SOURCE: "The Obituary Epigrams of Martial," The Classical Journal, Vol. 49, No. 6, March, 1954, pp. 265-72.

[In this essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1952, Johnson examines Martial's epigrams on death and dying. He calls attention to the poet's use of conventional tropes—especially from mythology—but he also remarks on the originality and genuine emotion in several of these obituaty epigrams.]

There are some twenty-five obituary epigrams¹ in Martial's corpus of 1561 poems.² If one includes all the pieces pertaining to death the total is considerably increased. To these Pliny's³ familiar appraisal of Martial par excellence applies. Though wit is less appropriate in them than pathos⁴ it is present here, but, as one would expect, well within bounds. A sufficiency of fel is assuredly to be found in his satirical epigrams on the blame-worthy dead. However, in the majority of his obituary pieces Martial qualifies for Pliny's candor. The term may mean 'sincerity', 'purity', 'kindness of heart', or 'good nature',⁵ and any one of these meanings is easily evidenced in Martial. The vein of sentiment discernible in him is particularly noticeable in his attitude to the dead, his genius for friendship, and his love of nature.⁶ Quite a few of Martial's obituary pieces combine the first two of these elements; there are some in which all three are present. Several sympathetic critics of Martial have noticed Martial's love of children,⁷ and, in general, he is genuinely grieved at the passing of the young with all their beauty and promise.

Martial's thoughts on death are the commonplaces found in Latin lyrics, in the literature of consolations, in the inscriptions, and in the anthologies, both Greek and Latin. No doubt his wide acquaintance with these sources was due to the literary education which his foolish parents, as he calls them, gave him.⁸ The piling up of literary parallels, as has been done by some editors,⁹ will not however deprive Martial of all claims to originality.¹⁰ With him originality consists largely of a novel combination of established ideas. Indeed with the poetae docti it was de rigueur to do this, and Martial, being one of these, was merely carrying on a traditional practice.¹¹ For him Graeco-Roman mythology was an open book from which to cull. This is not to say with Aelius Spartianus that Martial is our Vergil; only a person who cherished equally the Amores of Ovid and the culinary Recipes of Caelius Apicius could be guilty of such a judgment.¹² On the other hand the devastating indictments of Martial¹³ by his adverse critics overlook the fact that he is in a Graeco-Roman succession. This is particularly true of his significant sepulchral pieces. In these if anywhere Martial is entitled to the appellation of "noble Martiall" bestowed on him by the English laureate, John Skelton.¹⁴

It remains to illustrate some of these general statements by citations from Martial. Home-made versions reflecting the ipsissima verba of the poet seem to be most serviceable. May their readers not feel prompted to hurl at their author the ejaculation of Robert Burns on reading Elphinston's wretched translations of Martial: "O thou whom poetry abhors! / Whom prose has turned out of doors! / Heards't thou that groan? Proceed no further; / 'Twas laurel'd Martial roaring murther!"¹⁵

Quite a few of Martial's obituary pieces may be quickly passed by for the reason that they, for the most part, are conventional. The friendship of the centurions Fabricius and Aquinus, rival officers who now are reunited in Elysium, was for Martial more significant than their military records (1.93). Another centurion Varus, who died in Egypt, will be immortal in Martial's verse,¹⁶ unless indeed the Nile has power to withhold this comfort too (10.26). To the epigram on Fuscus, a prefect of the praetorians, who fell in Dacia, there is added Roman imperiousness: "The Dacian bears our mighty yoke upon his neck subdued, / And Fuscus' shade victorious holds the subjugated wood." (6.76). The death of Antistius Rufus in Cappadocia derives a solace from the affection of Nigrina his widow: Martial makes the point that she seemed twice bereaved. (9.30). The passing of Saloninus, buried in Spain, is softened by the thought that he still lives in the part¹⁷ which he preferred: in his friend Priscus (6.18). Camonius Rufus, who succumbed in Cappadocia, is asked to accept in absentia the tribute of his poet-friend: "Receive with his sad tears thy friend's brief lay, / And deem these incense from him far away." (6.85). The epigram on Etruscus, "that ancient hoar / Who both his lord's¹⁸ moods with no meekness bore," proceeds on usual lines: there is a tribute to his character, he was buried by his duteous offspring by the side of his wife, he had reached high old age, with his wife he now dwells in Elysium. Martial ends with the observation that his son's grief for him might suggest that he had died prematurely (7.40). Similar to this is the epigram on the parents of Rabirius, Domitian's architect who, Martial asserts elsewhere (7.56), earned for himself immortality for his skill and for his services to his master: they lived together for sixty years, their deaths were gentle, they were burnt on the same pyre: their son must not lament them as if they had died untimely (10.71).

An obituary piece on an unnamed noble lady of Tarentum (10.63) teems with conventional ideas uttered, as usual, by the departed: "Albeit tiny is this sepulchre¹⁹ / On which you read these lines, o traveller, / Yet will it not in fame be vanquished by / The Pyramids or Mausoleum." are her opening words. She had lived long enough to see the Secular Games twice; Juno had given her five sons and five daughters²⁰ who all sealed her eyes; her wedded glory was that her chastity had known only one consort.²¹ The type is well described by Nicholas Grimald in his lines Upon the Tomb of A. W. which begin thus: "Myrrour of matrones, flowr of spouslike loue, / Of fayr brood fruitfulle norsse, poor peoples stay …" (Tottel's Miscellany, p. 113).

Occasionally Martial deviates into side issues. In the epigram to Silius Italicus on the death of his son Severus (9.86) he says nothing of the lad, but lauds the sire's literary attainments. In a rather involved manner he proceeds to have Apollo console Calliope for her loss, by pointing out that the Tarpeian Thunderer (i.e. Jupiter) and the Palatine Thunderer (i.e. Domitian) had also been bereaved.²² The conclusion is neatly put: when you see that the divinities are exposed to the harsh rule of destiny, you may acquit them of envy.

Sometimes Martial introduces his mythological material somewhat awkwardly. An instance of this is the epigram to Sempronia (12.52) who had lost her husband. Before proceeding far the reader-comes here upon the rape of Helen and other items. In this excursus is imbedded the comforting thought about Rufus that "His very ashes with affection blaze / For thee, Sempronia …"²³ Less felicitous is the final thought of the poem: Sempronia's seizure will endear her to Proserpine in Elysium.

On the other hand mythology is very happily introduced into Martial's epigram on the hunting-hound Lydia (11.69):

Within the amphitheatre
The trainers gave me nurture; there
Instruction also they gave me:
A huntress I was taught to be.
Amid the woodlands I was wild,
But I within the house was mild,
Lydia called, most loyal to
My lord and master Dexter who
Would not have had instead of me
The famed hound of Erigone,²⁴
Nor yet the one from Dicte's land
Which Cephalus attended, and,
Translated with him, dwells upon
The constellation of the Dawn.²⁵
Me carried off not life's brief day,
Nor bore me useless eld away:
To have such ending was the doom
Of house-hound of Dulichium.²⁶
I was with lightning-thrust undone
By foaming boar: such monstrous one
Thy boar was, Calydon,²⁷ or thine,
O Erymanthus.… ²⁸

Lydia's comfort is that she could not have died more nobly. It is strange that this delightful "toy-consolation" is not included in a well-known doctoral dissertation²⁹ where those of Catullus, Ovid and Statius are adduced and Martial's obituary poems receive due notice.

Rarely do legalistic matters find their way into Martial's obituary pieces. Of the two poems on Antulla (1.114; 116) the latter, the more significant one, brings out the consolation that her parents will be buried in the same plot, for it belongs everlastingly to the dead—an obvious reference to the legal formula: Hoc monumentum sive sepulchrum heredem non sequitur.³⁰

In his epigram on the actor Latinus the poet has him speak of himself much in the same way as Ben Jonson spoke of Shakespeare: Th' applause, delight, the wonder of our stage. He defends his morals, albeit an actor, and easily passes on to praise the Emperor Domitian as censor morum (9.28). No such extraneous matter mars the epigram on Paris, the accomplished actor of mimes from Alexandria, whom Domitian murdered:

Whoso the Way Flaminian fare,
Traveller, this famed sepulchre
Pass you not by. Here Rome's delight,
The witticisms of Egypt's wight,
Art, grace, and play and pleasure lief,
The glory of Rome's stage, and grief,
All Venuses and Cupids room
Have found, interred in Paris' tomb.
(11.13)

On the popular charioteer Scorpus Martial wrote two epigrams.³¹ In the one he makes the point that Scorpus, in the race of life as in the races of the Circus, was swift to reach his goal with his swart-hued steeds (10.50). In the other, Martial is more brief but equally pointed. Lachesis, counting his victories—according to an inscription³² they were 2048, though Scorpus was only twenty-seven—concluded that he was old and so cut his thread. Nike in the Anthology³³ similarly counted a man's victories, and the Parcae, according to Ben Jonson,³⁴ made the same mistake about S(alomon) P(any), 'one of the Companye of Reuells to Queene Elizabeth who died scarce thirteen': "And did act (what now we mone,) / Old men so duely / As sooth the Parcae thought him one / He plai'd so truely." Martial's epigram runs thus:

I'm Scorpus, Rome, whom Circus'
   shouts acclaimed;
Thy short-lived pet, thy plaudits I
   received.
In my ninth triad Lachesis me claimed;
  My wreaths she counted and me old
   believed.
(10.53)

Glaucias, the freedman of Melior, also receives two epigrams. The one pays tribute to his popularity, his purity and his youthfulness; he is buried by the Flaminian Way; may the passerby who weeps for him have no other cause for woe! (6.28) The other reasserts his endowments and declares that Melior manumitted him from pure affection;³⁵ it concludes with these lines: "The well-endowed of humankind obtain / A life-span short, and seldom old age gain. / Whate'er you cherish supplicate that such / You may not seek to cherish overmuch." (6.29). The old idea that the good die young is perhaps most familiar from Gloucester's aside, "So wise so young they say do ne 'er live long. "³⁶ The thought of the last two lines of Martial's epigram Ben Jonson borrowed for his lines on his son, who died at the age of seven: "For whose sake henceforth all his vowes be such / As what he loues may never like too much."³⁷

The epigram on Alcimus, a young slave, is genuinely elegiac, and has imbedded in it a vignette of natural beauty:

Alcimus, whom from thy lord snatched
   away
In growing years, the Lavicana Way
With light turf veils, receive no Parian
   stone
Of nodding weight that will be over-
   thrown,
Which labour vain bestows upon the
   dead,
But yielding box-trees here receive instead;
Receive thou too the dusky palm-tree's
   shade,
And meadow green, by my tears dewy
   made.

Dear lad, memorials of my grief I give;
For thee this honour evermore will live.
When Lachesis has spun my last years
  I
Ordain my ashes in like mode should
   lie.
(1.88)

The epigram on Canace, a young slave girl, is also deeply affecting. She had died from a dreadful canker of the mouth; Martial makes the point that her lips had to be impaired lest her sweet utterance might win the Fates to mercy:

Canace of Aeolis lies buried in this
   tomb,
  The lass's seventh winter was her last
   one: sore woe!
Yet wait awhile, o stranger, before thou
   weep'st her doom:
 One may not here complain of how
  quickly life must go.

Sadder than death was death's mode:
   upon her dear mouth sate
 Disease foul; her fair features de-
   spoiled its wastage dire;
Her very lips so loving its cruel canker
   ate,
 So came she sorely blemished to her
   sad fun'ral pyre.

Ah, if her end was fated to come with
   flight so fleet,
 Its means should have been better;
   The passage of her breath
The Lord of Doom sealed swiftly for
   fear her voice so sweet
 Might move to ruth the Maidens who
   reign o'er life and death.
(11.91)

Martial composed three poems on his own little slavegirl Erotion ("Sweetie"). In one of these, each successive owner of her grave-plot is requested to pay annual dues to her departed spirit (10.61). Leigh Hunt's paraphrase of it is well known.³⁸ Perhaps a closer version is the following:

Here rests Erotion's hastened phantom
   whom
Her winter-season sixth with crime of
   doom
Destroyed. Thou, whosoever thou wilt
   be
The master of my farm-plot after me,
On her slight spirit yearly dues bestow,
So be thy Lar forever safe, and so
Thy household too, and may this tearful
     stone
Upon thy little farmstead stand alone.

In another epigram (5.37) Martial rather extravagantly dwells on the charms of Erotion and her endearing ways. This piece has been regarded as 'a clear case of the maxim trop de zèle.³⁹ The overstatement may however be a true measure of his affection and of his sorrow. The poet however proceeds to mar the genuine pathos of the piece and the simple sincerity of his grief by adding a sarcasm at the expense of a certain Paetus, who has urged Martial not to mourn for a mere slavegirl. Paetus, though he has recently lost a wife who was nota, superba, nobilis and locuples, has the fortitude to live on! The remaining poem on Erotion is regarded by many as Martial's masterpiece (5.34). It has been said of it that it is 'inspired with a simple and homely tenderness for which there are few parallels in the annals of literature'.⁴⁰

O mother mine Flaccilla and Fronto
   too my sire!
 To you I trust this maiden, my
   darling precious,
Lest little Sweetie shudder before the
   shades so dire,
 And dread the monstrous mouths of
   the Hound of Tartarus.

Just six times she'd have finished the
    winter-season's cold,
 But six days still were lacking when
   Death to claim her came.
O may she sport and play now anigh
  her guardians old,
 And mid her lovely babbling, o may
   she lisp my name!

Her bones so young and tender en-
   shroud in pliant sod,
 And, Earth, lie lightly on her: on thee
   she softly trod.

Robert Louis Stevenson in a translation of this poem compares her lightness with that of thistle-burr.⁴¹ This is not necessarily a Scottish touch: it is also classical; for example, Theocritus⁴² speaks of Galatea as being 'wanton as the dry thistle-down'.

Martial has several variations on the inscriptional motif of the last line, viz. Sit Tibi Terra Levis (STTL). One is the jeu d'esprit on the tiny farmer: "This farmer, heirs, do not inter: / So slight is he / That for him any earth whate'er / Would heavy be." (11.14). In his epigram on Pantagathus ("All-good"), the slave-barber, Martial makes the point that the lightness of the earth over him cannot match the lightness of his craftsman's hand (6.52). Usually barbers are made the butts of sarcasms.⁴³ Another lad Eutychus ("Lucky"), despite his name, drowned prematurely at Baiae: the earth and water are asked to be gentle to him (6.68). There is a similar request in the Greek Anthology: "O earth crowded with tombs and sea that washest the shore, do thou lie light on the boy, and do thou be hushed for his sake."⁴⁴

English literature abounds in instances of this literary device. Lovers of Herrick will readily recall his concluding lines of a concise epitaph on a little lass: "Give her strewings: but not stir / The earth that lightly covers her."⁴⁵ Scotchmen remember with relish the epigram of Robert Burns on a Noted Coxcomb: "Light lay the earth on Billy's breast, His chicken heart so tender. / But build a castle on his head, / His skull will prop it under."⁴⁶ Dean Swift affords however the best parallel, in his epitaph on the architect Vanbrugh: "Lie heavy on him, earth, for he / Laid many a heavy load on thee."⁴⁷ A very recent instance of the Sit Tibi Terra Levis idea appeared in the Reader's Digest (November, 1951, p. 96); there under In Memoriam is cited the verse on the tombstone of Mark Twain's daughter, Olivia Susan Clemens, of which the third line is: "Green sod above, lie light, lie light." ⁴⁸

Some of Martial's epigrams pertaining to death appear to be written primarily to score rhetorical points. The one on the lad killed by an icicle concludes with the paradoxical question: "And does not death bide lurking everywhere / If, water, you become a murderer?" (4.18). In another piece a lad is poisoned by a viper in the mouth of a brazen bear: the wicked deed was due to the fact that the wild bear was not real! (3.19) An epigram on the words Chloe fecit (quoted from a tombstone) affords Martial excellent material for a double entendre:

On the tombs of criminal Choe's seven
  husbands she
Has inscribed that she had done it:
   what could clearer be?
(9.15)

Another notorious dame was Galla who has now met more than her match:

After the death of seven husbands you
   then, Galla, wed
Picentinus: you wish, Galla, to pursue
   your dead.
(9.78)

Phileros ("Philanderer") apparently had earned much wealth by burying his wives:

Wives seven you, Philanderer, have
   buried / Within this field. /
Philanderer, to none else does the farm-
   stead/More profit yield.
(10.43)

One way of getting rid of such marriage-monsters is to match them:

Fabius lays out wives for funeral;
Crestilla puts her husbands on their
   pall.
Both of them brandish o'er the marriage-
        bed
The baneful torch-flame of a fury dread.
Match thou the victors, Venus: there'll
   remain
One end: one fun'ral will bear out the
  twain.
(8.43)

Yet lustful hags like Plotia keep their propensity even in death.⁴⁹

The most extensive satirical piece of Martial is addressed to Philaenis, a beldame mentioned several times elsewhere by him.⁵⁰ One is tempted to quote this epigram in full:

When thou hadst passed the eld of Nestor
 through,
So swiftly wert thou snatched, Philaenis, to
Dis's infernal waters? Thou didst not
As yet in life's span emulate the lot
Of the Euboean Sibyl: by months three
The prophetess in age exceeded thee.
Ah, what a tongue is mute! Not slaves for
 sale
On thousand platforms could o'er it prevail,
Nor crowd that loves Serapis Egypt-born,
Nor teaching-master's curly troop at morn;
Nor does the Stryrnon's bank, when it around
The flocks of birds have gathered, so resound.
What beldame will with rhomb Thessalian
 now
To draw the moon from heaven down know
 how?
What go-between will now like her know well
How bride-beds, these and those, for bribes to
 sell?
May earth on thee lie lightly, and be thine
A covering of sand both thin and fine,
In order that the dogs enabled be
To dig thy buried bones up easily.
(9.29)

Unfortunately for Martial the thought of the last four lines is by no means original; it is easily paralleled from the Greek Anthology: "May the dust lie lightly on thee under the earth, wretched Nearchus, so that the dogs may easily drag thee out."⁵¹ Philaenis appears also in this anthology, for instance where she protests that she was not lascivious with men or a public woman.⁵²

Martial occasionally writes on famous cases of suicide. That of Porcia, the wife of Brutus, who met her death as a true daughter of Cato Uticensis, is quite melodramatic. Better known is the shorter epigram on two other Stoics, Arria and Paetus:

When Arria chaste her Pactus gave the sword
Which she herself from out her vitals drew,
'My wound pains not, if truth be,' was her
  word,
'What pains me is the wound you'll deal to
  you.'
(1.13)

Elsewhere Martial has other things to say about suicide. How foolish was Fannius who in flight dealt himself death in fear of dying! (2.80). More seriously he says in another place: "In adversity it is easy to despise life; the truly brave man is one who can endure to be miserable." (11.56). In Martial's epigram rendered familiar to Englishmen by the translation of it by the Earl of Surrey,⁵³ the poet lists the elements of a happy life; his last entry is: 'life's final day / To fear not, yet not for it pray.' (10.47).

In general Martial in his obituary poetry deals with the harrowing experience of death and bereavement in the spirit of a gentle humanist. Although Martial constantly uses the conventional phraseology about death and dying,⁵⁴ he leaves the reader puzzled about his real beliefs. Of his own narrow escape from death Martial speaks conventionally yet convincingly;⁵⁵ he hopes that when he comes to die, he may seek the grove of the Elysian Lass (= Persephone), while he is still not disabled by protracted old age, yet having accomplished the three stages of life.⁵⁶ Return of the dead to the world of the living is mentioned by Martial only hypothetically.⁵⁷ As to the possibility of communication between the departed and the living, Martial is equally inconclusive: for instance he merely expresses the wish that the spirit of the dead poet Lucan may be aware of the affection of his widow Polla.⁵⁸ This is precisely the vagueness one finds in the Greek anthology⁵⁹ as well as throughout the Latin lyric poets.⁶⁰ Whether the dead retain their old likes and dislikes is also indefinite: although, according to Martial, Romulus still eats rapa (turnips) in heaven, this may be a mere echo of Seneca.⁶¹ Another echo of Seneca is seen in Martial's short epigram on the fate of the Pompeys.⁶² In general, death by violence is an anathema to the gentle poet; in speaking of Lucan's enforced death at the hands of Nero, his heart cries out against the crime: "Cruel Nero, made / More hateful by no other phantom-shade, / Alas this cursed crime at any rate / Thou should'st not have had pow'r to perpetrate."⁶³ Again, when Martial beheld the destruction that had been perpetrated by the gods in the eruption of Vesuvius he concludes that "The gods might wish that they had not / Had pow'r to do what here they've wrought."⁶⁴ Nowhere in Martial is the dominance of death put more potently than in the concise epigram on "Crumb", the little dining-room that looked out on the Mausoleum of the Caesars.⁶⁵ Despite the many clichés and commonplace ideas in this portion of Martial's poetry, his obituary pieces are assuredly exempt from the disdainful query of Lord Byron: "And then what proper person can be partial / To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?" ⁶⁶

Notes

¹ A paper delivered at the Fifth University of Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, Lexington, Kentucky, April 24-26, 1952.

² In a total of 1561 Epigrams in the Spectacula and fourteen other books, 1235 are in elegiac metre, 238 in hendecasyllabic and 77 in choliambic or scazon. There are besides a few in hexameter and iambic verse (J. Wight Duff: A Literary History of Rome in the Silver Age. London: T Fisher Unwin, 1927, 512.)

³ Pliny: Ep. 3.21. Erat homo ingeniosus acutus acer, et qui plurimum in scribendo et salis haberet etfellis nec candoris minus.

⁴ Cf. M. S. Dimsdale: Latin Literature. New York: Appleton and Co., 1915, 475 (re obituary pieces of Martial) "point is less appropriate than pathos."

⁵ So Merrill took it (Selected Letters of the Younger Pliny, edited by E. T. Merrill. London: Macmillan and Co., 1912, 294.)

⁶ J. Wight Duff: op. cit. 524. Butler remarks that "Martial has a genuine love for the country" (H. E. Butler: Post Augustan Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909, 268); in Martial's obituary verse this comes to view in little nature touches in regard to the surroundings of the sepulchre.

⁷ Cf. Butler (op. cit. 274) "Martial was a child-lover before he was a man of letters;" H. J. Rose: (A Handbook of Latin Literature. London: Methuen and Co., 1936, 403.) "it was one of his amiable qualities that he loved children;" Kirby Flower Smith (Martial the Epigrammatist and Other Essays. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1920, 18.) "Another attractive side of his nature was his evident devotion to children."

⁸ Martial 9.75. At me litterulas stulti docuere parentes.

⁹ Conspicuously by L. Friedländer. M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton Libri. 2 vols. Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1886.

¹⁰ Butler (op. cit. 260 fn. 2) points out that a very large proportion of the parallel passages cited by Friedlander is unjust to Martial, "No poet could be original judged by such a test."

¹¹ J. F. D'Alton: Roman Literary Theory and Criticism. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1931, 431 -432.

¹²Aelius Spartianus: Aelius ch. 5, sec. 9, Atque idem Apicii Caelii^* relata idem Ovidii libros amorum in lecto semper habuisse, idem Martialem epigrammaton poetam Vergilium suum dixisse.

^* Recipes of Caelius Apicius de re coquinaria libri X

¹³ E.g. by J. W. MacKail: Latin Literature. London: John Murray, 1913, 194-195.

¹⁴ Cf. The Complete Poems of John Skelton edited by Philip Henderson. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1931, 136: Poems Against Garnesche: "If thou wert acquainted with all / The famous poets satircall / As Persius and Juvenall / Horace and noble Martiall."

¹⁵The Poetical Works of Robert Burns. London: George Bell and Sons, 1878 (The Aldine Edition) Vol. ii, 194-195. Epigram on Elphinstone's (sic) Translation of Martial's Epigrams.

¹⁶ Martial, like many another poet, believed his verse bestowed immortality. Of this his friend Pliny was doubtful (Ep. 3.21).

¹⁷ Cf. Greek Anthology XII.52; Callim. Ep. 42 (echoed in the expression aufugit mi animus of Q. Catulus); Arist.. Eth. Nic. 9.4.5; Hor. Od. 1.3.8; 2.7.5.

¹⁸Utrumque deum, i.e. Domitian whether adverse or auspicious. For an analogous use cf. Cat. 31.3 Uterque Neptunus.

¹⁹ Cf. Greek Anthology 7.2B; 18: 380.

²⁰ Cf. Ibid. 7. 331 (woman boasts that she was the wife of one husband and left him and ten children alive); ibid. 7.224 (woman boasts that she had 29 children and left them all living).

²¹ Martial's epigram closes with an indecent expression (10.63.8). For the woman's boast cf. Greek Anthology 7.324 (woman declares that she loosed her zone for one man alone.)

²² In 4.3, Martial fancies that the deified son of Domitian is throwing down from the skies snowballs at his father sitting at the games.

²³ This is as lovely as the line in Propertius (4.11.74) haec cura et cineri spirat inusta meo (which inspired Gray in the Elegy: E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires).

²⁴ Maera, the hound of Icarius, placed with his daughter Erigone in the heavens as the constellation Virgo; cf. Ovid Fasti 5.723.

²⁵ Laelaps ("Hurricane") a hound of Crete given to Procris by Diana and by Procris to Cephalus. When Cephalus was elevated to the heavens by Aurora the loyal dog went with him; cf. Ovid Met. 3.211; 7.771.

²⁶Dulichio cani i.e. Argus the hound of Odysseus (Hom. Od. 17.291-293, 326-327).

²⁷ The Calydonian boar (sus) sent by the enraged Diana, and killed by Meleager; cf. Ovid. Met. 8.324.

²⁸ The Erymanthian boar was slain by Hercules; cf. Ovid Her. 9.87; Met. 5.608.

²⁹ S'ster Mary Edmond Ferns: The Latin Consolatio as a Literary Type. St. Louis, Missouri, 1941. The "toy-consolations" are dealt with in ch. XI.

³⁰ cf. Wilmanns Ex. Inscr. 2.693 sq.

³¹ In 10.74 Martial satirizes his quick acquisition of wealth, and in the preface to 11.1 refers to the gossip about him and another charioteer Incitatus (who is mentioned also in 10.76).

³² CIL 6.2, 10048.

³³ Cf. Anthol. Palat. 3.18.

³⁴ Cf. Ben Jonson: Epigrammes CXX (Ben Jonson edited by C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson, [Oxford Clarendon Press, 1947] VIII. 77).

³⁵ Martial himself manumitted his beloved secretary Demetrius, before he died. (1.101). His friend Pliny similarly set free his dying slaves (Ep. 8.16).

³⁶ Shakespeare: King Richard III 3.1.79.

³⁷ Ben Jonson: Epigrammes XLV On My First Sonne (op. cit. 41).

³⁸The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt edited by H. S. Mitford, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923, 427.

³⁹ E. E. Sikes: Roman Poetry. London: Methuen and Co., 1923, 10.

⁴⁰ Kirby Flower Smith: op. cit. 18; H. E. Butler: op. cit. 272: "And Martial's epitaphs and epicedia at their best have in their slight way an almost unique charm."

⁴¹Robert Louis Stevenson: Collected Poems edited by Janet Adam Smith. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1950, 292: "That swam light-footed as the thistle-burr / On thee: 0 mother earth, be light on her." In another version Stevenson however discards the simile: "That ran so lightly footed in her mirth / Upon thy breast—lie lightly, mother earth." (Robert Louis Stevenson Poems. II. 176 in the Tusitala edition. London: Heinemann, XXIII, 1923).

⁴² Theocritus. Id. 6. 15-16; cf. Hom. Od. 5. 328 ff.

⁴³ E.g. in 11.84 Martial satirizes at length the barber Antiochus; more briefly in 7.83 he pokes fun at the slowness of barber Eutrapelus ("Nimble"): "While barber Nimble made the round amowing / Old Wolfeman's face, / And smoothed his cheeks, another beard came growing / To take its place."

⁴⁴Greek Anthology 7.628; cf. ibid. 372, 461, 476, 583; Kaibel: Epigrams. 329, 538, 551, 569; Anthol. Lat. (Meyer) 1349.

⁴⁵ Robert Herrick: Upon a Child That Dyed (For Herrick's indebtedness to Martial see Paul Nixon's article, CP V (1910) 189-202. Cf. Ben Jonson (op. cit. 33-34). Epigrammes XXII On My First Daughter. (The girl was less than six years old).

⁴⁶ Robert Bums. op. cit. II 144, Epigram on a Noted Coxcomb.

⁴⁷ Cf. Greek Anthology 7.401. "Earth, who hast espoused an evil bridegroom, rest not light or thinly scattered on the ashes of the deformed being." Cf. ibid. 7.204 (on a partridge killed by a cat).

⁴⁸

"Warm summer sun, shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind, blow softly here;
Green sod above, lie light, lie light;
Good night, dear heart, good night, good
 night."

⁴⁹ 10.67. 6-7: Hoc tandem sita prurit in sepulcro Calvo Plotia cum Melanthione.

⁵⁰ 2.33; 4.65; 7.67; 70; 9.62; 10.22; 12.22.

⁵¹Greek Anthology, 11.226.

⁵²Ibid. 7.345.

⁵³ The translation of Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, appeared in the first edition of Tottel's Miscellany, June 5, 1657. Martial was recognized a good deal earlier: Sir Thomas Elyot in his first edition of The Boke named the Governour, I. 128) in 1531 said of Martial: "Martialis whiche for his dissolute wrytynge is mooste seldom radde of men of moche gravite hath not withstandynge many commendable sentences and right wise counseils …" (and he gives a version of Martial 12.34.8-11.) Indeed the poet as recognized by Puttenham, in 1589, "was cheife of this skil among the Latines." (The Arte of English Poesie, Arber Reprint, 1895, 68.)

⁵⁴ E.g. 1.36.5; 11.84.1; 4.60.4; 12.90.4; 1.78.3; 10.23.4; Metaphorically in 5.25.6 'not to want to approach the Stygian pools' = 'to desire immortality'; similarly Truth has been recovered from the Stygian abode by Trajan because he has resuscitated her (10.72.10); and Martial's readers save him from the sluggish waves of ungrateful Lethe, i.e. from oblivion (10.2.7-8). His book also, if critized by his friends Secundus and Severus, will not behold the restless rock of tired Sisyphus, i.e. will not be condemned to oblivion (5.80.10-11). Whether Martial really believed in the traditional punishments in Hades is uncertain: when he is imprecating against a slanderous poet punishments after death, he finishes with the expression delasset omnes fabulas poetarum (10.5.17) i.e. may he exhaust all the fabled torments the poets mention.

⁵⁵ 6.58.3-4. "O how nearly had I been carried off from you to the waters of the Styx and seen the dusky clouds of the Elysian plain."

⁵⁶ 10.24.8-10.

⁵⁷ 4.16.5; 10.101.1; 11.5.5-6; 13-14.

⁵⁸ 7.23.3-4. Tu, Polla, maritum / Saepe colas et se sentiat Me coli. /

⁵⁹Greek Anthology 7.23.6: "If indeed any delight touches the dead;"

⁶⁰ Cf. Intimations of Immortality in the Major Lyric and Elegiac Poets of Rome, a paper by the present writer, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada, XLIV (1950) 61-93.

⁶¹ 13.16; cf. Seneca: Apocoloc.9.5. cum sit e republica esse aliquem qui cum Romulo possit ferventia rapa vorare.

⁶² 5.74. In 11.61 Martial says that the plane-tree at Cordova was not planted by Pompeian hands: it was planted by Caesar. Martial's regret at the murder of Pompey is however genuine though it was less heinous that that of Cicero (3.66; 5.69): Pothinus slew Pompey to serve his master, Antony had Cicero murdered to serve his private viciousness, but all in vain for "All men will commence / To speak for Tully's muted eloquence."

⁶³ 7.21.

⁶⁴ 4.44.

⁶⁵ 2.59.

Crumb I am called: a little diningroom
Thou know'st: from me thou look'st on
  Caesar's Tomb.
Crush couches, drink. don roses, ointed be,
'Remember death' the god himself bids thee.

⁶⁶ Lord Byron: Don Juan; Canto 1. 43. 7-8. Byron employed the same rhyme in his single translation from Martial (1.1).