Bald trifler! cease at once your thriftless trade;
That mountain paunch for verse was never made.
—Satires.
In Martial we find a humorist after our own heart. As Homer was the father of poetry and Herodotus the father of prose, so to Martial must be ascribed the paternity of the epigram.
Epigrams, so-called, had been made before, but in Martial’s work they rose to a new height, took on a new meaning.
Before Martial, epigram meant merely inscription,—any short poem that might conveniently be cut on stone.
Martial’s epigrams have keen wit and sharp point, such as appeal to the mind and appreciation of the reader.
Fourteen hundred and fifty is his legacy of epigrams to us, and most of them properly short, as an epigram should be.
TO SABIDIUS
I love thee not, Sabidius. But why?