[In the following excerpt, Smith offers a vigorous response to Martial's detractors, particularly those who have charged him with obsequiousness toward patrons. Smith stresses the tradition of the patron-client relationship—before as well as after Martial—and praises the poet's keen powers of observation, his candor, and his sense of proportion.]

… I know of no ancient writer whose personal character has been more bitterly assailed by modern critics of a certain class. I know of few who have deserved it so little. We may say, at once, that all Martial's faults are on the surface. Otherwise, many of his critics never would have discerned them at all. The just and sympathetic appreciation of an ancient author demands a much larger background of knowledge and experience than seems to be generally supposed. It is, of course, obvious that, first of all, before attempting to criticize an author one ought to read his entire works with care and understanding. In the case of a man like Martial, one must also be thoroughly acquainted with all of the conditions of his life and times; one must know all about the history of the antique epigram as a department, one must be able to realize the peculiarities of the Latin temperament as such, and make due allowance for them.

For example, most prominent and most widely circulated—indeed, with many persons, the only association with the name of Martial—is the charge that both in subject and in language his epigrams are offensive to modern taste. To a certain extent this is true. We should add, however, that Martial himself cannot be held responsible for it. The conventional tradition of the epigram demanded that a certain portion of one's work should be of this character. That in Martial's case the peculiarity is more the result of this convention than of individual taste, is shown by the fact that it does not run through his entire text. On the contrary, it is confined to certain epigrams, and those epigrams do not represent his best and most characteristic work. Lastly, the proportion of these objectionable epigrams is by no means as large as the majority of people appear to suppose. The text of Martial contains 1555 epigrams. The Delphin edition of 1660 excluded 150 of this number. The standards of another age and a different nationality would probably exclude about 50 more. All told, hardly a seventh of the total. This leaves more than 1200 little poems into which anyone may dip without hesitation, and on this residuum Martial can easily support his claim to be called one of the wittiest, one of the most amusing, and at the same time one of the most instructive, writers in any period of the world's history.

Martial's flattery of Domitian is a charge easily disposed of. Flattery of the reigning emperor has been the rule since Augustus. By this time it was almost as conventional as our titles of nobility. What do these mean when we interpret them literally? Moreover, Martial is outdone not only by his predecessors but, which is more to the point, by his graver contemporaries, Statius and Quintilian. Still more to his credit is the fact that he did not revile the memory of Domitian after his death. Finally, we must remember that Martial was a Spaniard and a provincial. Why should he care about Domitian's vices or virtues, or about his moral fitness or unfitness to be a Roman emperor?

The third and, on the face of it, the most serious charge against Martial is his relation to his patrons. To state the matter baldly as well as briefly, it is Martial's idea that his patrons owe him a living, and if he has reason to think that they are forgetting it, he does not hesitate to refresh their memories. For instance, he frequently reminds his readers in general, and his patrons in particular, that a poet is a person who needs money. Again, he makes pointed reference to the depleted condition of his wardrobe. Once, he reminds Stella that unless he is moved to send him some new tiles, the farmhouse at Nomentum will have to go on leaking as before.

Now all this is unpleasant to us, but we must not forget that, as a matter of fact, Martial's patrons actually did owe him a living. Such were the habits and standards of his time, the accepted and unavoidable conditions of his life. That life was the life of a brilliant provincial who came to the city without an independent fortune and chose literature as his profession. Nowadays, the most of us are familiar with the idea that an author is entitled to a share in the success of his book, that he draws his income for literary work from that source. But this idea was not generally entertained until the nineteenth century; and our recent experience with the law of international copyright shows that the idea is still rudimentary in many minds. In antiquity, therefore, unless an author possessed independent means, his only alternative was patronage; and until 1800 patronage was the general rule of literature.

The relation of client to patron was. an ancient and honorable institution in Roman society. There was nothing to criticize in the relation of Vergil and Horace to Mcecenas and Augustus. And at the time of his death Vergil possessed not less than half a million in our money. But whatever Vergil was worth, the bald fact remains that practically all of it was acquired by gift. It was only through the generosity of a patron that a poor author could secure the leisure for literary composition. In return, he undertook to immortalize his patron in his works. He also attended him in public from time to time, he went to his regular morning receptions, and if his patron invited him to dinner, he made himself agreeable. In short, he made every return in his power for the favors he had received or hoped to receive.

It will easily be seen that this relation—like the fee to the waiter—was peculiarly liable to abuse. The pages of Martial, Pliny, and Juvenal show how much it had deteriorated by the time of Domitian. Both sides were to blame. Prices were outrageous, and wealth the standard of life. The rich were largely the descendants of dishonest nobodies, and with habits, tastes, and views to match; the poor had lost their pride, their independence, their spur of ambition. Each class despised the other, and each class was justified in it. Both Juvenal and Martial tell us that men of birth and education, men of high official position, even men with fortunes of their own, were not ashamed to take the sportula (originally the basket of food for the day, now the dole of money) given to those who had made the regular morning call. One is reminded of the retainers of a noble house in the Middle Ages, or of the poor courtiers under the old régime in France and England.

Not pleasant, this custom; but it existed, and Martial in paying court to a patron was only following the universal rule of his time. He had the further justification of necessity, and it is also clear that he made all the return for it in his power. Indeed, it was characteristic of the man, and, all things considered, rather to his credit, that he insisted upon the business aspect of it, and refused to pretend that it was anything else. So far, therefore, from severely criticizing Martial's relation to his patrons, it seems to me that in a situation which he could not avoid, and for which he was not responsible, he showed himself a better man than most of his contemporaries would have done under the same conditions.

It was a hard, uncertain, Bohemian sort of life in many respects. But to a certain degree Martial was himself a genuine Bohemian. The type is excessively rare in the annals of Roman literature. The one other striking example whom I now recall is that brilliant old reprobate Furius Bibaculus. Martial's combination of improvidence and gaiety is distinctly Bohemian. He also seems to have had the peculiarly attractive personality by which that temperament is sometimes accompanied. At any rate, his epigrams show not only that he knew everybody in Rome who was worth knowing, but that few men as great as he have at the same time been so universally liked by their contemporaries. Some of Martial's best epigrams are to his friends. In one of his last poems (xii, 34)—it is addressed to Julius Martialis, whom he had known and loved for four-and-thirty years—the poet closes by saying: "If you would avoid many griefs, and escape many a heartache, then make of no one too dear a friend You will have less joy, but you will also have less sorrow." This can only be the observation of a man who has had real friends, and has really loved them.

Another attractive side of his nature was his evident devotion to little children. I content myself with a single illustration. This is his epitaph for Erotion, a little girl belonging to his household who died at the age of six. Martial, who was then a man of nearly fifty, was deeply affected by the loss of his little favorite. The poem, which is one of three devoted to her memory, recommends the child to the care of his own parents, who had long been dead—a touchingly naïve conception quite in harmony with antique methods of thought, but inspired with a simple and homely tenderness for which there are few parallels in the annals of literature (v, 34);

Dear father and dear mother: Let me crave
Your loving kindness there beyond the grave
For my Erotion, the pretty maid
Who bears these lines. Don't let her be afraid!
She's such a little lassie—only six—
To toddle down that pathway to the Styx
All by herself! Black shadows haunt those
  steeps,
And Cerberus the Dread who never sleeps.
May she be comforted, and may she play
About you merry as the livelong day,
And in her childish prattle often tell
Of that old master whom she loved so well.
Oh earth, bear lightly on her! 'Tis her due;
The little girl so lightly bore on you.

Lines like these help us to understand why under continual provocation he could still be patient with a fussy, dictatorial, old slave who was utterly unable to realize that the boy he had spanked forty or fifty years before had now arrived at years of discretion.

The only contemporary reference to Martial which has happened to survive is found in the passage of Pliny to which I have already alluded. He describes the poet whom he knew as "acutus, ingeniosus, acer"—clear-sighted, clever, shrewd. And, truly, as a keen observer of men and things, Martial has rarely been equalled. The world of Rome was an open book before him. He read the text, fathomed its import, and wrote his commentary upon it in brilliant and telling phrases, and in a literary form of which he was undoubtedly the master.

But, after all, the mainspring of Martial's character and career, the real secret of his abiding greatness as an epigrammatist, is found as soon as we learn that he possessed the quality which Pliny calls candor. Candor means frankness, genuineness, sincerity. It was one of the highest tributes to character that a Roman could pay.

Here we have, according to Pliny's showing, a man who was witty, yet kindly, who was clear-sighted, yet tolerant, who was shrewd, yet sincere. This is the character of one who is never blind to the true proportion of things. And, as a matter of fact, a sense of proportion, a conception of the realities as applied to life, conduct, thought, art, literature, style, everything, is the leading trait of Martial's character, the universal solvent of his career and genius. All is expressed in.,. "avoid extremes," that phrase so characteristic of antiquity, the summary of its wisdom and experience, its most valuable contribution to the conduct of life.

So it was that in spite of his surroundings and associations Martial remained simple, genuine, and unaffected to the end. In an age of unutterable impurity he had no vices. In an age of cant, pedantry, affectation, and shams of every sort and description, he was still true to himself. In an age as notable for exaggeration as is our own, Martial knows that strength does not lie in superlatives. He tells us again and again in his own characteristic fashion that the secret of happiness has not been discovered by the voluptuary, nor the secret of virtue by the ascetic. The present is quite good enough for him; to live it heartily and naturally as it comes, to find out what he is best fitted to do, and then to do it—this is the sum of his philosophy. It is true enough that most friendship is mere feigning. But there are real friends. Let us, therefore, bind them to us with bonds of steel. It is true that life is hard and bitter. But we have to live it. Let us, therefore, find the sunshine while we can. In v, 58, he says (Cowley's translation):

To-morrow you will live, you always cry.
In what far country does this 'morrow' lie,
That 'tis so mighty long ere it arrive?
Beyond the Indies does this 'morrow' live?

'Tis so far-fetched, this 'morrow,' that I fear,
'Twill be both very old and very dear.
"To-morrow I will live," the fool does say;
To-day itself s too late—the wise lived
  yesterday.

The sentiment is as characteristic of antiquity as it is of Martial. Not very elevated, perhaps, but Martial is not a reformer. Like most men of the world he is generally indifferent on the subject of other people's vices. He is not an enthusiast, for he has no illusions. Nor is he a man of lofty ideals. But he is natural and sensible as he is witty and brilliant. Therefore he was in harmony with his own days, and would have been equally in harmony with ours. For if Martial seems so intensely modern, it is not because he has advanced beyond his own time. It is because he is universal. Martial is a cosmopolitan poet and, with the single exception of Menander, the most pronounced example of the type in all classical antiquity.

The prose preface to Martial's first book indicates very clearly some of his views with regard to the sphere and character of the epigram. It also illustrates the man. "I trust," he says, "that the attitude I have maintained in these books of mine is such that no reasonable man can complain of them. They never make their fun at the expense of real people, even of the humblest station—a thing quite absent from the old epigrammatists. Those men not only attacked and vilified people by their real names, but also attacked people of consequence. I do not care to buy fame at such a price. My witticisms contain no innuendoes. I want no malicious commentators who will undertake to rewrite my epigrams for me. It is unfair to be subtle in another man's book. For my free plainness of speech, that is, for the language of the epigram, I should apologize if the example were mine. But so Catullus writes, so Marsus, so Pedo, so Gcetulicus—so everyone who is read through. Still, if there is anyone so painfully Puritanical that in his eyes it is unholy to speak plain Latin in a book, he would better content himself with the preface or, better still, with the title. Epigrams are written for those who attend Flora's entertainments. Cato should not come into my theatre. But if he does come in, let him take his seat and look on with the rest."

Perhaps I ought to add, by way of explanation, that the theatrical performances regularly given at the spring festival of the Floralia were proverbial for their gaiety and license. Once upon a time, the younger Cato, a proverb of Stoic virtue and gravity, went into the theatre during this festival, but finding that his presence put a damper on the occasion, he walked out again. The Stoics of the Empire were never weary of repeating this anecdote of their patron saint. We might expect a man of Martial's temperament to detect the essential ostentation of such a performance. Witness the closing words of his preface:

Pray tell me, when you knew 'twas Flora's
  holiday,
  With all the license, all the sport expected
  then,
Why, Cato, came you stalking in to see the
 play?
 Or was it that you might go stalking out
 again?

So, too, referring to the theatrical way in which the contemporary Stoics preached and practised their favorite doctrine of suicide, Martial says (i, 8, 5-6): "I care nothing for a man who buys fame with his blood—'tis no task to let blood. Give me the man who can deserve praise without dying for it." That the ostentatiousness of the proceeding was the cause of his criticism, is shown by the fact that he yields to none in his admiration of real heroism where real heroism is needed. Ostentation in vice is quite as repellent to him. "Tucca," he says, "is not satisfied to be a glutton, he must have the reputation of it."

All this goes back to his doctrine of Nil nimis—temperance in the real meaning of the word. Neither virtue nor happiness is compatible with excess of any sort. Writing to his friend Julius Martialis, he says (x, 47, translated by Fanshawe):

The things that make a life to please,
Sweetest Martial, they are these:
Estate inherited, not got;
A thankful field, hearth always hot;
City seldom, lawsuits never;
Equal friends, agreeing ever;
Health of body, peace of mind;
Sleeps that till the morning bind;
Wise simplicity, plain fare;
Not drunken nights, yet loos'd from care;
A sober, not a sullen spouse;
Clean strength, not such as his that plows;
Wish only what thou art, to be;
Death neither wish, nor fear to see.

It is extremely difficult to reproduce the exquisite poise and simplicity of Martial's style and thought. No one knew better than he how hard it was to write good epigrams. "Some of your tetrastichs," he says to one Sabellus (vii, 85), "are not so bad, a few of your distichs are well done. I congratulate you—but I am not overpowered. To write one good epigram is easy, to write a bookful is another matter." To those who insisted that no epigram should exceed the length of a distich, his characteristic reply was (viii, 29). "If a man confines himself to distichs, his object, I suppose, is to please by brevity. But, pray tell me, what does their brevity amount to, when there is a whole bookful of them?"

Everyone knows his famous judgment of his own work (i, 16):

Sunt bona, sunt qucedam mediocria, sunt mala
 plura
 Quce legis hic: aliter non fit, Avite, liber.

Good, fair, and bad
May here be had.
 That's no surprise!
'Twere vain to look
For any book
 That's otherwise.

So good a criticism of books in general, and of books of epigrams in particular, that one might almost be excused for overlooking the fact that Martial himself is really an exception to his own rule. At any rate, no one has written so many epigrams, and at the same time has contrived to produce so many good epigrams. It is clear that he was one of those rarest of men who have resolution enough to throw their bad work into the waste-basket.

So far as they illustrate the life of contemporary Rome, many of Martial's themes are also to be found in the letters of that literary Bostonian of antiquity, the Younger Pliny. They are, likewise, the same which Juvenal worked into his satires twenty years after—when Domitian was safely dead. Each of these three has pictured the situation from his own point of view. It was Martial who really saw it. So far as that situation applies to our own life, much has always been familiar, some has grown familiar during the last decade, and the remainder will probably come home to us with the advancing years of the twentieth century.

A marked feature of this age was the feverish production of literature. One may say without exaggeration that it was really the fashion to write books. In fact, the situation politically and socially was such that for an ambitious Roman of birth and education, literature was one of the few avenues to fame which was still open. No wonder Juvenal and Martial believed that neither literature nor learning was a paying investment. "There are quite too many persons of quality in the business," says Martial in one place, "and who ever knew an author who was interested in other people's books?" "Of course (x, 9), one may become famous through one's books. I myself, for example, am well known all over the Empire—almost as well known, I may say, as Andrœmon, the race-horse!"

But although literature may bring fame, it never brings a large income. "I understand, Lupus," he says in another epigram (v, 56), "that you are debating on the best training for your son. My advice is, avoid all professors of literature and oratory. The boy should have nothing to do with the works of Vergil or Cicero. Let him leave old Professor Tutilius to his own glory. If he makes verses, disown the poet. If he wants to follow an occupation that will pay, let him learn the guitar or the flute. If he proves to be dull, make an auctioneer of him or an architect."

The business of an auctioneer was despised, but it was proverbially lucrative. Hence the point of the following epigram (vi, 8):

Two prætors, seven advocates,
Four tribunes and ten laureates—
Such was the formidable band
Of suitors for a maiden's hand.
All twenty-three approached her sire,
All twenty-three breathed their desire.
Father dismissed that deputation
Without a moment's hesitation,
And straight bestowed his daughter dear
On Eulogus, the auctioneer.

Of course, we hear a great deal about the deadly recitatio and all its attendant horrors, such as the amateur poet, the Admirable Crichton in literature, etc., etc. The ostensible and legitimate object of the recitatio was to allow an author to read his work to his friends and get their criticisms of it. But this unfortunate invention of Vergil's friend Asinius Pollio had become literally pestiferous by the time of Domitian, and more especially for its inordinate length and intolerable frequency. Martial speaks in all seriousness of the entire days which politeness or policy often obliged him to waste on these things. Pliny attended them religiously. But Pliny performed all the functions of his life religiously. Moreover, Pliny was himself an author. He was, therefore, as Horace said, an 'auditor et ultor'—in a position to get even now and then by giving a reading himself.

Martial is only too well acquainted with all the types. Here is Maximus (iii, 18) who begins his reading by saying that he has a bad cold. "Why then do you recite?" inquires Martial solicitously.

"Gallicus," he says in another epigram (viii, 76), "you always say, 'tell me the exact truth about my poetry and my oratory. There is nothing which I would rather hear.' Well, Gallicus, listen then to the great truth of all. It is this: Gallicus, you do not like to hear the truth."

"Mamercus," he says (ii, 88), "you wish to be considered a poet, and yet you never recite. Be anything you like, Mamercus, provided you don't recite!"

Of course, the reader often gave a dinner to his hearers. But in Martial's opinion such dinners are quite too dear at the price. In iii,45, he observes: "They say the Sun god turned backward that he might flee from the dinner of Thyestes. I don't know whether that is true or not. But I do know, Ligurinus, that I flee from yours. I don't deny that your dinners are sumptuous, and that the food you furnish is superb. But absolutely nothing pleases me so long as you recite. You need not set turbot and mullet before me; I don't care for mushrooms, I have no desire for oysters. Just be still."

The most important and characteristic feature of Roman social life was the dinner party. Martial accepted the invitations of his patrons as a matter of course; and it is inconceivable that a man of such unrivalled wit and social qualities could have failed to be in constant demand elsewhere. Between the two, he probably saw as much, if not more, of this side of life than any other man of his time. No wonder he did not live to be seventy-five, in spite of his temperate habits!

Nothing has been added to Roman experience in the methods of giving a dinner. Singing, for example, music, vaudeville, and the like, which some of our wealthy contemporaries are just beginning to discover, were already old when Martial began his career. His own opinion is (ix, 77) that "the best kind of a dinner is the dinner at which no flute-player is present." Doubtless there are some in these days who will agree with him.

But of all the persons one met at these large entertainments the best known and the most frequently mentioned is the professional diner-out, the 'dinner-hunter.' One of Juvenal's best satires is devoted to this character. But not even Juvenal can surpass Martial's observation of this specific type of 'dead-beat.' "Some of these people carry off as much food as they can conceal in their napkins. The next day they either eat it themselves or sell it to someone else. They try to make you believe that they don't care to dine out, but this is false. Others, on the contrary, swear that they never dine at home, and this is true—for two reasons."

But the Nemesis of the dinner-hunter is the stingy host. The stingy host has many ways of displaying his really remarkable ingenuity. He can blend good and bad wines, he can give a different wine to his guests from that which he drinks himself—though he sometimes tries to conceal it by giving them poor wine in good bottles. He can allow his guests the privilege of watching him eat mushrooms. Or if he does give them something good, he may give them so little of it as to be merely an appetizer. Such, for example, is Mancinus, who set out one poor, little, unprotected boar for no less than sixty hungry men. Or the stingy host never invites a man except when he knows that he has a previous engagement. Again, he furnishes handsome decorations at the expense of the dinner, or he gives a poor dinner and tries to excuse himself by abusing the cook. You will observe, however, that these persons are only niggardly with other people. In their own pleasures they are extravagant enough.

The strangest type, however, are those who are too stingy to do anything even for themselves. A curious anomaly, the miser. Here is Calenus, for example. Calenus never became stingy at all until he had inherited a fortune and could afford to be generous. The twin brother of the miser is the spendthrift, and they are both alike in their inability to realize the value of money.

One of the most tedious duties of a client was the necessity of presenting himself at the daily receptions of his patrons. These took place regularly at daylight. On the whole, it was the heaviest burden of Martial's life in Rome. He often complained that his literary work was sadly interfered with by this duty. And there is no real affection in it, he says. Some patrons, for instance, insist upon having all their titles. Nor is there much profit in it. The only ones who get anything are the rich, or those persons who know too much about their patron. And as for the sportula, it is so small and so poor that foreign competition for it is quite discouraged. For example, there was my countryman Tuccius (iii, 14):

Poor Tuccius, quite starved at home,
To seek his fortune here in Rome
  Came all the way from Spain.
But when he reached the city gate,
He heard about the dole—and straight
  Went posting back again.

No one knows better than Martial all the possible varieties of the genus Millionaire. The type which we have recently named 'the migratory rich' is nothing new to him, and his comment is, that "a man who lives every-where lives nowhere." He knows the sort who cherish a high temper, "because it is cheaper to fly into a passion than it is to give." Another one gives, but he never ceases to remind you of the fact. He knows the wealthy invlid and recommends, free of charge, one dose of real poverty. Nor does he fail to observe the rich upstart who is forever trying to steal a Knight's seat in the theatre, or who attempts to get into society by changing a too significant name. Mus is a small matter—as Horace says, "ridiculus mus." But observe what a difference it makes between Cinnamus, the ex-slave, and Cinna, the patrician.

Martial devotes more than one caustic epigram to that large class in Rome who lived beyond their means—"ambitiosa paupertate," as his friend Juvenal puts it—eking out what they lack by all sorts of shifts and hypocrisies, the mere counterfeit presentment of wealth in an age of high prices and vulgar ostentation. Most hopeless of all is the semi-respectable person, too indolent to work, too self-indulgent to be independent.

"You say you desire to be free (ii, 53). You lie, Maximus, you do not desire it. But if you should desire it, this is the way. Give up dining out. Be content with vin ordinaire. Learn to smile at dyspeptic Cinna's golden dinner service. Be satisfied with a toga like mine. Submit to lower your head when you enter your house. If you have such strength of mind as this, you may live more free than the Parthian king."

Nor are the fortune-hunters forgotten (ii, 65): "Why are you so sad?" says Martial to his acquaintance Saleianus. "Why, indeed? I have just buried my wife." "Oh great crime of Destiny!" Martial cries with exaggerated sympathy, "Oh heavy chance! To think that Secundilla is dead—and so wealthy too—she left you a million sesterces, didn't she? My broken-hearted friend, I cannot tell you how much I regret that this has happened to you."

No new observations have been made on the various professions since Martial's day, and surely no classical scholar would venture to guess how long it has been since anything new has been contributed to the theme of lovely woman.

"Diaulus (i, 30) began as a doctor. Then he became an undertaker. Really, a distinction without a difference. In either case he laid us out."

"In the evening Andragoras supped gaily with me. In the morning he was found dead. He must have dreamed that he saw Dr. Hermocrates!" (vi, 53).

"The artist (i, 102) who painted your Venus must have intended to flatter Minerva." The point of this criticism is seen as soon as we recollect that the only time Minerva ever contended in a beauty-show was on that memorable occasion when Paris was umpire and gave the prize to Venus. Perhaps Martial was justified in his suspicion that if the severe and unapproachable goddess of wisdom was sufficiently human to enter such a contest, she was also sufficiently human to enjoy seeing her victorious rival so dreadfully caricatured by the artist.

"All of Fabulla's friends (viii, 79) among the women are old and ugly to the last degree. Fabulla thoroughly understands the value of background."

To Catulla, fascinating but false, Martial says (viii, 53):

So very fair! And yet so very common?
Would you were plainer, or a better woman!

Which is really far superior to Congreve's famous song which ends:

Would thou couldst make of me a saint,
 Or I of thee a sinner!

Many of Martial's best epigrams may be grouped under the head of character sketches. So many of these men are quite as familiar to us as they were to him eighteen centuries ago.

Here is Cinna (i, 89) who takes you aside with a great air of mystery to tell you that "it is a warm day."

Here is Laurus (ii, 64) who all his life has been intending to do something great, but has never been able to decide what it shall be.

We all know Nœvolus (iv, 83). Ncevolus is never polite or affable except when he is in trouble. On the other hand, we also know Postumus (ii, 67). Postumus is the painfully civil person. If he saw you from a merry-go-round, he would say "how do you do?" every time he passed.

And which one of us has failed to meet Tucca (xii, 94,) the Admirable Crichton, the Jack-of-all-trades, the man who knows it all? Tucca always reminds me of the Welsh Giant in my old copy of Jack the Giantkiller. Whenever you have done anything, he at once lets you know that "Hur can do that hursel."

Poor Tom Moore, among his titled friends, finds his prototype in Philomusus (vii, 76), of whom Martial says:

Delectas, Philomuse, non amaris,—

"You divert them, Philomusus; you are not an object of their regard."

Another type is represented by Linus (vii, 95). Linus is the affectionate person with a long beard and a cold nose who never misses the chance of kissing you on a winter's day. "Pray put it off," Martial cries, "put it off, until April!" These kissers, these 'basiatores,' as he calls them, were the poet's bete noire. "You cannot escape them," he complains (xi, 98), "you meet them all the time and everywhere. I might return from Spain; but the thought of the 'basiatores' gives me pause."

One other familiar type in Rome was also the poet's especial dislike. This was the 'bellus homo'—the pretty man, the beau.

"Pray tell me," he inquires of Cotilus in iii, 63, "what is a 'bellus homo' anyhow?" "A bellus homo," Cotilus replies, "is one who curls his locks and lays them all in place; who always smells of balm, forever smells of cinnamon; who hums the gay ditties of the Nile and the dance music of Cadiz; who throws his smooth arms in various attitudes; who idles the whole day long among the chairs of the ladies, and is always whispering in someone's ear; who reads little billets-doux from this quarter and from that, and writes them in return; who avoids ruffling his dress by contact with his neighbor's sleeve; he knows with whom everybody is in love; he flutters from entertainment to entertainment; he can give you to the uttermost degree every ancestor of the latest race horse." "That, then, is a bellus homo? In that case, Cotilus, a bellus homo is a monstrously trifling affair."

Sextus the money-lender (ii, 44) hates to say no, but has no intention of saying yes:

Whenever he observes me purchasing
A slave, a cloak, or any such like thing,
Sextus the usurer—a man, you know,
Who's been my friend for twenty years or
 so—
In fear that I may ask him for a loan,
Thus whispers, to himself, but in a tone
Such as he knows I cannot choose but hear:
"I owe Secundus twenty thousand clear,
I owe Philetus thirty thousand more,
And then there's Phcebus—that's another
 four—
Besides, there's interest due on each amount,
And not one farthing on my bank account!"
Oh stratagem profound of my old friend!
'Tis hard refusing when you're asked to lend;
But to refuse before you're asked displays
Inventive genius worthy of the bays!

Of a fascinating but moody friend Martial says (xii, 47, translated by Addison):

In all thy humours whether grave or mellow
Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,

Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen
 about thee,
There is no living with thee or without thee.

It is high time, however, for me to bring this imperfect sketch of Martial and his work to a close. I have said nothing of the history, form, and style of the antique epigram. One should be well acquainted with them in order really to understand and appreciate Martial. I have also said nothing of his supreme position in the later history of his department. His influence on the English poets is a large chapter by itself. So, too, a few of his happy phrases still linger in cultivated speech. But, so far as I know, only one of his epigrams, as such, has penetrated our popular consciousness. This is i, 32:

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare:
 Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.

An epigram which through a lawless Oxford undergraduate of the seventeenth century is responsible for the proverbial jingle:

I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.

I have also said nothing of Martial's occasional tenderness, of his frequent touches of real poetry, and of many other important matters. I trust, however, that I have succeeded in giving some idea of the scope and character of his genius.

Not altogether a pleasant period, those evil days of Domitian. It is always saddening to watch the long senescence of a great nation. But after dwelling in the gloom of Tacitus, after being dazzled by the lightning of Juvenal's rhetoric, it is well for us that we can see that age in the broad sunlight of Martial's genius, that we can use the keen and penetrating yet just and kindly eyes of one who saw it as it really was. And bad as it may have been, there was at least a large reading public which was highly cultivated, and the great traditions of literary form and style were still intact. Patronage was unpleasant enough, but I fancy that one could find authors in this age who would prefer the slavery of patronage to slavery to the modern descendant of Scott's "Gentle Reader."

However that may be, the genius of Martial was the genius of one who knew how to write for time, and time has justified his methods. As he himself said, "his page has the true relish of human life." And in its essentials human life is unchangeable. Thus it was that the first and last great poet whom the Provinces gave to the literature of Imperial Rome could also take his place among the few who have written for all men and for all time.