amatque togam.

¹⁶ Mart. v. 30. 4, cultis aut elegia comis, indicates a similar regard for polish in elegy. Other epithets for elegy and elegists in Martial are levis, tenuis, lascivus (a). Lascivus, in Quintilian used to denote any exuberance of style, seems to stand for erotic content in Martial.

¹⁷ Cf. Martial iv. 22 with Ovid Met. iv. 354 ff. Martial would seem to have written a little poem quite out of his usual style and devoid of valid point simply to incorporate some pretty images from Ovid.

¹⁸ The whole matter of reminiscences in Martial needs extreme caution. Many of those listed by the commentators were certainly clichés, common to all poets since the early Augustans.

¹⁹ Compare the numerous epigrams which Martial wrote to fit statuary, paintings, and other works of art.

²⁰ Critics of epigram were more opposed to the crude diction than to the licentious subject-matter. Pliny believed in both, practiced the latter, but lacked the moral courage to be boldly vulgar; cf. Pliny iv. 14.4: summos illos et gravissimos viros qui talia scripserunt non modo lascivia rerum sed ne verbis quidem nudis abstinuisse; quae nos refugimus, non quia severiores (unde enim?), sed quia timidiores sumus. Quintilian, though not recognizing epigram, seems to condemn both qualities. For verba parum verecunda, Quintilian Inst. x. 1.9, grudgingly allows a certain license in iambic poetry and the old comedy, though he denies such language to the orator.

²¹ Pliny vi. 21. 5-7: non amaritudo, non dulcedo, non lepos defuit: ornavit virtutes, insectatus est vitia, fictis nominibus decenter, veris usus est apte. The words would serve to describe Martial's practice.

²² On the matter of harsh personalities in epigram, one recalls the distinction between the wit and the buffoon, scurra, which Horace insists upon. Martial does not use the word scurra, though Pliny does. But he makes the same distinction, in comment on the lampoons which had been attributed to him (x. 3.1). Vernaculorum dicta, sordidum dentem, etc., cf. also (i. 41. 1-2). Urbanus tibi, Caecili, videris. Non es, crede mihi. Quid ergo? verna. Later in the same epigram Caecilius is compared to noted scurrae. Cf. also Mart. 7. 12. Martial emphasizes a distinction between urbicus and urbanus (i. 41. 11).

²³ For the "Boy of Brutus" cf. Friedlander on Mart. ii. 77. 4. Also Mart. xiv. 171. For Martial's literary thesis cf. Pliny vi. 21. 4: scripsit mimiambos tenuiter argute venuste, atque in hoc genere eloquentissime; nullum est enim genus quod absolutum non possit eloquentissimum dici. This was no doubt a very liberal admission on Pliny's part. Critical opinion at this time was apt to measure genius in terms of lamp oil and elbow grease.

²⁴ Cf. Quintilian Inst. x. 1-54 (Apollonius) non tamen contemnendum edidit opus aequali quadam mediocritate et quantum eminentibus vincimur, fortasse aequalitate pensamus (ibid. x. 1. 86-87).

²⁵ The stage is recognized by Tacitus as a vicious influence for oratory; cf. Or. 26: quo plerique temporum nostrorum actores ita utuntur ut lascivia verborum et levitate sententiarum et licentia compositionis histrionales modos exprimant. On popularizing generally cf. Quintilian x. 1. 43: alios recens haec lascivia deliciaeque et omnia ad voluptatem multitudinis imperitae composita delectant.