Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Part 21

for 'all quality, pride, pomp, and circ.u.mstance of glorious war', we must go to the inspired prose of Livy.

And yet it is well that the _Punica_ should have been preserved. It is well to know that as France has its _Henriade_ and England its _Madoc_, so Rome had its _Punica_. It is our one direct glimpse into the work of that cultured society, devastated by the 'scribendi caccethes', as Juvenal puts it, or, from the point of view of the facile Pliny, adorned by the number of its poets.[626] The _Punica_ have won an immortality far other than that prophesied for them by Martial,[627] but they show us the work of a cultured Roman gentleman of his day, who, if he had small capacity, had a high enthusiasm for letters, who had diligence if he had not genius, and was possessed by a love for the supreme poet in whose steps he followed, a pa.s.sion so sincere that it may win from his scanty readers at least a partial forgiveness for the inadequacy of his imitation and for the suffering inflicted on all those who have essayed the dreary adventure of reading the seventeen books that bear his name.

CHAPTER XI

MARTIAL

Marcus Valerius Martialis, like Quintilian, Seneca, and Lucan, was a Spaniard by birth, and, unlike those writers, never became thoroughly reconciled to life at Rome. He was born at Bilbilis,[628] a small town of Hispania Tarraconensis. The exact year of his birth is uncertain; but as the tenth book of his epigrams, written between 95 and 98 A. D., contains a reference (24) to his fifty-seventh birthday, he must have been born between 38 and 41 A. D. His birthday was the 1st of March, a fact to which he owes his name Martialis.[629] Of the position of his parents, Valerius Fronto and Flaccilla,[630] we have no evidence. That they were not wealthy is clear from the circ.u.mstances of their son. But they were able to give him a regular literary education,[631] although, unlike his fellow-countrymen whom we have mentioned above, he was educated in his native province. But the life of a provincial did not satisfy him. Conscious, perhaps, of his literary gifts, he went, in 64 A.D.,[632] like so many a young provincial, to make his fortune at Rome.

There he attached himself as client to the powerful Spanish family of the Senecas, and found a friendly reception also in the house of Calpurnius Piso.[633] But fortune was against him; as he was congratulating himself on his good luck in starting life at Rome under such favourable auspices, the Pisonian conspiracy (65 A.D.) failed, and his patrons fell before the wrath of Nero.[634] His career must be commenced anew. Of his life from this point to the reign of Domitian we know little. But this much is certain, that he endured all the indignities and hardships of a client's life,[635] and that he chose this degrading career in preference to the active career of the Roman bar. He had no taste for oratory, and rejected the advice of his friend Gaius[636] and his distinguished compatriot Quintilian to seek a livelihood as an advocate or as a politician. 'That is not life!' he replies to Quintilian:

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

differat hoc patrios optat qui vincere census atriaque immodicis artat imaginibus (ii. 90. 3).

His ideals and ambitions were low, and his choice had, as we shall see, a degrading effect upon his poetry. He chose rather to live on such modest fortune as he may have possessed, on the client's dole, and such gifts as his complimentary epigrams may have won from his patrons. These gifts must have been in many cases of a trifling description,[637] but they may occasionally have been on a more generous scale. At any rate, by the year 94 A. D., we find him the possessor of a little farm at Nomentum,[638] and a house on the Quirinal.[639] Although he must presumably have written a considerable quant.i.ty of verse in his earlier years, it is not till 80 A. D. that he makes an appearance on the stage of literature. In that year the Flavian amphitheatre was consecrated by the Emperor t.i.tus, and Martial celebrated the fact by the publication of his first book, the _Spectaculorum Liber_. It is of small literary value, but it was his first step on the ladder of fame. t.i.tus conferred on him the _ius trium liberorum_, although he seems not to have entered on the enjoyment of this privilege till the reign of Domitian.[640] He thus first came in touch with the imperial circle. From this time forward we get a continual stream of verse in fulsome praise of Domitian and his freedman. But his flattery met with small reward. There are many poems belauding the princeps, but few that thank him. The most that he acquired by his flattery was the honorary military tribunate and his elevation to the equestrian order.[641] Of material profit he got little,[642] save such as his improved social position may have conferred on him indirectly.

Four years after the publication of the _Spectaculorum Liber_ (i.e.

later in 84 and 85)[643] he published two books, the thirteenth and fourteenth, composed of neat but trifling poems on the presents (Xenia and Apoph.o.r.eta) which it was customary to give at the feast of the Saturnalia. From this point his output was continuous and steady, as the following table will show:[644]

I, II. 85 or early in 86.

III. 87 or early in 88.

IV. December (Saturnalia) 88.

V. Autumn, 89.

VI. Summer or Autumn, 90.

VII. December, 92.

VIII. 93.

IX. Summer, 94.

X. 1. December, 95.

X. 2. 98.

XI. 97.

XII. Late in 101.

His life during this period was uneventful. He lived expensively and continually complains of lack of funds and of the miseries of a client's life. Once only (about 88) the discomfort of his existence seems to have induced him to abandon Rome. He took up his residence at Forum Cornelii, the modern Imola, but soon returned to Rome.[645] It was not till 98 that he decided to leave the capital for good and to return to his Spanish home. A new princeps was on the throne. Martial had a.s.sociated his work too closely with Domitian and his court to feel at his ease with Nerva. He sent the new emperor a selection from his tenth and eleventh books, which we may, perhaps, conjecture to have been expurgated. He denounced the dead Domitian in a brilliant epigram which may have formed part of that selection, but which has only been preserved to us by the scholiast on Juvenal (iv. 38):

Flavia gens, quantum tibi tertius abstulit heres!

paene fuit tanti non habuisse duos.

How much thy third has wronged thee, Flavian race!

'Twere better ne'er to have bred the other brace. ANON.

But he felt that times were changed and that there was no place now for his peculiar talent for flattery (x. 72. 8):

non est hic dominus sed imperator, sed iustissimus omnium senator, per quem de Stygia domo reducta est siccis rustica Veritas capillis.

hoc sub principe, si sapis, caveto verbis, Roma, prioribus loquaris.

an emperor Is ours, no master as of yore, Himself the Senate's very crown Of justice, who has called from down In her deep Stygian duress The hoyden Truth, with tangled tress.

Be wise, Rome, see you shape anew Your tongue; your prince would have it true.

A. E. STREET.

Let flattery fly to Parthia. Rome is no place for her (ib. 4). Martial had made his name: he was read far and wide throughout the Empire.[646]

He could afford to retire from the city that had given him much fame and much pleasure, but had balanced its gifts by a thousand vexations and indignities. Pliny a.s.sisted him with journey-money, and after a thirty-four years' sojourn in Italy he returned to Bilbilis to live a life of _dolce far niente_. The kindness of a wealthy friend, a Spanish lady named Marcella,[647] gave him an estate on which he lived in comfort, if not in affluence. He published but one book in Spain, the twelfth, written, he says in the preface, in a very few days. He lived in peace and happiness, though at times he sighed for the welcome of the public for whom he had catered so long,[648] and chafed under the lack of sympathy and culture among his Spanish neighbours.[649] He died in 104. 'Martial is dead,' says Pliny, 'and I am grieved to hear it. He was a man of genius, with a shrewd and vigorous wit. His verses are full of point and sting, and as frank as they are witty. I provided him with money for his journey when he left Rome; I owed it to my friendship for him, and to the verses which he wrote in my honour'--then follows Mart.

x. 20--'Was I not right to speed him on his way, and am I not justified in mourning his death, seeing that he wrote thus concerning me? He gave me what he could, he would have given more had he been able. And yet what greater gift can one man give another than by handing down his name and fame to all eternity. I hear you say that Martial's verses will not live to all eternity? You may be right; at any rate, he hoped for their immortality when he wrote them' (Plin. _Ep._ iii. 21).

Of Martial's character we shall have occasion to speak later. There is nothing in the slight, but generous, tribute of Pliny that has to be unsaid.

Of the circles in which he moved his epigrams give us a brilliant picture; of his exact relations with the persons whom he addresses it is hard to speak with certainty. Many distinguished figures of the day appear as the objects of his flattery. There are Spaniards, Quintilian, Lucinia.n.u.s Maternus and Canius Rufus, all distinguished men of letters, the poets Silius Italicus, Stertinius Avitus, Arruntius Stella, the younger Pliny, the orator Aquilius Regulus, Lentulus Sura, the friend of Trajan, the rich knights, Atedius Melior, and Claudius Etruscus, the soldier Norba.n.u.s, and many others. With Juvenal also he seems to have enjoyed a certain intimacy. Statius he never mentions, although he must have moved in the same circles.[650] His intimates--as might be expected--are for the most part, as far as we can guess, of lower rank.

There are the centurions Varus and Pudens, Terentius Priscus his compatriot, Decia.n.u.s the Stoic from the Spanish town of Emerita, the self-sacrificing Quintus Ovidius, Martial's neighbour at Nomentum and a fellow-client of Seneca, and, above all, Julius Martialis. His enemies and envious rivals are attacked and bespattered with filth in many an epigram, but Martial, true to his promise in the preface to his first book, conceals their true names from us.

Of his _vie intime_ he tells us little. As far as we may judge, he was unmarried. It is true that several of his epigrams purport to be addressed to his wife. But two facts show clearly that this lady is wholly imaginary. Even Martial could not have spoken of his wife in such disgusting language as, for instance, he uses in xi. 104, while in another poem (ii. 92) he clearly expresses his intention not to marry:

natorum mihi ius trium roganti Musarum pretium dedit mearum solus qui poterat. valebis, uxor, non debet domini perire munus.

The honorary _ius trium liberorum_ had given him, he says, all that marriage could have brought him. He has no intention of making the emperor's generosity superfluous by taking a wife. He preferred the untrammelled life of a bachelor. So only could he enjoy the pleasures which for him meant 'life '. He is neither an impressive nor a very interesting figure. He has many qualities that repel, even if we do not take him too seriously; and though he may have been a pleasant and in many respects most amiable companion, he has few characteristics that arrest our attention or compel our respect. More will be said of his virtues and his vices in the pages that follow. It is the artist rather than the man that wakens our interest.

In Martial we have a poet who devoted himself to the one cla.s.s of poetry which, apart from satire, the conditions of the Silver Age were qualified to produce in any real excellence--the epigram. In a period when rhetorical smartness and point were the predominant features of literature, the epigram was almost certain to flourish. But Roman poets in general, and Martial in particular, gave a character to the epigram which has clung to it ever since, and has actually changed the significance of the word itself.

In the best days of the Greek epigram the prime consideration was not that a poem should be pointed, but that it should be what is summed up in the untranslatable French epithet _lapidaire_; that is to say, it should possess the conciseness, finish, and relevance required for an inscription on a monument. Its range was wide; it might express the lover's pa.s.sion, the mourner's grief, the artist's skill, the cynic's laughter, the satirist's scorn. It was all poetry in miniature. Point is not wanting, but its chief characteristics are delicacy and charm. 'No good epigram sacrifices its finer poetical substance to the desire of making a point, and none of the best depend on having a point at all.'[651] Transplanted to the soil of Italy the epigram changes. The less poetic Roman, with his coa.r.s.e tastes, his brutality, his tendency to satire, his appreciation of the incisive, wrought it to his own use.

In his hands it loses most of its sensuous and lyrical elements and makes up for the loss by the cultivation of point. Above all, it becomes the instrument of satire, stinging like a wasp where the satirist pure and simple uses the deadlier weapons of the bludgeon and the rapier.

The epigram must have been exceedingly plentiful from the very dawn of the movement which was to make Rome a city of _belles-lettres_. It is the plaything of the dilettante _litterateur_, so plentiful under the empire.[652] Apart from the work of Martial, curiously few epigrams have come down to us; nevertheless, in the vast majority of the very limited number we possess the same Roman characteristics may be traced. In the non-lyrical epigrams of Catullus, in the shorter poems of the _Appendix Vergiliana_, there is the same vigour, the same coa.r.s.e humour, the same pungency that find their best expression in Martial. Even in the epigrams attributed to Seneca in the _Anthologia Latina_ [653] something of this may be observed, though for the most part they lack the personal note and leave the impression of mere juggling with words. It is in this last respect, the attention to point, that they show most affinity with Martial. Only the epigrams in the same collection attributed to Petronius[654] seem to preserve something of the Greek spirit of beauty untainted by the hard, unlovely, incisive spirit of Rome.

Martial was destined to fix the type of the epigram for the future. For pure poetry he had small gifts. He was endowed with a warm heart, a real love for simplicity of life and for the beauties of nature. But he had no lyrical enthusiasm, and was incapable of genuine pa.s.sion. He entered heartwhole on all his amatory adventures, and left them with indifference. Even the cynical profligacy of Ovid shows more capacity for true love. At their best Martial's erotic epigrams attain to a certain shallow prettiness,[655] for the most part they do not rise above the p.o.r.nographic. And even though he shows a real capacity for friendship, he also reveals an infinite capacity for cringing or impudent vulgarity in his relations with those who were merely patrons or acquaintances. His needy circ.u.mstances led him, as we shall see, to continual expressions of a peevish mendicancy, while the artificiality and pettiness of the life in which he moved induced an excessive triviality and narrowness of outlook.

He makes no great struggle after originality. The slightness of his themes and of his _genre_ relieved him of that necessity. Some of his prettiest poems are mere variations on some of the most famous lyrics of Catullus.[656] He pilfers whole lines from Ovid.[657] Phrase after phrase suggests something that has gone before. But his plagiarism is effected with such perfect frankness and such perfect art, that it might well be pardoned, even if Martial had greater claims to be taken seriously. As it is, his freedom in borrowing need scarcely be taken into account in the consideration of our verdict. At the worst his crime is no more than petty larceny. With all his faults, he has gifts such as few poets have possessed, a perfect facility and a perfect finish. Alone of poets of the period he rarely gives the impression of labouring a point. Compared with Martial, Seneca and Lucan, Statius and Juvenal are, at their worst, stylistic acrobats. But Martial, however silly or offensive, however complicated or prosaic his theme, handles his material with supreme ease. His points may often not be worth making; they could not be better made. Moreover, he has a perfect ear; his music may be trivial, but within its narrow limits it is faultless.[658] He knows what is required of him and he knows his own powers. He knows that his range is limited, that his sphere is comparatively humble, but he is proud to excel in it. He has the artist's self-respect without his vanity.

His themes are manifold. He might have said, with even greater truth than Juvenal, 'quidquid agunt homines, nostri est farrago libelli.' He does not go beneath the surface, but almost every aspect of the kaleidoscopic world of Rome receives his attention at one time or another. His att.i.tude is, on the whole, satirical, though his satire is not inspired by deep or sincere indignation. He is too easy in his morals and too good-humoured by temperament. He is often insulting, but there is scarcely a line that breathes fierce resentment, while his almost unparalleled obscenity precludes the intrusion of any genuine earnestness of moral scorn in a very large number of his satiric epigrams. On these points he shall speak for himself; he makes no exacting claims.

'I hope,' he says in the preface to his first book, 'that I have exercised such restraint in my writings that no one who is possessed of the least self-respect may have cause to complain of them. My jests are never outrageous, even when directed against persons of the meanest consideration. My practice in this respect is very different from that of early writers, who abused persons without veiling their invective under a pseudonym. Nay more, their victims were men of the highest renown. My _jeux d'esprit_ have no _arrieres-pensees_, and I hope that no one will put an evil interpretation on them, nor rewrite my epigrams by infusing his own malignance into his reading of them. It is a scandalous injustice to exercise such ingenuity on what another has written. I would offer some excuse for the freedom and frankness of my language--which is, after all, the language of epigram--if I were setting any new precedent. But all epigrammatists, Catullus, Marsus, Pedo, Gaetulicus, have availed themselves of this licence of speech.

But if any one wishes to acquire notoriety by prudish severity, and refuses to permit me to write after the good Roman fashion in so much as a single page of my work, he may stop short at the preface, or even at the t.i.tle. Epigrams are written for such persons as derive pleasure from the games at the Feast of Flowers. Cato should not enter my theatre, but if he does enter it, let him be content to look on at the sport which I provide. I think I shall be justified in closing my preface with an epigram

TO CATO

Once more the merry feast of Flora's come, With wanton jest to split the sides of Rome; Yet come you, prince of prudes, to view the show.

Why come you? merely to be shocked and go?'

He rea.s.serts the kindliness of his heart and the excellence of his intentions elsewhere:

hunc servare modum nostri novere libelli; parcere personis, dicere de vitiis (x. 33).

For in my verses 'tis my constant care To lash the vices, but the persons spare.

HAY.

Malignant critics _had_ exercised their ingenuity in the manner which he deprecated.[659] Worse still, libellous verse had been falsely circulated as his:

quid prodest, cupiant c.u.m quidam nostra videri si qua Lycambeo sanguine tela madent, vipereumque vomant nostro sub nomine virus qui Phoebi radios ferre diemque negant? (vii. 12. 5).

But what does't avail, If in bloodfetching lines others do rail, And vomit viperous poison in my name, Such as the sun themselves to own do shame?