Quintilian, Statius and Martial in Roman Literature

Principles of Literary Correction According to Quintilian

What is written must be pruned as carefully as it is planted. Cut away what is overgrown, elevate what is base, organize what is disordered, give rhythm where the draft is harsh, and soften what is excessively dry.

The best method of correction is to set aside what we have written for some time, so that when we return to it we can see it with fresh eyes, as if it were the work of another. In this way we can restrain ourselves from regarding our own writings with the tenderness we lavish upon a newborn child.

Delivery, like composition, must stir the emotions, but one must avoid excessive gestures and theatricality. Feeling and force of imagination make us eloquent.

Quintilian’s Place in Literary Criticism

In the twelfth book of his work, Quintilian adds these excellent precepts to what remains the finest piece of literary criticism surviving from antiquity. With great fervor he enters the old and new battle between the Ancients and the Moderns and finds the truth somewhere in the middle, though not without uncertainty.

He has no desire, like Fronto, to return to the harsh simplicity of Cato and Ennius, but he is even more averse to the lustful and ostentatious eloquence of Seneca. As a model for his students he prefers the manly yet polished and refined style of Cicero, whom he considers the only Roman writer who surpassed the Greeks in his own field.

Quintilian’s own style is often that of a schoolmaster, more akin to dead speech through definitions, classifications, and distinctions. Yet it is a very strong style, and its solemnity is occasionally relieved by touches of humanity and humor. Behind the well-chosen words one always senses the quiet goodness of the author; this moral quality itself provides an incentive to read him.

Life and Works of Publius Papinius Statius

Publius Papinius Statius, son of a poet and teacher of grammar from Naples, received from his environment and education everything except money and genius.

He composed an epic called Thebaid about the seven champions against Thebes. Today this epic is almost unreadable; its fluent verses have lost their charm because of the multitude of forgotten gods, and its delicate lines possess a strong soporific quality. Yet his contemporaries admired it. The people of Naples gathered in the theater to hear the poet himself recite it.

His most pleasing poems are collected in Silvae, modest odes in praise of nature and light, graceful verses addressed to Domitian and other patrons, his father, and friends.

In the Capitoline contests another poet took first prize. Statius’s star waned in Rome, and he persuaded his discontented wife to return with him to his childhood home. In Naples he began another epic, Achilleid, but died suddenly in the year 96 at the age of thirty-five.

He was not a great poet, but in an age whose literature was often sneering and bitter, and in a society that had become unprecedentedly corrupt and brutal, Statius raised a welcome voice of kindness and gentleness. Had he written immoral verses like Martial, he would have become equally famous.

Life of Marcus Valerius Martial

Marcus Valerius Martial was born in 40 AD in Bilbilis, Spain. At the age of twenty-four he came to Rome and enjoyed the friendship of Lucan and Seneca. Quintilian advised him to earn his bread in the courts, but Martial preferred to starve and write poetry.

His friends perished in the Pisonian conspiracy, and he was reduced to addressing his verses to rich men who might give him a dinner in exchange for a clever line. He probably lived alone under the roof of a three-story tenement.

His poems were read throughout the empire, even among the Goths. He enjoyed the fame of a racehorse, yet complained that his publisher grew rich while he himself had not earned even a goose. With time he found more generous patrons; one gave him a farm in Nomentum, and he managed to buy a modest house on the Quirinal hill.

He repeatedly served as a client at the morning levees of the wealthy, sometimes receiving a gift. Yet he felt the shame of his position and mourned that he lacked the courage to live in poverty and therefore in freedom.

Martial’s Style of Epigram

Until his time the epigram had been a distant metaphor, sometimes a dedication, a compliment, or a tomb inscription. Martial compressed it into a shorter, sharper form and added the sting of satire.

These 1,561 epigrams were published over the years in twelve books. They were meant to be consumed in small doses, like appetizers, not as a full banquet. Most of them seem thin and trivial to us today because their allusions were local and temporary.

Martial is a master of versification and knows every meter and poetic device, yet like Petronius he flees from profound meaning. He cares little for the mythological ornament that burdened the literature of his age. His interest lies in real men and women and their daily life, which he describes with a mixture of relish and malice. He says: My pages taste of man.

He prefers to speak of barbers and cobblers, peddlers, acrobats, rope-dancers, auctioneers, prisoners, criminals, and prostitutes. The scenes of his portraits are not ancient Greece but the baths, theaters, streets, circuses, houses, and tenements of Rome. Martial is the poet laureate of the common people.

Personal Character and Morality of Martial

He cared more for money than for love. Although not devoid of feeling — he speaks tenderly of a friend’s young son who had just died — not a single line of genuine romantic love appears in his books.

With unmanly vindictiveness he attacks women who rejected him. His love poems are addressed to boys. One of his epigrams to Sabidius reads:

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;
Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.

He exposes his enemies with pseudonyms that barely conceal their real names and with language that today would be found only on the walls of public latrines. While Statius always spoke kindly of his friends, Martial pillories his enemies.

Eventually he grew tired of writing compliments and insults for a living and longed for a quieter life closer to his native Spain. At the age of fifty-seven, gray-haired and with a thick beard, he returned to Bilbilis. There he spent the last years of his life in a modest villa given by a kind woman.

Pliny the Younger wrote in 101: I have just heard of the death of Martial. The news has grieved me deeply. He was a man of great wit, sharpness, and force, who mixed in his poetry honey and salt and, above all, sincerity.