1 6 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



Still more unlike the Martial of popular conception does he appear in an 

 epitaph on a little slave-girl, whose shade he commends to the loving care 

 of the shades of his father and mother. Even the little maiden's name is 



a caress: 



Ye parents, Fronto and Flocilla here, 

 To you I do commend my girl, my dear. 

 Lest pale Erotion tremble at the shades, . 

 And the foul dog of hell's prodigious heads. 

 Her age fulfilling just six winters was, 

 Had she but known so many days to pass. 

 'Mongst you, old patrons, may she sport and play 

 And with her lisping tongue my name oft say. 

 May the smooth turf her soft bones hide, and be, 

 O earth, as light to her as she to thee ! (Fletcher.) 



Perhaps these three quotations will have given us a ghmpse of the 

 anti-Martial in our epigrammatist ; at any rate, they may serv^e to bid us 

 remember that in the poet's complex being salt and spleen, the old sal and 

 }el, are ofttimes united with serious thought and kindhness of heart. And 

 if we take leave of him by Erotion's grave, we may judge more generously 

 the nature and character of a man whose writings afford only too painful 

 grounds for a judgment that must still be severe, even when justice has 

 been tempered by mercy. 



It has been said most happily that the epigram is to literature what 

 the engraved gem is to plastic art. From the Greek hand it issued more 

 dainty, more direct, more simple and sweetly winning; from Martial we 

 receive it sometimes in delicate form, often crisp and vigorous, even at 

 times repulsive, but ever with its hnes clear and strong, the work of a 

 master-craftsman. His more dehcate epigrams, however, Avere not the 

 work that won him fame, and they are left too often for the praise of the 

 scholar who cUngs to beautiful Greek ideals, whereas his scintillating 

 humor and biting wit have been enjoyed by many tastes in all ages since 

 the Roman Empire. Whether the course of the epigram is followed in 

 Italy, France, Germany, or England, the influence of Martial is encoun- 

 tered at every turn. For good or for ill, he molded the epigram, and 

 those who came after him wrought as he had taught them. 



