In your desire to learn your fortune, sir,
You questioned every tripod, every rune;
"You'll stand out above gods and men," at last
Answered the god in truth-revealing voice.
What arrogance you drew from this! You were
Immediately lord of the universe.
Now you ascend the cross. God was no cheat:
The whole world lies spread out beneath your feet.[20]
This is fairly respectable and merely low. But the cynical license of Martial and Catullus, by which they speak of many things that are not simply morally foul but such as decent society demands be removed from sight and hearing, must be regarded as altogether shameless and vulgar. For this reason men of taste never mention favorably Catullus' Annales Volusi cacata charta, or Martial's
et desiderio coacta ventris
gutta pallia non fefellit una[21]
And there are many others a good deal more despicable which cannot be adduced even as examples of a fault. Assuredly Antiquity was too forbearing toward this sort of thing, and I have often wondered how Cicero could have been tolerated in the Roman Senate when he inveighed against Piso:
Do you not remember, blank, when I came to see you about the fifth hour with Gaius Piso, you were coming out of some dirty shack, slippers on your feet and your face and beard covered; and when you breathed on us that low tavern air from your fetid mouth, you apologized on grounds of ill health, saying that you were taking a kind of wine treatment? When we had accepted your explanation—what else could we do?—we stood a while in the smell and fume of the joints you patronize until you kicked us out by the impudence of your answers and the stench of your belches.[22]
On spiteful epigrams.
Men with some gentleness of nature have an inborn hatred of spite, especially of such as mocks bodily flaws or reversals of fortune, or, finally, anything that happens beyond the individual's responsibility. For, since no man feels himself free of such strokes of chance, he will not take it easily when they are torn down and laughed at. The Vergilian Dido spoke with human feeling when she said: Not unaware of ill I learned to aid misfortune.[23] and the good will of the reader rises quietly in her favor. Likewise, Seneca says nicely: It is not witty to be spiteful.[24] On the other hand they act inhumanely who triumph over misfortune and upbraid what was not guiltily effected, to such an extent that they arouse a feeling of aversion and alienation in the hearts of their readers.
Accordingly we have admitted only a few of this kind, and have rejected a great many, as, for example, Owen's frigid and spiteful epigram:
Look, not a hair remains on your bright skull.
The hairs on your inconstant brow are null.
With every last hair lost behind, ahead,
What has the bald man left to lose? His head.[25]
Nor do we greatly care for many of the same kind in Martial, which nevertheless were not omitted for the reasons given above.[26]