he poison of vipers under my name. My sport is harmless."

But he well saw that some little severity was necessary for humour, for
he chides a dull poet:

"Although the epigrams which you write are always sweetness itself, and
more spotless than a white-leaded skin, and although there is in them
neither an atom of salt, nor a drop of bitter gall, yet you expect,
foolish man, that they will be read. Why, not even food is pleasant if
wholly destitute of acid seasoning, nor is a face pleasing which shows
no dimples. Give children your honey, apples, and luscious figs--the
Chian fig, which has sharpness, pleases my taste."

Following this view we find him often sarcastic, but not personal, the
names being fictitious, or if not, those of well known public men. In a
few instances he is a little ill-natured, and writes, "Laugh, if thou
art wise, girl, laugh, said Ovid, but he did not say this to all girls,
not, for instance, to Maximina, who has only three teeth, and those the
colour of pitch and boxwood. Avoid the pantomimes of Philistion and gay
feasts. It befits you to sit beside an afflicted mother, and a wife
lamenting her husband. Weep, if thou art wise, girl, weep."

Martial often uses the figure called by the Greek grammarians "contrary
to expectation." The point of the whole epigram lies in the last word or
line, which changes the drift of the whole.

"His funeral pile was strewn with reed,
His tearful wife brought fragrant myrrh,
The bier, the grave, the ointment were prepared,
He named me as his heir, and he--got well."

"Sorry is Athenagoras not to send the gifts,
Which in mid-winter he is wont to send;
Whether he be sorry I shall shortly see,
But sorry he has certainly made me."

"You feast so often without me, Lupercus,
I've found a way by which to pay you out,
I am incensed, and if you should invite me,
What would I do, you ask me? Why--I'd come."

The growing appreciation of this kind of writing had already led
Meleager, a cynic philosopher of Gadara, to form the first collection of
Greek epigrams, which he prettily termed the anthology or bouquet.
Martial has been commended at the expense of the Greeks, but he borrowed
considerably from them in form and matter. His epigrams were more
uniformly suggestive and concentrated than those of any previous writer,
and he largely contributed to raise such compositions from being merely
inscriptive into a branch of literature.