THE EPIGRAM AND ITS GREATEST MASTER II 



He made friends and enemies, won sweet favor and bitter envy; he 

 walked and talked, dissipated deeply and slept lightly;, he frequented 

 theater and bath, Hbrary and club; he ran to the country when tired of 

 the town, and returned to the town when tired of the country; he dined 

 much and dreamed a Httle ; he observed some of the virtues of his fellow- 

 men and women, and all of their vices; he wrote good poems and bad; 

 and achieved fame and unhappiness. Then after thirty-four years the 

 quiet rural life he had deserted took its revenge, as it so often does on its 

 successful but embittered children, and brought him back to the peace- 

 ful scenes of his native province. A generous patroness provided him 

 with an estate that both dehghted the mind and supported the body, and 

 here he seems to have been fairly happy save for the rasping gossip of the 

 tiny village and his inevitable longing for the dehghts of the capital. It 

 was amid the old scenes that he passed away, lacking about ten years of 

 the three score and five which he had prayed the grim sisters three 

 might spin for him. 



Martial's popularity was immediate and general. He was read much, 

 not only at Rome, but also in the remote parts of Rome's dominions for 

 many centuries. Even during the Middle Ages he did not fall into such 

 neglect as was the lot of many Latin writers, and with the "Renaissance" 

 he came rapidly into his own, or even more than his own. 



Of the reasons for Martial's triumph it is always easy to write at 

 length; but they generally come back to the fact that he has put before 

 us the frailties of human nature in unforgettable verses. You cannot 

 forget Martial any more than you can escape human nature with its 

 mingled yam of good and ill together. "My page is Ufe," he asserts; 

 and his claim is largely true, although it is not all of Hfe. This is unques- 

 tionably the reason that his pages are ever fresh, and that his jests make 

 newer jests seem old. Years ago Mark Twain was credited with a mot 

 that the younger generation seems to have forgotten. "There are but 

 thirteen jokes in the world," he said, "and Aristophanes and Martial had 

 twelve of them. Modesty prevents me from mentioning the author of 

 the thirteenth." The commonplace that there is no new joke is true in 

 foundation; for the modern joke is simply its ancient forerunner adapting 

 itself to a new environment. 



