MARTIAL'S EPIGRAMS. Marcus Va lerius Martialis, the epigrammatist, was born about 40 A.D. in Bilbilis, Spain, 20 miles west of the present Aragonese city of Saragossa. He went to Rome at the age of 23, and after nearly two score years of residence at he capital re turned to his native town, where he died about 104. At the age of 40 he celebrated the dedica tion of the Coliseum and won the favor of the Emperor Titus by composing the 'Book of Spectacles,) a collection of epigrams on the incidents of the day's sport. Several years later he published two collections of couplets to be used with dinner favors and with presents at the Saturnalia, which afterward took their places in his works as books XIII and XIV. Books I to XII, his really characteristic work, were published at intervals more or less regular from 86 to 102, the last one having been sent from Spain after his return. The total num ber of pieces in the 15 books is about 1,550, of which three-fourths are in the elegiac couplet, like the verse of Ovid and the great part of Greek epigram.
Though at first glance Martial seems to continue the tradition of the epigram, which had already had long life and great fame in the Greek tongue, he is really to a large extent original and creative, and is of the greatest importance in literary history as being the founder of the epigram as it has been popularly conceived ever since; that is, as a short, highly concentrated poem with a point that is made to appear suddenly or with a surprise.
Whether his influence has been the best is sometimes questioned. Those who are familiar with the calm, sunny, contemplative, tripping genius of the Greek Anthology, which, though its epigrams are always neat and concise, and sometimes stinging, has not as a whole the satiric character, will be likely to think Martial somewhat hard and metallic in both form and content. Those who enjoy averbal exactness and mechanical ingenuity') (Dimsdale), and look to the epigram for the character of sting ing, satiric pointedness usually associated with it, will agree with Lessing that he is the world's greatest epigrammatist, and under stand his appeal to Dryden, Pope and Johnson.
Martial is not all pungency. A not incon siderable number of his pieces are epigram matic rather than epigrams; a few of them might be classed as short poems without reference to epigram. They are nevertheless homogeneous. Even more than perfection of form, the characteristic that gives them all a unity, is their quality as a human document. Martial was right when he said, uMy page smacks of human Provincially and sim ply bred, existence of a free lance in a great capital in an intense age, gifted with a keen understanding, a quick eye, and a re sponsive pen, he converted into clear, cameo like literary pictures for the amusement of his own time, and for the amusement and instruc tion of all time, innumerable vivid impressions from the fascinating realities among which he moved. To read his epigrams in quantity is like sitting before a cinematograph of the Fla vian era. There flash before us lively scenes of men and thinks: numerous faces of the known and the nameless, types of men and women from every sphere, the bawling school master with his noisy pupils, the poetical bore reciting his verses to unwilling ears, the stingy host, the snowstorm in the amphitheatre, the routine of the Roman day, the patron who is never at home, the guest who comes too early, the transparent hypocrite, the slow barber, the waste slopes of recently active Vesuvius, the in cident of the circus or theatre or the dinner or the street. In an age of ennui, the world is
fresh and interesting to Martial. Not only men, but things, find him attentive. Thinking of this and of his facility of expression. Verrall says ('Literary Essays, Classical and Modern,' p. 15) that he is "perhaps the only writer in whom plate and tapestry, earthenware and hardware, beds and sofas, become truly poetic." Dims dale ((Latin Lit .,> p. 4721, commentin on his method of attaining vividness by dic use of realistic detail, says that The uses no general ex pressions such as rich and poor, but speaks in terms of jewelry, scents, linen, cloaks and boots.' Martial is a satirist, but only by accident. He has no moral indignation such as a few years afterward glows from the page of Juve nal. certain intolerance of hypocrisy," says Mackail ('Latin Lit.,) p 194), is the nearest ap proach Martial ever makes to moral feeling. He does not scold; he does not even preach. He manifests no moral enthusiasms, and almost no malice for anything. He is a wit rather than a humorist, though he is by no means without humor. He merely records, and his quality as a satirist is the outgrowth and accompaniment of epigrammatic expression rather than the result of conscious purpose. To portray freely and realistically was in itself to satiri.e.
The reader's enjoyment of Martial unex purgated is interfered with by coarseness in about one in 10 of his pieces. This is hardly higher or lower than the modern European average, though his coarseness is not on this account the more welcome. He is also charged with servility in his attitude toward the em peror and other patrons. It should be said in extenuation that literary patronage has until not long ago been a regular and a recognized i relation and has always carried with it a certain amount of purely conventional flattery, and that Martial's servility perhaps did not seem so offensive in his own day as it does now, when the servility of the literary art finds expression in other ways. So clean-hearted and clean lipped a man as the younger Pliny, in express ing regret at the poet's death, has left the word candor as descriptive of him: the was a man of talent, penetrating, keen, with exceed wit and satire as a writer, and with no less This is probably a reference to the sincerity and frank straightforwardness of Martial the realist, who saw clearly and took no pains to cover up either other men's failings or his own. Of himself he says, "My page is free, my life Of his work he says: Lovers of Spanish art hi general, and of the present day novel in particular, will find them selves wondering whether Martial is not to be explained as merely an ancient example of the truthfulness and directness which so strongly characterize the Spanish genius. Paul Nixon, in rA Roman Wit,c gives a spirited rendering, in evitably lacking in finish, of about 200 epigrams. The Bohn Library Martial contains a greater number of translations in both verse and prose. Kirby Smith, in the Sewanee Review, Vol. 26, No. 1, may be consulted for appreciation.