655. The best of his erotic poems is the pretty vi. 34, but it is far from original; cp. the last couplet:
nolo quot (sc. basia) arguto dedit exorata Catullo
Lesbia; pauca cupit qui numerare potest.
656. Cp. Cat. 5 and 7; Mart. vi. 34; Cat. 2 and 3; Mart. i. 7 and 109 (it is noteworthy that this last poem has itself been exquisitely imitated by du Bellay in his poem on his little dog Peloton).
657. Cp. Ov. Tr. ii. 166; Mart. vi. 3. 4; Ov. F. iii. 192; Mart, vi. 16. 2; Ov. A. i. 1. 20; Mart. vi. 16. 4; Ov. Tr. i. 5. 1, iv. 13. 1; Mart, i. 15. 1. His imitations of other poets are not nearly so marked. There are a good many trifling echoes of Vergil, but little wholesale borrowing. A very large proportion of the parallel passages cited by Friedländer are unjust to Martial. No poet could be original judged by such a test.
658. There is little of any importance to be said about Martial's metre. The metres most often employed are elegiac, hendecasyllabic, and the scazon. In the elegiac he is, on the whole, Ovidian, though he is naturally freer, especially in the matter of endings both of hexameter and pentameter. He makes his points as well, but is less sustainedly pointed. His verse, moreover, has greater variety and less formal symmetry than that of Ovid. On the other hand his effects are less sparkling, owing to his more sparing use of rhetoric. In the hendecasyllabic he is smoother and more polished. It invariably opens with a spondee.
659. Cp. vii. 72. 12, x. 3.
660. Cp. vii. 12. 9, iii. 99. 3.
661. Catull. xvi. 5; Ov. Tr. ii. 354; Apul. Apol. 11; Auson. 28, cento nup.; Plin. Ep. vii. 8.
662. We might also quote the beautiful
extra fortunam est quidquid donatur amicis: quas dederis solas semper habebis opes (v. 42).