Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/608

Rh 580 M A R M A B writings, notwithstanding their vivacity, truth, and brilli ancy, a place among the best poetry of antiquity, have been sufficiently indicated. It remains to ask, What were those qualities of nature and intellect which enable us to read his best work even the great body of his work with the freshest sense of pleasure in the present day ] He had the keenest capacity for enjoyment, the keenest curiosity and power of observation. The ordinary spectacle of Koman life, as it passed before his eyes, was thus vividly apprehended and reproduced by him in all its details ; and the many varieties of character which an over-ripe and decaying civilization produces were quickly seized and graphically sketched. He had also a very just discern ment. It is rare to find any one endowed with so quick a perception of the ridiculous who is so little of a carica turist. He was himself singularly free from cant, pedantry, or affectation of any kind. Though tolerant of most vices, he has a hearty scorn of hypocrisy, of the combination of outward austerity with secret profligacy, of the man who, while he wears &quot; Fuscos colores, galbinos habet mores.&quot; 1 There are few better satirists of social and literary pre tenders either in ancient or modern times. Living in a very artificial age, he was quite natural, hating pomp and show, and desiring to secure in life only what really gave him pleasure. To live one s own life heartily from day to day without looking before or after, and to be one s self without trying to be that for which nature did not intend him, is the sum of his philosophy. It is the philosophy of a man who has passed the middle of life, who has outlived any illusions he may ever have had, and who is quite content that whatever remains to him in the future should be like his present. Further, while tolerant of much that is bad and base, the characters of Crispinus and Regulus, for instance, he shows himself genuinely grateful for kindness and appreciative of excellence. He has no bitterness, malice, or envy in his composition. He pro fesses to avoid personalities in his satire ; &quot; Ludimus in- nocui &quot; is the character he claims for it. Pliny, in ths ehort tribute which he pays to him on hearing of his death, says, &quot; He had as much candour as wit and pungency in his writings &quot; (Ep. iii. 21). Honour and sincerity (fides and simplicitas) are the qualities which he most admires in his friends. Though many of his epigrams indicate a cynical disbelief in the character of women, yet others prove that he could respect and almost reverence a refined and courteous lady. His own life in Rome afforded him no experience of domestic virtue ; but his epigrams show that, even in the age which is known to modern readers chiefly from the Satires of Juvenal, that virtue was recognized as the purest source of happiness. The tenderest element in Martial s nature seems, however, to have been his affection for children and for his dependants. The pathos with which he has recorded their premature death, combined with his fresh enjoyment of outward nature, give to many of his pieces a rank among the serious poetry of the world &quot;inter sanctiora carmina,&quot; to use a phrase of his own. The permanent literary interest of Martial s epigrams arises not so much, from their verbal point or brilliancy, though in these respects they are unsurpassed, as from the amount of human life and character which they contain. There is no truer painter of social manners in antiquity. He enables us better than any other writer to revive the out ward spectacle of the imperial Home which we see in its ruins, and to repeople its streets, shops, porticos, baths, and amphitheatres. If Juvenal enforces the lesson of that time, and has penetrated more deeply into the heart of society, 1 &quot; Whose dress is of a dull colour, his morals a pale green.&quot; Martial has sketched its external aspect with a much fairer pencil and from a much more intimate contact with it. 1 1 is from the immediate impressions and comments of the epigrammatist that the satirist has taken the suggestion of many of his more elaborate pictures and more stern denunciations. But it is not only the peculiarities of Roman customs that live in the writings of Martial. His page, to use his own phrase, &quot;has the true relish of human life&quot; in every age &quot;hominem pagina nostra sapit.&quot; He was to Rome in the decay of its ancient virtue and patriotism what Menander was to Athens in its decline. They were both men of cosmopolitan rather than of a national type, and had a closer affinity to the life of Paris or London in the 18th century than to that of Rome in the days of the Scipios or of Athens in the age of Pericles. The form of epigram was fitted to the critical temper of Rome as the comedy of manners was fitted to the dramatic genius of Greece. Martial professes to be of the school of Catullus, Pedo, and Marsus, and admits his inferiority only to the first But, though he is a poet of a less pure and genuine inspiration, he is a greater epigrammatist even than his master. He has indeed made that form of art peculiarly his own. He has applied it to the repre sentation of a very much greater number of situations, incidents, and characters, and he has done this with the greatest clearness, terseness, and vivacity of style, and with a masterly command over all his metres, except the pure hexa meter, in which no other writer has been able to treat the familiar matters of the day with the light touch of Horace. Martial, except where he is flattering the emperor, and then we may sometimes suspect an undercurrent of irony, is one of the most natural and sensible as he is one of the wittiest and most brilliant of writers. He fails, per haps, more often in his wit than in his sense. He is full of the happiest phrases, which express admirably for all times, without over-subtlety and without triteness, the judgment and impressions of life formed by direct contact with it, and taken neither from books nor from the opinions of other men, of a thorough man of the world, who had yet some feelings and sensibilities to which men of the world are generally strangers. He wrote naturally because he was completely in harmony with the life of his age. As this is the explanation of his grave offences, it should also be recognized as contributing to his merits as a writer. Owing probably to the reasons which have excluded his writings from school education, little has been done for the criticism or explanation of Martial for about two centuries. There is a good edition of the text by Schneidewin in the Teubner series of classics. For English readers the Selected Epigrams of Martial, by H. H. Stephenson, and the Martialis Epigrammata Sclecta, by Messrs Paley and Stone, may be recommended as a good introduction to the study of this poet. An edition of book i., with a Latin com mentary by J. Flach, has lately appeared at Tubingen. Further information about him may be obtained in a work by A. Brandt, De Martialis poctas vita ct scnptis (Berlin, 1853), and in Friedlander s Sittcngcschichtc, Moms ; and an excellent criticism on Ids writings is to be found among the prose works of Lessing. (W. Y. S.) MARTIAL LAW. See MILITARY LAW. MARTIGUES, chief place of a canton in the depart ment of Bouches-du-Rhone, France, stands on the southern shore of the lagoon of Berre, and at the eastern extremity of that of Caronte, by which the former is connected with the Mediterranean. Divided into three quarters by canals with numerous bridges, the place has sometimes been called the Venice of Provence. It has a harbour of 10 acres, an iron foundry, workshops for maritime constructions, oil manufactures, and chemical works ; the principal industry, however, consists in the preparation of &quot; boutargue,&quot; which is obtained from the roes of the grey mullet caught in the lagoons, and rivals Russian caviare. The population in 1876 was 8053.