SOURCE: "The Poet Martial," Bulletin of the John Rylandds Library, Vol. 42, No. 2, March, 1960, pp. 432-52.

[In this essay, Semple touches on a wide range of topics associated with Martial's life and work. He gives an extended treatment of the patron-client system as the writer's only means of financial support; the accuracy and sincerity of the epigrams praising Domitian; and Martial's poetic style and tone.]

As I thought about a scheme for this lecture, my main difficulty was this. Here were 1,200 short poems, on many different topics and themes, but with no single co-ordinating plan. There is no unity in their variety: they preach no doctrine: they advance no cause: they are not related to any one end. The individual poems are separate entities; and, though massed together in books, they stand there as isolated units, without cohesion of subject or purpose. I am reminded of what the Emperor Gaius said of Seneca's writings: "harena sine calce" ("sand without lime"): there is no lime, no mortar, in Martial to bind the individual pieces into a cohesive whole; and this caused my difficulty in preparing to write about them. But, as I considered, there emerged three possible groupings of the poems which would supply some interesting material for my talk—first, some glimpses of how a poor man, a poet, lived at Rome in the first century A.D.; then, the surprising portrait of the Emperor Domitian that Martial presents to us; and finally, some account of his own methods, aims, and opinions as a man-of-letters. I shall have to quote a good deal, often in translation and in prose (for the verse translations are unsatisfactory): and I warn you that in translation the pointed sharpness of a Latin epigram is often blurred: but I shall try to quote pieces that are intrinsically interesting as well as useful for my purpose. And I may as well add that, in the 1,900 years since Martial lived, nothing of what I now say has failed to be said before.

Let me state at once that, if I now appear as a literary critic dealing with an ancient poet, I do not conceive a literary critic to be primarily or mainly a fault-finder. It is not his duty to come before you as an accuser or indeed as an advocate: his first duty is to exercise judgment—to discern between good and evil, I mean literary good or literary evil, not necessarily moral. He must base his judgment on no predetermined doctrine: he must know thoroughly the time and milieu and intellectual atmosphere in which his author worked: he must judge the success of a book by its attainment or otherwise of its professed intention, with due allowance for the handicap of circumstances or personal conditions. I deprecate that type of modern criticism by which the author is put in the dock and subjected to a third-degree examination, and is often condemned for errors which are not typical or symptomatic. If errors are occasional and localized, they are no doubt regrettable but venial. If they are embedded in the structure of the work and endemic, then and then only are they significant. It is as much the duty of the critic to praise where he justly admires as to blame where he is justly indignant. In fact, good criticism is generally neither praise nor blame, but a mixture of both: for a book is a human document, not perfect, but in spite of human failings striving towards perfection. Martial himself puts it very well in a poem (I. 16) to his friend Avitus:

sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala
  plura
  quae legis hic: aliter non fit, Avite, liber.

And when the censorious critic, Lausus, says (VII. 81) with heavy displeasure,

triginta toto mala sunt epigrammata libro,

Martial makes the very apt rejoinder,

si totidem bona sunt, Lause, bonus liber est.

The known facts of Martial's life are soon stated. He was a Spaniard, like several other distinguished men-of-letters at Rome in the first century A.D., Quintilian, the Senecas father and son, and Lucan: he was born about 40 A.D. at Bilbilis, a steel-making town in Hispania Tarraconensis in central north-east Spain. He was given a good education by his parents, that is, he had been to the grammarian's school to study language and literature both Latin and Greek, and to the more advanced school of the rhetorician to study oratory. He comments (IX. 73) on the folly of his parents in having him taught these literary subjects which were never of any material advantage to him in making a living:

at me litterulas stulti docuere parentes:
  quid cum grammaticis rhetoribusque mihi?

"My foolish parents had me taught the rudiments of literature: but what good are grammar teachers and rhetoric teachers to me now?"

He came to Rome in the early sixties of the century, in the reign of Nero, and for thirty-five years he existed as a man-of-letters in the capital, under Nero, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva and Trajan, gaining such a livelihood as he could, and finally retiring to his native Bilbilis about 98 A.D. He lived there for a few years more and published from there his twelfth book of epigrams in 101 A.D. During all his time in Rome, he took no part in politics: there is barely a single political reference all through his works, though he does of course mention such public events as the Emperor's campaigns and triumphs. He was a man about town, poor, dependent on his own resources, making his way by his talent as a poet and by his faithful attendance as a client on rich patrons against whose meanness and grudging appreciation of literary merit he inveighs frequently. We have no knowledge of his first fifteen years in Rome. In 80 A.D. he published a collection of epigrams known as the Liber Spectaculorum to celebrate the opening of the Colosseum by Titus. He then published twelve successive books of epigrams, of which the first nine were published under Domitian: each book contains about 100 poems, some as short as a couplet, some quatrains, many of them twelve or fourteen lines long, some few running to twenty or thirty lines, mostly in elegiacs, iambic scazons, or hendecasyllables, the tone and style of the poems being mostly satirical and based on the epigrams of Catullus, whose disciple and follower in the art of the epigram Martial professed himself to be. He acquired a very considerable reputation; in his own day he was much read, imitated, plagiarized, and criticized; he was the maker of the epigram as we know it: he could justly be called the greatest epigrammatist of the world.

What has a perpetual social interest is the fact that Martial, a man without (as far as we know) inherited private means, lived for some thirty-five years at Rome and appears to have supported himself on the tenuous income derived from the relationship of patron and client. Like many other freeborn Roman citizens, he depended on the small daily allowances which the wealthier men gave to those who attended them as clients—and from the hundred farthings, the "centum miselli quadrantes", which constituted the client's daily dole, there had to be paid his lodgings, his clothes, his amenities and comforts. The patron expected his presence at the "salutatio", the early morning levee in his house: the client had to rise early and make his way through the dark streets in order to be present punctually between six and eight o'clock. Then along with others he would accompany his patron down to the centre of the city, perhaps to the forum, perhaps to a literary reading, perhaps to the law-courts, the throng of clients in their formal togas giving importance to the movement of the great man through the streets. The morning's duties extended till nearly midday, and then the afternoon was given more or less to one's own pursuits. The picture that Martial gives us of patrons is not an attractive or pleasant one. All through the books of poems he attacks their churlish treatment of the clients from whom they have exacted such a continuous round of social duties. At the morning "salutatio" they are haughty and remote: at the dinner to which they sometimes invite a client they make a difference in food and drink—a fine menu for the lord and his close friends, an inferior meal for the client: sometimes they make him a gift of clothing, but not on any regular system, so that the formal toga in which he pays his official calls has become worn and shabby and needing repair, but he has no means of replacing it. The Emperor Doinitian in his queer conservative way had tried to bring the patron-client relationship back to the old-time style in which it was formed by a genuine social protection which the patron extended to his poor dependants: at this earlier period there was no money payment, the client dined in the afternoon at the table of his protector: and Domitian had ordered a return to the original system, so that the "sportula", the "centum quadrantes", the money dole, had to be replaced by a regular meal—a "cena recta". The clients were appalled at such reactionary legislation: they had lost their only means of subsistence: there was so much complaint that the change lasted only for a short time. We have a pleasant little poem (III.7) from Martial about it, in which he asks his fellow-dependants how they regard the new arrangement:

centum miselli iam valete quadrantes,
anteambulonis congiarum lassi, …
quid cogitatis, o fames amicorum?
regis superbi sportulae recesserunt.

And they answer in one voice:

nihil stropharum est: iam salarium dandum est.

"Goodbye to you now, wretched hundred farthings, distributed as our dole for acting as weary escort. What do you think, my starving friends? The dole the haughty patron gave us is now abolished. What about it?"

And their answer comes:

"There can be no dodging it: he must pay us a salary as well as a dinner."

But what of the dinner itself to which the client, no longer a paid attendant, is invited by his patron? Let Martial tell us in a poem (III. 60) written to his patron:

cum vocer ad cenam non iam venalis ut ante,
 cur mihi non eadem, quae tibi, cena datur?
ostrea tu sumis stagno saturata Lucrino,
 sugitur inciso mitulus ore mihi:
sunt tibi boleti, fungos ego sumo suillos:
 res tibi cum rhombost, at mihi cum sparulo:
aureus inmodicis turtur te clunibus implet,
 ponitur in cavea mortua pica mihi.
cur sine te ceno, cum tecum, Pontice, cenem?
 sportula quod non est, prosit: edamus idem.

"Why, Ponticus, when I, no longer a dole-paid
  client, am invited by you to dinner,
  Why is it not the same dinner served to me
  as to you?
You take oysters fattened in the Lucrine Lake:
 I suck a mussel, cutting my lips on the
 shell.
You have mushrooms: I get fupguses.
 You tackle a turbot, but I a brill.
You gorge yourself on the super-fatted
 haunches of a golden-brown turtle dove:
 Before me is set a magpie that has died in
 its cage.
Why do I dine at a different table from you
 though I am dining with you?
 Let me have some benefit from the abolition
 of the money-dole: let us eat the same
 food."

And since I am quoting, let me quote the amusing little poem (VII. 39) about a client who became so utterly weary of walking round with his patron and of having his morning broken up and of meeting with supercilious disdain when he saluted the great men, that he decided to simulate an attack of gout as a good excuse for absenting himself: but he made his malingering so realistic that he actually convinced himself he had a genuine bout:

discursus varios vagumque mane
et fastus et ave potentiorum
cum perferre patique iam negaret,
coepit fingere Caelius podagram.
quam dum volt nimis adprobare veram
et sanas linit obligatque plantas
inceditque gradu laborioso,
(quantum cura potest et ars doloris!)
desit fingere Caelius podagram.

"Wishing to prove that it was absolutely genuine, he plasters and bandages his perfectly healthy feet, and walks with a hobbling gait. Well—such is the powerful effect of scientifically shamming pain—it's no longer a pretended gout that Caelius has got."

About all this treatment of clients, Martial, like his contemporary, Juvenal, feels bitterly. The condition of a slave, he tells us, is much preferable to that of a free poor citizen. The slave is not dunned for debts he cannot pay, nor bothered by social duties: he is fed, given shelter, and a place to sleep quietly: and thus he is three times as well off as his master. This need for money and the general lack of money among clients at Rome undoubtedly led to the degrading and shameful practice of cultivating the aged and childless wealthy and so ingratiating oneself by constant attendance and gifts that a fat legacy would be the outcome on the death of the testator. Martial sees all this with his peculiarly sharp vision and he leaves us almost a photographic record of what takes place: he writes (VI. 63) to a rich old man, Marianus:

"You know, Marianus, that you are being fished for, and you know the rapacity of the fisherman who is angling for you, and you know the fisherman's purpose. Yet, you foolish man, in your last will and testament you name him your heir and you mean him to take your place. You say, 'oh! but the gifts he sent me were splendid.' Yes, but he sent them as bait on a hook. Can the fish really love the fisherman? Will this man mourn your death with any genuine grief? If you want him to feel sorrow, Marianus, leave him nothing."

However, it is pleasant to record the experience of one "captator" (X. 97) which turned out unexpectedly: his intended victim, the aged and stricken invalid, was at his last gasp: his life was despaired of: all the preparations for the funeral are complete, pyre, ointments, grave, bier and funeral-director. It only remains for him to make his will and name the "captator" as his heir. Well, what happened?

dum levis arsura struitur Libitina papyro,
 dum murram et casias flebilis uxor emit,
iam scrobe, iam lecto, iam pollinctore parato
  heredem scripsit me Numa: convaluit.

"While the lightly built pyre was being laid
  with papyrus for kindling,
  While the weeping wife was buying myrrh
  and casia,
When the grave and the bier and the
 undertaker were ready,
 Numa inscribed me in his will as heir,
 and—recovered!"

Martial is bitter enough about the indignities put upon a freeborn client at Rome, but often he is even more indignant at the lack of reward for a man-of-letters in the capital of the world. It is indeed a hard life for a poet. In those days there were no royalties from publishers, no copyright, no literary agents to look after a writer's interests: there is no clear evidence that any author of the first century A.D. got any financial benefit from the publication of his work. The bookseller, of course, charged for the copies of it: but he took the risk and bore the expense of having it transcribed by his copyists. If the author was successful, he acquired reputation: and if he had a wealthy patron, and had flattered him by a dedication or a special mention, he might be given a sum of money or some other material reward; but as often as not, all he got was applause—for Helicon has all the ornamental trappings, but no solid benefit for the poet (I. 76):

praeter aquas Helicon et serta Iyrasque dearum
        nil habet et magnum, sed perinane,
  sophos.

"Isn't it strange," Martial says (X. 76), "how Fortune distributes her gifts! Yonder is a Roman citizen, Maevius, not a slave, not an immigrant from Syria, Parthia, or Cappadocia, 'sed de plebe Remi Numaeque verna,' a pleasant and friendly man, honest too and blameless, educated in both Greek and Latin, altogether an admirable person, but having one fault and no small fault—'quod est poeta:' that's why he goes cold in a black cowl, while the mule-driver Incitatus walks in flaming scarlet." The fact is (and Martial expresses it bitterly in many of his poems) if a man is coming to live in this city of Rome and means to keep himself in any comfort, he need not count on any qualities of character to help him on, nor any qualities of mind. If he wants to have money, he ought to become a popular musician. Indeed Martial for a while left Rome and went to Forum Cornelium in Cisalpine Gaul because he could no longer put up with the useless social duties required of a client; and if Rome wonders where he is and why he went and when he will return, he sends her a message that will explain all (III. 4): the self-exiled poet is undergoing a change: he will return when he has got a profitable profession—

                              poeta
exierat: veniet cum citharoedus erit.

Therefore if you are educating your son for life in the city, you must watch carefully what you have him taught (V. 56): guard him from the unremunerative literary subjects: the aim of education should be profitableness:

cui tradas, Lupe, filium magistro
quaeris sollicitus diu rogasque.
omnes grammaticosque rhetorasque
devites moneo: nihil sit illi
cum libris Ciceronis aut Maronis,
famae Tutilium suae relinquat;
si versus facit, abdices poetam.
artes discere vult pecuniosas?
fac discat cithareodus aut choraules.
si duri puer ingeni videtur,
praeconem facias vel architectum.

"You have long been anxiously enquiring and asking what kind of master to send your son to, Lupus. Well, I advise you to avoid all teachers of literature and of oratory; keep him clear of the works of Cicero and of Virgil: don't let him emulate Tutilius' fame as a lawyer: and if he writes poetry, disinherit the poet. But suppose he wants to learn the money-making arts? See that he learns to be a harp-player or a flute-player—or if he seems to be dull-witted, make him an auctioneer or an architect."

Martial therefore concludes that, if great works of literature are to be produced, writers must not be expected to depend on a mean pittance but should have a competency, adequate recognition, and complete freedom from anxiety; and it is only the patrons who can confer such a boon (I. 107),

otia da nobis, sed qualia fecerat olim
  Maecenas Flacco Vergilioque suo.

Martial again and again calls for a Maecenas (VIII. 56) who will endow literature and thus make possible a revival of poetry:

sint Maecenates, non deerunt, Flacce,
   Marones.

But the age of wealthy nobles was past. The only patron of letters who could now provide pensions for poets was the Emperor. Caesar must become the universal patron: only the head of the State could adequately reward writers whose work was of service to the State. Teachers and professors had been well provided for. Vespasian had instituted a class of teachers graded and salaried on a systematic and permanent scheme: why could not some comparable benefit be conferred on poets? The only fault in the age of Domitian, says Martial (V. 19), an age which he claims to have surpassed all earlier ages in most respects, is the fact that the poor man, the penniless writer, is not cared for and there is no one to befriend him in his poverty: the triumphs of Domitian's age, the favours bestowed on it by heaven, the enlargement and adornment of the city—these, says the poet, had never before been equalled:

est tamen hoc vitium, sed non leve, sit licet
  unum,
  quod colit ingratas pauper amicitias.

Therefore to remedy this one fault in an almost perfect age, Caesar must be the patron of poets and writers:

                    esto tu, Caesar, amicus:
nulla ducis virtus dulcior esse potest.

In fact, Titus and Domitian had each conferred on Martial the "ius trium liberorum" (which brought him whatever privileges the actual father of three children could have) and a tribuneship which carried with it the honorary status of knight. At some time towards the latter part of his career he owned a small estate at Nomentum about twenty miles north-east of Rome, and later he also acquired a town-house in Rome: but his circumstances were never easy: and after the death of Domitian and succession of Nerva, either because he found the new regime less sympathetic or because his finances were still difficult, or because, as he grew older, the chances of ease in Rome seemed less, he decided to return to Spain, where through the kindness of friends and the liberality of a Spanish patroness, Marcella, he was given a small estate sufficient for his needs. He lived there not unhappily till his death in 104 A.D.

The Roman historians have not much good to say about the Emperor Domitian. The fifteen years of his reign (81-96 A.D.) are described by Tacitus in the Agricola as a grim tyranny in which the liberal arts and all freedom and indeed even speech itself were suppressed by this jealous and ruthless Emperor. The impression we get is of a haughty, morose, vain, suspicious man, who at the same time was ambitious, impulsive and dangerous. The portrait given by Suetonius is little better. And the Younger Pliny in his Panegyricus, addressed' to Trajan, uses every trait of Domitian as a foil to heighten the virtues and glories of the new Emperor whom he is extolling. I feel that the Roman writers were all too prone to emphasize these extremes of contrast: they adored antithesis not only of phrase, but of character: it was part of their rhetorical education. Scipio Africanus and Hannibal are contrasted in Livy, Caesar and Pompey in Lucan, Aeneas and Turnus in Virgil; and so the unpopular Domitian is set over against his brother Titus who was acclaimed as "deliciae populi Romani". Now, contrast is a powerful and useful device, but in Roman hands it tended to make the black blacker so as to intensify the radiance of the white; and I am not sure that a more subtle or controlled gradation of the difference between virtue and vice might not have given Domitian a rather less repellent reputation. Certainly, coming from the pages of Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, and Juvenal, one is surprised to find the transfiguration (I can use no other word) which has befallen Domitian. As Martial sees him, or chooses to portray him, he is a very different figure—angelic, noble, generous, the vice-regent on earth of Jupiter, approachable, willing to be entreated, interested in the arts especially poetry, and exercising a cleansing moral influence in the life of the State. He is a successful general, not the organizer of a sham triumph as he appears in Tacitus: he has won victories over the Germans, the Sarmatians, and the Dacians. Like Augustus, he has given his name to the calendar—to two months, for September in which he came to the throne he has decided to call "Germanicus", and October in which he was born is to be called "Domitianus". Hence Martial (IX. 1) speaks of the first day of September as "Germanicarum magna lux Kalendarum". The Emperor's Sarmatian campaign was so enthralling (VII. 6 and 7), especially when dispatches of victory began to arrive, that the Romans' minds were far away from Rome—with Caesar in the field, and not a man of them could have told you which of the favourite horses was running in the Circus that day:

adeoque mentes omnium tenes unus
ut ipsa magni turba nesciat Circi
utrumne currat Passerinus an Tigris.

The Emperor in his achievements is like Hercules: he has come through many labours to final acknowledgement of his greatness. This theme is one that appeals both to Emperor and poet. Domitian built a temple to Hercules on the Appian Way and erected beside it a huge golden statue of the god—but with his own head and features imposed on top of it. Martial develops the theme with zest: Jupiter now, he says (IX. 65), will have no hesitation in accepting Hercules as his true son or in acknowledging the sonship and godhead of Alcides,

postquam pulchra dei Caesaris ora geris;

and if the original Hercules had had these features, Juno's heart would have been won and the twelve labours avoided. The twelve labours were great: but what of the labours that Domitian has accomplished? how do they compare with those of the ancient and lesser Hercules? They are so surpassing that the likeness of Domitian on the statue of Hercules is not enough: let the Emperor give his features to Jupiter Capitolinus (IX. 101):

templa deis, mores populis dedit, otia ferro,
  astra suis, caelo sidera, serta lovi.
Herculeum tantis numen non sufficit actis:
  Tarpeio deus hic commodet ora patri.

"He has given temples to the gods, sound morals to his nation, peace to the sword, deification to his father and brother, stars to the firmament, and wreaths to Jupiter. The divine personality of Hercules is not enough for such achievements: let this god of ours lend his features to the statue of Jupiter."

This ascription of divinity to the Emperor was completely in accord with Domitian's wishes as we learn from Suetonius (Dom. xiii), and it is everywhere present in the poems. In V. 8 he speaks of the "edictum domini deique nostri"; he calls Domitian "dux sanctus, praeses mundi, summe mundi rector et parens orbis". His safety and preservation are the surest proof that the gods exist and are beneficent (II. 91),

rerum certa salus, terrarum gloria, Caesar,
  sospite quo magnos credimus esse deos.

Jupiter, in fact, doesn't want to be bothered with human petitions when a power so generous and willing exists on earth (VI. 10): "When I was recently praying to Jupiter for a few thousands, he answered: 'the one on earth who gave me the temples, he will provide for you,'

"ille dabit" dixit "qui mihi templa dedit."

So in future when he supplicates Jupiter, it will be a prayer for the Emperor only: all personal prayers he will address to Domitian (VII. 60), and he begs Jupiter not to misunderstand:

nil pro me mihi, luppiter, petenti
ne succensueris velut superbo:
te pro Caesare debeo rogare:
pro me debeo Caesarem rogare.

When, therefore, he ventures to address a prayer to Domitian, he begs fervently that it may be granted (VIII. 24): but if not—giving a clever turn to the poem, he prays that at least the request may be allowed to be made, because it is not the image-maker who creates the gods, but the worshipper and petitioner:

qui fingit sacros auro vel marmore vultus,
 non facit ille deos: qui rogat, ille facit.

In fact, if he were invited to dinner by a summons simultaneously from Jupiter and from Domitian, it would be a nice problem of protocol to decide which to accept (IX. 91); but he is sure what his answer would be:

astra licet propius, Palatia longius essent,
  responsa ad superos haec referenda darem:
'quaerite qui malit fieri conviva Tonantis:
  me meus in terris luppiter, ecce, tenet.'

"Though the sky was nearer and the Palace farther away, I would give this answer to be returned to the Gods of Heaven: 'Find someone who would prefer to be the guest of Jupiter: don't you see, I'm engaged with my own Jupiter here on earth.'"

It is with equally avowed admiration, and sometimes also with a little brisk fun, that he greets some of Domitian's legislation in the State. You will recall how Domitian assumed the office of censor early in his reign and, contrary to all precedent, held on to it for the rest of his life. Politically, this gave him control of the Senate and he could advance to that order or degrade from it at his own will and choice. But he also exercised the censorial powers to institute a kind of moral purge of the city by re-instituting certain lapsed laws, notably the Lex Julia against adultery, with the result that there was a considerable rush on the part of offenders to get married. Martial refers to it seriously, but he cannot help joking about it too. For example he addresses Domitian (VI. 4) in tones of magniloquent eulogy:

censor maxime principumque princeps,
cum tot iam tibi debeat triumphos,
tot nascentia templa, tot renata,
tot spectacula, tot deos, tot urbes:
plus debet tibi Roma, quod pudica est.

"Greatest of censors and prince of princes,
Although Rome is indebted to you for so
  many victories,
For so many new temples being built, and so
  many old ones reconstructed,
For so many spectacles, so many gods, so
  many cities,
Yet Rome is still more indebted to you for
  making her chaste."

But listen to this in a different vein (V. 75):

quae legis causa nupsit tibi Laelia, Quinte,
 uxorem potes hanc dicere legitimam.

"Laelia who married you to comply with the
  law, Quintus,
  you can now surely call your lawful spouse."

And this (VI. 7) is a characteristically satirical comment on the law:

Iulia lex populis ex quo, Faustine, renata est
  atque intrare domos iussa Pudicitia est,
aut minus aut certe non plus tricesima lux est,
  et nubit decimo iam Telesilla viro.

"Faustinus, it is now the thirtieth day, perhaps less, certainly not more, since the Julian law was reinstituted and chastity officially ordered to enter our homes—it is just about the thirtieth day and already Telesilla is marrying her tenth husband."

Domitian also re-enacted the Lex Roscia by which the two highest orders in the state, the senators and the knights, were assigned special places in the theatre—the senators having the orchestra seats in a semicircle in front of the stage, and the knights having the next fourteen rows. Martial as a military tribune had the standing of a knight, and was very proud of his privilege at the theatre. Book V is full of references to comical scenes in the theatres when well-dressed and wealthy upstarts tried to occupy a knight's seat and argue it out with the vigilant attendants. There is for example V. 35, which describes a scene in the theatre when Leitus the attendant attempts to expel from the knights' stalls an indignant scarlet-clad Greek who wishes to be taken for a rich freedman of equestrian rank, and who protests that he has the full legal income for a knight, since he draws 200,000 sesterces a year from his farm at Patrae and as much again from his property near Corinth; and as for family, he has an attested pedigree running back to Leda and the swan. As the altercation proceeded, there dropped out of the magnificent pretender's clothes a large key, a doorkeeper's key, which revealed him for what he was, a slave:

dum suscitanti Leito reluctatur:
equiti superbo, nobili, locupleti
cecidit repente magna de sinu clavis.
nunquam, Fabulle, nequior fuit clavis.

"While he was struggling against Leïtus, who was removing him, out of the robe of this proud, aristocratic, wealthy knight there suddenly tumbled a large door-key. Never, Fabulus, was there a more perverse key."

How far can these complimentary poems about Domitian be trusted? How true is the evidence they afford? It may be said in their favour that Book V, being specially intended for Domitian's reading, has been made to conform to the new standard of at least legal morality which the Emperor has instituted, and the tone of the book has been very much improved, so that the Emperor may read it with face unashamed in the very presence of his patron goddess Pallas Athene (V. 2); but readers who enjoy "nequitiae procaciores salesque nudi" are referred back to the first four books already published. Similarly in Book VIII, which is specifically dedicated to the Emperor, he states that his epigrams have not been allowed to speak with as much playful licence as before (VIII. proem.) though, of course, he does allow a certain admixture of jest. "As the greater part, and better part, of my book is attached to the Majesty of your sacred name, it should remember that only those cleansed by religious purification ought to approach the temple"; and therefore in the first poem he dismisses Venus and welcomes Pallas the patroness of Caesar:

nuda recede Venus; non est tuus iste libellus:
 tu mihi, tu Pallas Caesariana, veni.

And it must be said that the tone of these two books is such that they could indeed be read, as Martial claims, by "matronae, puerique, virginesque".

On the other hand, it is notable that Book X, which had passed into circulation just before Domitian's death, was in fact withdrawn, remodelled, and republished two years later; and the only conclusion one can draw is that the first draft contained poems in praise of Domitian which would have been unacceptable to the new regime, however liberal that regime was. This is supported by the fact that in the new edition there is a kind of apology or palinode (X. 72), in which the poet dismisses Blanditiae from his books so as to make room for sincere and truthful praise of the new Emperor Trajan,

frustra, Blanditiae, venitis ad me,
adtritis miserabiles labellis …

"In vain, Flatteries, do you come to me, wretched creatures with your hackneyed lips. I am not now intending to address anyone as Master and God: no longer in this city is there any place for you … there is no Master here now, but a commander, but a senator the most just of them all, by whose action plain unadorned Truth has been brought back from her exile in the underworld: if you are wise, Rome, under such an Emperor you will beware of speaking in your former tones."

This change of note, this renunciation of flattery, seems to me to cast considerable doubt on the genuineness of his praise of Domitian: he had very quickly adjusted himself to the character of the new ruler.

Martial has written twelve books of epigrams with nearly a hundred poems in each and a total of between 700 and 750 verses in each book. (I omit from consideration the introductory book called the Liber Spectaculorum, because it is not really of great poetic interest: and I equally omit Books XIII and XIV which consist of couplet-mottoes meant for inscription on gifts and presents.) So the whole collection of epigrams amounts to between 8,000 and 9,000 verses—about the same length as the Aeneid, except that most of Martial's lines are shorter than hexameters. The poems are short, crisp and pointed. There is nothing aimless or loose in them. The poet knows what he wants to say and the effect he wishes to produce, and he does it with the utmost economy of words and terseness of diction. I have heard his poems described as mechanical, as if he turned them out by automation. I don't agree. The simplicity and precision and rapidity of his execution are such that the technical excellence of his artistry can be missed. What strikes me most is the inevitability of his phrasing: it could not be bettered: it has no surplusage, no fat tissue: it is lean, athletic and swift: he puts it well himself (II. 77) in reply to one of his critics:

non sunt longa quibus nihil est quod demere
  possis,

"a poem is just right in length if there is nothing that can be omitted without spoiling it": such a poem has become a natural entity: it is self-sufficient, existing in its own right.

Martial is not a poet of war. In his books no trumpets blare, and no legions march. Nor is he a learned poet. In him there is very little mythology, no recondite allusions, no abstruse echoes of older poets, no laboured effects, no enigma variations. The tone is conversational, direct, plain, neat and crisp, free from that curse of Roman poetry—rhetorical ornament and rhetorical emphasis. He makes no great claims for his verse: he calls it (X. 19),

nec doctum satis et parum severum
sed non rusticulum nimis libellum.

But this absence of academic learning, this unpuritan gaiety, and this air of unaffected urbanity—all these constitute its charm. And when you cast your mind over Latin poetry, this kind of writing is something unique.

His subject-matter was the Rome of his day and the multifarious people whom he saw or met in the houses, the forum, the baths, the Campus, the theatres and streets. He was a poet of life: his books are, in his own phrase, "Roman books dipped in sprightly wit" in which "Life can read and recognize her own manners" (VIII. 3). His little poems are like snaps, sharp and vivid, of real scenes. He had a great contempt for the poets who produced long epics and dramas on such traditional literary subjects as Oedipus and Thyestes, Colchian witches, Scyllas, and monsters (X. 4):

hic non Centauros, non Gorgonas, Harpyjasque
invenies: hominem pagina nostra sapit.

"Here in my poems you won't find Centaurs, Gorgons, and Harpies: it is of living humanity that my page smacks." And he has equal scorn for those other escapists from life, the archaizing poets (XI.90), who adore the rough measures and expressions of Accius and Pacuvius, and who love such a hexameter ending as "terrai frugiferai", and who praise as better than Homer such a vile pentameter as "Lucili columella hic situ' Metrophanes".

The tone of his epigrams is generally satirical and mocking, but never sour like Juvenal's. As Pliny said of him, "plurimum in scribendo et salis (habebat) et fellis nec candoris minus": "a lot of wit, a lot of gall, but no less good nature." He had no wish to win notoriety by attacking persons openly by name and damaging their reputation: "ludimus innocui", he says (VII. 12). He enjoyed the human scene: and laughter, dry and astringent, is the dominant note in his verse. He has no use for an epigrammatist whose poems are merely sweet (VII. 25):

nullaque mica salis, nec amari fellis in illis
 gutta est; o demens, vis tamen illa legi?

"Not a single grain of wit, not a single drop of gall—and yet do you expect your poems to be read?"

Martial, on the contrary, requires that his own poems shall have a sharp tang—and he is generally successful. These short disciplined epigrams are made to sting and bite. For example, he attacks a critic who thinks that, because Martial wrote small poems, he had therefore only a small talent. This critic Gaurus had composed a grand epic in twelve books on the wars of Priam. Does this vast work therefore prove him to be a great man? "Not at all", says Martial: "I make my small works live: you, Gaurus, make a giant of a poem, but an inert clay giant" (IX. 50).

tu magnus luteum, Gaure, Giganta facis.

There are obscenities in Martial's poems. It would be a mistake not to mention this feature which he himself so often mentions and excuses and defends. The licentiousness is sometimes so gross that the Loeb translation renders it into the language of the Decameron. He was criticized in his own day for the luxuria of his pages (III. 69): one critic complained (I. 35) that he wrote (and this is putting it mildly)

versus … parum severos
nec quos praelegat in schola magister.

In his introduction to the First Book he speaks of the naughty realism of the language, "lascivam verborum veritatem", which he claims to be the proper kind of language for epigrams, because the fashion was set by Catullus who to him is the "magister". I imagine that in some ways Roman society in its talk must have been a great deal coarser than our own (there is evidence of this in many anecdotes in Suetonius), and Martial naturally mirrors this society. He argues that the type of epigram which he terms Catullan cannot give entire pleasure without an element of bawdiness: this is not introduced because the poet or his readers are depraved: it is not evidence that their character and morals are corrupt: it belongs to the accepted convention of the literary genre (I. 35),

lex haec carminibus data est iocosis,
ne possint, nisi pruriant, iuvare.

"This is the law appointed for amusing poems; they can't please unless bawdy."

And for this reason he refuses to have his poems emasculated or expurgated. He does not attack known or recognizable persons: he uses fictitious names: it is always his intention (X. 33)

parcere personis, dicere de vitiis.

I would not say that Martial reveals any serious or idealistic philosophy of life. He had no religious belief, no faith, as far as I can discover. He makes no profession of philosophic belief: there is nothing in his poems that indicates his adhesion to any particular school of thought. On the whole, I would call him a realist, a man with no illusions about life, with no great ambitions; he desires only such common pleasures as bring comfort without pain or regret—a mildly optimistic hedonist who knows what he would enjoy but not always how to get it. He has left us his view of what constitutes for him the best in life in a number of poems scattered through the collection, and some of these are in my judgment among the very best that he wrote. His claims on life are not high: the same sentiments have been expressed by other Latin poets perhaps more eloquently: but I find in Martial a simple directness of statement which is in keeping with the plainness of his hopes. You will, perhaps, remember the well-known poem (II. 90) addressed to his countryman Quintilian, the great teacher and professor of rhetoric. It sounds as if Quintilian had been rebuking him for his unwillingness to settle down to a serious profession such as the law, or teaching, which would bring him a settled income. But this is not what Martial wants: he admits he is poor and not too old to begin a profession, but he doesn't want to be tied, he wants to live,

vivere quod propero pauper nec inutilis annis,
  da veniam: properat vivere nemo satis.

"Forgive me, Quintilian, for being in a hurry to live, to enjoy life …; no man ever makes enough speed in enjoying life."

His wants are few. He has no desire for power or wealth. His tastes are simple and not beyond attainment: he sets them out for Quintilian very simply: here they are:

me focus et nigros non indignantia fumos
 tecta iuvant et fons vivus et herba rudis.
sit mihi vema satur, sit non doctissima
   coniunx,
   sit nox cum somno, sit sine lite dies.

"What gives me pleasure is a fire on the hearth, and rafters with the black smoke eddying through them, and a well of spring water, and a plot of untrimmed grass. I would like to have a well-fed slave, and a wife educated but not a bluestocking, a sound night's sleep, and a day without a lawsuit."

That theme, which insists on the urgent immediacy of living now, recurs through all Latin poetry; but again and again in these poems it comes with a delightful freshness and charm. Pleasures are fugitive: we must clutch them with both hands (I. 15),

non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere "vivam":
 sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie.

"Believe me, it's not the part of a wise man to say 'I intend to live': living tomorrow is too late: live today, my friend."

In fact, neither living tomorrow nor living today is good enough: the only wise man is he who has already lived yesterday (V. 58):

cras te victurum, cras dicis, Postume, semper.
  dic mihi, cras istud, Postume, quando venit?
quam longe cras istud, ubi est? aut unde
  petendum?
  numquid apud Parthos Armeniosque latet?..

cras vives? hodie iam vivere, Postume, serum
  est:
  ille sapit quisquis, Postume, vixit heri.

"Tomorrow you say you will live, Postumus,
  always tomorrow.
  That tomorrow of yours, when does it
  arrive? Tell me.
How distant is it? Where is it? Where is it to
 be found?
 Is it hidden somewhere in Parthia or
 Armenia? …
Tomorrow will you live? To live to-day it's
 too late even now.

He's the wise man who really lived
yesterday."

And what is this living, this enjoyment of life, this realization of a swiftly passing existence, that Martial speaks about so feelingly? He tells us in two poems which I consider to be among the very best he wrote. They are both addressed to Julius Martialis, his closest friend at Rome for thirty-three years. The first is V. 20: in it he gives utterance to the deep hatred he has come to feel for the conventional life of the retainer whose time belongs not to himself but is given to his patron. He wishes to be free to enjoy the social company and talk and freedom of the Roman capital:

"If you and 1, my dear Martial, had the chance to enjoy together unworried days, and to have our time unoccupied by business and our own to dispose of, and both alike to have leisure for genuine life, we shouldn't have anything to do with the halls or mansions of the great or grim lawsuits or the gloomy forum or lordly families: but the promenade, the conversation, the notices, the Campus Martius, the colonnade, the coolness of the shade, the baths—these would always be our haunts and this our work. But as it is, neither of us sets the plan for his own life. We see the good sunny days slipping away and passing beyond recall, days that are lost to us and yet are included in our reckoning. Does any man, if he knows how to live, put off beginning?"

                     bonosque
soles effugere atque abire sentit,
qui nobis pereunt et inputantur.
quisquam, vivere cum sciat, moratur?

And the second poem (X. 47) simply states the things which in the poet's opinion make for a happier life—and they are not all to be found in a Welfare State:

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

"What makes life happier, my genial friend
  Martial, are things like these:
Means not gained by work but inherited by
 bequest;
A pleasantly rewarding demesne, a fire on the
  hearth perpetually alight;
No lawsuits, the formal toga seldom wom, a
  mind at peace;
A free man's natural vigour, a healthy body;
Candor with discretion: congenial friends;
Good-natured companionableness: a menu not
 elaborated.
An evening not intoxicated but relaxed and
 carefree;
A wife who is jolly and yet chaste;
Sleep so sound that it's morning before you
  know;
To be content with what you are and not wish
  to be something else:
Neither to dread your final day nor to wish
  for it."¹