MARTIAL AND JUVENAL— OYSTERS 145 



For in this same epigram and many others the poet is fain 



" Ante focum plenas explicuisse plagas, 

 Et piscem tremula salientem ducere seta." 



To him these rank among the chief dehghts of country hfe, 

 which hfe he, though an admirable flaneur, places higher than 

 all else. 



He ends his vivid sketch of it with the passionate burst — 

 " Let not the man who loves not this life, love me, and let him 

 go on with his city life — white as his own toga ! " ^ 



Martial's charming picture of a Roman homestead, of its life, 

 live-stock, of its pursuits, and of its fishing, 2 contrasts vividly 

 with his fawning eulogies of Emperors, and his savage satire 

 on foes. It must be confessed, however, that some of his 

 prettiest appreciations of country life were written in or about 

 the large villas with which his rich patrons had studded, too 

 closely to be really rural, Baiae and the Bay of Naples. 



His pleasure in this part of the coast was increased by the 

 nearness of the baths of Baiae, and the Lacus Lucrinus, the home 

 of the famous Roman oyster. 



These oysters held, I think, the highest place in Martial's 

 gastronomic affections. Constant his references to them, 

 frequent his assertions or assumptions that they excelled all 

 other. 3 His well known lament for a beautiful little slave girl, 

 who died when only six, employs as a term of highest praise 



^ The client had to be at his patron's house in the morning and attend him, 

 there or anywhere, all day if necessary. It was an act of disrespect to appear 

 before his patron without donning the toga. Cf. Juvenal, VII. 142, and 

 VIII. 49 ; also I. 96 and 119, and X. 45, and Martial, Ep., X. 10. In prose the 

 most caustic description of the client-and-patron institution may be found in 

 Lucian, Nigrinus, 20-26. In Ep., XII. 18, to poor Juvenal dancing attendance 

 in Rome on his patron and sweating in the requisite toga he recounts the many 

 delights of his home in Spain : among them " ignota est toga," a blazing fire 

 of oak cut from the adjoining coppice, and lastly the venator or keeper, whose 

 attractions in lines 22-3 do not appeal to the modern sportsman. I draw 

 attention to these lines, because they reflect quite casually, but quite clearly, 

 the decadent vices of the age : remember, they af e not quotations from some 

 obscure, if obscene, versifier, but were written (and pubhshed !) by the second 

 poet to the first poet of that generation. It has been pointed out that in the 

 epigrams of Martial with which Juvenal is connected some obscenity usually 

 creeps in. Cf. Ep., VII. 91. 



■ Ep., III.. 58, 26, 



" Sed tendit avidis rete subdolum turdis 

 Tremulave captum linea trahit piscem " 



3 Cf. Ep. VI. II, 5, and III., 60 3, and XII., 48, 4. 



