One of Martial’s references to the customary præmium occurs in these verses.[215] The poet has been protesting against the weary and unprofitable role of a client or follower. He asks that Rome may spare him from any such thankless and trivial tasks as those which come upon the weary “congratulator,” who, for his dreary service, earns through the day at best but a hundred miserable pennies (plumbeos), while Scorpus (the gladiator) carries off in an hour, as victor, fifteen sacks of gleaming gold. Then follow the lines:
Non ego meorum præmium libellorum,
(Quid enim merentur?) Appulos velim campos,
Non Hybla, non me spicifer capit Nilus,
Nec quæ paludes delicata Pomptinas
Ex arce clivi spectat uva Setini.
Quid concupiscam quæris ergo?—dormire.
“As a reward (præmium) for my books (for what, indeed, are they worth?) I ask not for the Appulian fields; neither Hybla nor the fruitful Nile attracts me, nor the luscious grapes which from the Setian hillside hang over the Pontine marshes. You ask what do I then desire; I reply—to sleep.”
These lines should, of course, be interpreted in connection with the poet’s other utterances, which, as we have seen, are not marked by any lack of appreciation of the importance of his literary productions. It seems probable that the query, “what, indeed, are they worth?” is meant as a mere façon de parler, and is intended to be answered with a full appreciation of the inestimable value of his poems to the reader and to the community. I judge further that the poet in naming the attractive things of this world which he would not demand as his reward, while, of course, speaking with a certain hyperbole of phrase, is at the same time making a kind of undercurrent of suggestion that fruitful hillsides, or even great provinces, would not, in fact, be a disproportioned reward for talents and services like his. The lines remind one of what Dickens (in his sketch of the election of a beadle) describes as the “great negative style” of oratory. “I will not speak of his valiant services in the militia, I will not refer to his charming wife and nine children, two at the breast,” etc. The important detail in the lines, however, for our present purpose is the reference to a præmium or compensation of some kind or amount as naturally to be looked for and to be depended upon for successful literary production. Taking this reference in connection with others of similar purport, it is, I think, safe to conclude that, notwithstanding the lack of protection of the law, Martial and other writers of his time who were not too rich to require such earnings or too proud to demand them, earned money with their pens, or rather with their styli.
I add references to a few other instances of payments or returns to authors.