For in my verses 'tis my constant care
To lash the vices, but the persons spare.
HAY.
Malignant critics had exercised their ingenuity in the manner which he deprecated.[659] Worse still, libellous verse had been falsely circulated as his:
quid prodest, cupiant cum quidam nostra videri
si qua Lycambeo sanguine tela madent,
vipereumque vomant nostro sub nomine virus
qui Phoebi radios ferre diemque negant? (vii. 12. 5).
But what does't avail,
If in bloodfetching lines others do rail,
And vomit viperous poison in my name,
Such as the sun themselves to own do shame?
ANON., 1695.
In this respect his defence of himself is just. When he writes in a vein of invective his victim is never mentioned by name. And we cannot assert in any given case that his pseudonyms mask a real person. He may do no more than satirize a vice embodied and typified in an imaginary personality.
He is equally concerned to defend himself against the obvious charges of prurience and immorality:
innocuos censura potest permittere lusus:
lasciva eat nobis pagina, vita proba[660] (i. 4. 7).
Let not these harmless sports your censure taste!
My lines are wanton, but my life is chaste.
ANON., seventeenth century.
This is no real defence, and even though we need not take Martial at his word, when he accuses himself of the foulest vices, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that chastity was one of his virtues. In Juvenal's case we have reason to believe that, whatever his weaknesses, he was a man of genuinely high ideals. Martial at his best shows himself a man capable of fine feeling, but he gives no evidence of moral earnestness or strength of character. On the other hand, to give him his due, we must remember the standard of his age. Although he is lavish with the vilest obscenities, and has no scruples about accusing acquaintances of every variety of unnatural vice, it must be pointed out that such accusations were regarded at Rome as mere matter for laughter. The traditions of the old Fescennina locutio survived, and with the decay of private morality its obscenity increased. Caesar's veterans could sing ribald verses unrebuked at their general's triumph, verses unquotably obscene and casting the foulest aspersions on the character of one whom they worshipped almost as a god. Caesar could invite Catullus to dine in spite of the fact that such accusations formed the matter of his lampoons. Catullus could insert similar charges against the bridegroom for whom he was writing an epithalamium. The writing of Priapeia was regarded as a reputable diversion. Martial's defence of his obscenities is therefore in all probability sincere, and may have approved itself to many reputable persons of his day. It was a defence that had already been made in very similar language by Ovid and Catullus,[661] and Martial was not the last to make it. But the fact that Martial felt it necessary to defend himself shows that a body of public opinion—even if not large or representative—did exist which refused to condone this fashionable lubricity. Extenuating circumstances may be urged in Martial's defence, but even to have conformed to the standard of his day is sufficient condemnation; and it is hard to resist the suspicion that he fell below it. His obscenities, though couched in the most easy and pointed language, have rarely even the grace—if grace it be—of wit; they are puerile in conception and infinitely disgusting.
It is pleasant to turn to the better side of Martial's character. No writer has ever given more charming expression to his affection for his friends. It is for Decianus and Julius Martialis that he keeps the warmest place in his heart. In poems like the following there is no doubting the sincerity of his feeling or questioning the perfection of its expression: