Martial’s charming picture of a Roman homestead, of its life, live-stock, of its pursuits, and of its fishing,[335] contrasts vividly with his fawning eulogies of Emperors, and his savage satire on foes. It must be confessed, however, that some of his prettiest appreciations of country life were written in or about the large villas with which his rich patrons had studded, too closely to be really rural, Baiæ and the Bay of Naples.
His pleasure in this part of the coast was increased by the nearness of the baths of Baiæ, and the Lacus Lucrinus, the home of the famous Roman oyster.
These oysters held, I think, the highest place in Martial’s gastronomic affections. Constant his references to them, frequent his assertions or assumptions that they excelled all other.[336] His well known lament for a beautiful little slave girl, who died when only six, employs as a term of highest praise Concha Lucrini delicatior stagni, rendered by Paley “more delicate” (in complexion) “than the mother-of-pearl in the shell of the Lucrine oyster.”[337]
Others hold that concha is meant for the oyster itself. One author, basing himself on the varying praises of the particular beauties of the child, rhapsodises thus: “Oysters[338] so tender, so juicy, so succulent, so delicious, that the poet could find no fitter comparison for a charming young girl!” But in the words of Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review, “This will never do.” To twist the verse into a comparison of pleasure derived from the sense of taste rather than of beauty from the sense of sight passes the inadmissible, and unless Martial could eat, or in Charles Lamb’s word on a gift of game, “incorporate” the pretty child, reaches the ludicrous.
Martial shows up as a sportsman. Proud of a good day, he knows—and tells us—what it is to be “blank” (“ecce redit sporta piscator inani,” Ep., X. 37, 17). That he is no “River Hog” and quite eligible for some select club on the Test or Itchen appears from his throwing back into his native river any mullet which looked less than three pounds.[339]
The interest attaching to his Epigrams lies not only in the evidence they afford of his and his friends’ love for things piscatorial, but also in the probability that in them we meet with the first recorded mention of (a) a Jointed Rod, and (b) Fishing with a Fly. The former claim turns on the couplet,
“Aut crescente levis traheretur harundine præda, Pinguis et implicitas virga teneret aves.” Ep., IX., 54, 3.
For levis there are two other, though less well supported, readings, viz. vadis and velis. Is harundo (literally a ‘reed,’ then a ‘rod,’ but used impartially to describe both the weapon of the fowler and of the fisher) in these lines a fowler’s reed, or a fisher’s rod? The answer, if indeed any be possible, depends on the precise meaning to be attached to crescente, having regard to the context and the whole epigram.
Crescente, which some dictionaries, ignoring its use in a similar connection in Silius Italicus, VII. 674-77, “sublimem calamo sequitur crescente volucrem,” render jointed, can only here, I suggest, be properly translated by lengthening, or increasing. But whether this process of increasing was effected by real joints cannot be clearly ascertained.
In his solitary note on crescente Valpy (Delphin edition, 1823) vouchsafes the bald and not informative comment: “Vero mihi videtur intelligenda esse virga quæ crescat in locis palustribus.”