Propter te perit? Hoc, Labulle, verum est?
Hoc quisquam ferat? ut tibi tuorum
Sit major numerus togatulorum,
Librorum mihi sit minor meorum?
Triginta prope jam diebus una est
Nobis pagina vix peracta. Sic fit,
Cum cenare domi poeta non vult.
In translating, I attempt only to present the general purport.
“During the time in which I am in your company, Labullus, and while escorting you homeward I am listening to your chattering, and am expected to give attention and praise to whatever you may be saying or doing, how many verses do you think could I have produced? Do you not realize how grievous a loss it is [to both author and public] that what Rome reads, what the stranger asks for, what the knight does not scorn, what the Senator cherishes as a possession, what the lawyer praises, what the poet eagerly seizes, that all this should perish [i. e., fail to come into existence], O Labullus, through your fault? Yet is not this the case? Is it a thing to be approved that simply to swell the number of your followers, my literary productions should be diminished? During a whole month I have hardly been able to complete a page. This is the inevitable result when the poet is tempted to dine away from home.”
The interpretation placed by Schmidt on these and similar verses, that the damnum stood for a pecuniary loss to the author, and that productions which secured for themselves popular favor brought, therefore, to their authors pecuniary gain, is upheld by Becker. He maintains that authors were evidently attracted to Rome by the prospects of such receipts, and that, to a considerable extent at least, they depended upon the same for their support. “It is not easy to believe,” Becker continues, “that a needy author like Martial, always in want of money, would have been willing to permit Tryphon, Secundus, and Polius to make profits out of his productions without arranging to secure any portion of these profits for himself.”[213] Birt, who, as we have before seen, is a firm believer in the conclusion that Roman writers secured compensation for their work, is of opinion that this compensation must usually have taken the shape of a præmium, as Martial puts it, a round payment or honorarium, made probably on the delivery of the manuscript, rather than that of a royalty.[214]