Dimisitque animam nobiliore via.
Hanc mortem fatis magni praeferre Catonis
Fama potest: huius Caesar amicus erat.
(When corrupting disease began to sorely afflict his unworthy throat and black contagion was creeping to his very face, Festus, himself with dry cheeks, comforted his weeping friends, and determined to seek the pools of Styx. But still he never disgraced his dutiful lips with darkling poison, nor brought on a painful, miserable end by slow hunger; nay! rather by a Roman death he completed his holy life, and dismissed his soul the nobler way. Such a death fame may well exalt above great Cato’s end; Caesar was his friend).
The words indignae fauces (unworthy throat) obviously point to the practice of fellation, whereby he had brought on himself the pestis tabida and atra lues, (corrupting disease, black contagion), and so we have here a clear statement of the cause by one doctus venereae cupidinis (learned in the passion of love), which cause was quite unknown to the artifex medicus (medical practitioner). The pia ora (dutiful lips) are therefore to be taken merely ironically, as also the sancta vita (holy life). Even the Cinaedus, as well as the maidens who prostitute themselves in honour of Astarté, are invariably, as we have seen, described in the Old Testament as sanctus (holy), and we read e. g. in Job. Ch. XXXV. 14., of a good-for-nothing, how he will die like such a sanctus. It was precisely this signification of sanctus that led us to the idea of taking the throat affection for a secondary consequence of paederastia, especially if we understand a double entendre to underlie the last words huius Caesar amicus erat (Caesar was his friend). The Commentators it is true take them merely as said by way of contrast with the death of Cato of Utica, who was forced by Caesar’s enmity to take his own life, and as implying this was not the case with Festus, consequently that his suicide is so much the more remarkable[52]. However it is doubtful which Caesar is meant, whether the word is merely a Title or a proper name. In the second—and certainly this at first appeared to us to be the more likely,—view we were of course bound then to turn our attention to his character for dissoluteness. However as both Catullus[53] and Suetonius[54] represent him merely as a Cinaedus in regard to the male sex, if that is to say we subscribe to the accepted opinion, we afterwards came to the conclusion it was rather the Emperor generally that is spoken of here, and consequently that any other Emperor, e. g. Tiberius, or Nero, or another, might be intended. It is true that if pathicus (pathic) and omnium virorum mulier (wife of all men) are taken in a wider sense, there would be nothing to make the supposition impossible that Julius Caesar is pointed at. Only that perhaps another passage of Martial would seem to go against this, a passage where he seeks to excuse the several excesses and vices of a certain Gaurus by instancing an exalted personage as patronizing each of them, and says finally (Bk. II. 89.):
Quod fellas; vitium dic mihi cuius habes?
(But for your fellation: tell me whose vice you follow in this?) Still against the cinaedus view the words indignae fauces (unworthy throat) speak clearly. Probably in this connection the following passage of Martial should also come in,—where the Poet says of his servant (Bk. I. Epigr. 102.):
Destituit primos virides Demetrius annos:
Quarta tribus lustris addita messis erat.
Ne tamen ad Stygias famulus descenderet umbras,