Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

INTRODUCTION
spondee at the end of each line probably seemed to him
exactly suitable; for in those days of strained rhetoric
and formal antithesis it was an unusual novelty to have
simple ideas and to express them in simple language.
His model, of course, is the ' Sirmio' of Catullus, and in
several pieces he, at least, equals his predecessor. There
is the beautiful description (III, lviii) of Faustinus' farm,
and of the suburban retreat of Julius Martialis (IV, lxiv),
the outburst on the glories of Spain (IV, lv), and the
ecstatic picture of the seaside at Formiae (X, xxx); best
known of all perhaps the poem on the death of little
Erotion (V, xxxvii), with whom compared, 'inamabilis
sciurus et frequens phoenix.' These poems indeed are
studded with gems of phrasing-' grandes proborum
virgines colonorum', 'sub urbe possides, famem mundam',
' caelo perfruitur sereniore ', 'viva sed quies ponti ',and they show that Martial had latent in him a vein of
imagination not unlike that which Goldsmith worked
when he wrote ' The Deserted Village'.
While the best and longest of the iambic pieces
treat of the picturesque, the most striking of the hendecasyllabics are concerned with personal emotions. Here
again Martial follows Catullus in the 'Passer' poems,
but for him the place of Lesbia is taken by male friends,
above all by his dear Julius Martialis. To him the three
most charming of the series are addressed, the invitation
to holiday, with its reminder of the hours-' qui nobis
pereunt et imputantur' (V, xx); the description of the
happy life and all that it needs (X, xlvii); and the final
poem of farewell written in sorrow from Spain-' nulli
te facias nimis sodalem '.
It would be possible to collect from Martial a small
anthology, in which each piece was of high poetical
quality, and most of these pieces would be either in iambics
or in hendecasyllabics. But this was not the sort of
thing that really pleased Martial's public; what they
wanted was humorous realism, and if the humour was
somewhat gross, that was rather a recommendation than
a fault. Consequently the large majority of the Epigrams
are of the humorous type, and are written in the elegiac
metre. Pieces more than twelve lines in length are
comparatively rare, and a very large number are either
in four lines or in two. Generally speaking, the shorter
the epigram is, the stronger is the effect that it produces,
and the device whereby the sting of the sarcasm is kept
for the very last word is often used with wonderful effect.
xiii