From this kind of gaiety Martial graduates into another—that of pleasantry. In an epitaph on his barber, he bids the earth lie light upon him, adding, "It could not be lighter than his artistic hand." From his censure of bad wit, it is evident that he drew great distinctions between broad and subtle humour. "Every man," he says, "has not a nose," i.e., a keen perception—cannot smell a fault. He is very seldom guilty of a pun, and says in one place that he has not adopted verbal tricks, imitating echoes, or making lines which can be read backwards or forwards.[26] Nor has he any intention to indulge in bitter reflections; he says,—
"My page injures not those it hates, and no reputation obtained at the expense of another is pleasing to me. Some versifiers wish publications which are but darts dipped in the blood of Lycambus to be mine, and vomit forth the poison of vipers under my name. My sport is harmless."
But he well saw that some little severity was necessary for humour, for he chides a dull poet:
"Although the epigrams which you write are always sweetness itself, and more spotless than a white-leaded skin, and although there is in them neither an atom of salt, nor a drop of bitter gall, yet you expect, foolish man, that they will be read. Why, not even food is pleasant if wholly destitute of acid seasoning, nor is a face pleasing which shows no dimples. Give children your honey, apples, and luscious figs—the Chian fig, which has sharpness, pleases my taste."
Following this view we find him often sarcastic, but not personal, the names being fictitious, or if not, those of well known public men. In a few instances he is a little ill-natured, and writes, "Laugh, if thou art wise, girl, laugh, said Ovid, but he did not say this to all girls, not, for instance, to Maximina, who has only three teeth, and those the colour of pitch and boxwood. Avoid the pantomimes of Philistion and gay feasts. It befits you to sit beside an afflicted mother, and a wife lamenting her husband. Weep, if thou art wise, girl, weep."
Martial often uses the figure called by the Greek grammarians "contrary to expectation." The point of the whole epigram lies in the last word or line, which changes the drift of the whole.
"His funeral pile was strewn with reed,
His tearful wife brought fragrant myrrh,
The bier, the grave, the ointment were prepared,
He named me as his heir, and he—got well."
"Sorry is Athenagoras not to send the gifts,
Which in mid-winter he is wont to send;
Whether he be sorry I shall shortly see,
But sorry he has certainly made me."
"You feast so often without me, Lupercus,
I've found a way by which to pay you out,
I am incensed, and if you should invite me,
What would I do, you ask me? Why—I'd come."
The growing appreciation of this kind of writing had already led Meleager, a cynic philosopher of Gadara, to form the first collection of Greek epigrams, which he prettily termed the anthology or bouquet. Martial has been commended at the expense of the Greeks, but he borrowed considerably from them in form and matter. His epigrams were more uniformly suggestive and concentrated than those of any previous writer, and he largely contributed to raise such compositions from being merely inscriptive into a branch of literature. He opened a new field, and the larger portion of these productions in Greek were written about this time. They are not generally humorous, with the exception of a few from Philo and Leonidas of Alexandria who lived about 60 B.C., from Ammianus in 120 B.C., and from Lucilius, a great composer of this kind, of whose history nothing is known but that he lived in the reign of Nero. The following are from the last-mentioned.
"Some say, Nicylla, that thou dyest thy hair, which thou boughtest most black at the market."
"All the astrologers prophesied that my uncle would be long-lived except Hermocleides, who said he would not be so. This, however, was not until we were lamenting his death."