You know his passionate liking for my trifles; not even I myself could love them more. 2  So called from having lost Atys, for whom she mourned. Put up no prayer that can be called my own: He, as your pious votary, consecrates his gifts to wisdom; he invokes you with incense, but is faithful at the same time to our Jove.1. TO Thestylus, sweet torment of Victor Voconius, you than whom no youth is better known in the whole city, so may you still, though your longhair has been cut, retain your beauty and the affection or your master, and so may no maiden find favour in the eyes of your poet-lord, as you now lay aside for a while his learned compositions, whilst I read to him a few humble verses. Is it Olus, what either of them does with himself? 1 He says that he is not repaid for the presents which he made to Fabius to induce him to make him his heir. He thinks it not disgraceful, too, to gather up with greedy hand whatever the waiter and the dogs have left. If, therefore, Linus, you have any sense or decency, defer, I pray you, your winter salutations till the month of April. If you bring face to face the awful monstrosities of the two, either will be a terror to the other. Consider the epigram again. 1 An untranslatable jest which may be partly understood by reference to [7] Martial’s use of ‘tucked up’ implies that Sparsus is hidden in the Campania region, away from any busy urban centre, such as Pompeii. You, Ovidius, in whose praise no tongue should be silent, followed him through the Sicilian waves, setting at nought the wrath of a furious tyrant. (1897). came to me, sent by your kindness, a supply of tiles, sufficient for a defence against any sudden shower. TO Do you ask, Severus, how it could come to pass that Charinus, the very worst of men, has done one thing well? OF THEOPHILIA HIS BETROTHED. Go, happy rose, and wreathe with a delicate chaplet the tresses of my Apollinaris. 3 In the Portico of Europa, ibid. You buy everything, Castor; the consequence will be, that you will sell everything. And all your blessings for themselves desire, Gather up your toga, Cinna; or your shoe will be quite spoilt. And when, the napkin is bursting with a thousand thefts, he hides in the reeking fold of his dress gnawed fish-bones, and a turtle-dove deprived of its head. 1  Faithful to Domitian, as you are to Jupiter. You are in debt for your paltry toga; that, The past ten years have seen a resurgence of interest in Martial's writings. Rome is envious of the foe that detains him, although many a laurelled letter reaches her. If, Caesar, you regard the wishes of your people and senate, and the real happiness of the inhabitants of Rome, restore our deity to our urgent prayers. You cannot be a rhetorician, a grammarian, a school-master, a Cynic, or Stoic philosopher, nor can you sell your voice to the people of Sicily, or your applause to theatres of Some. 61. Martial may have rejected this one because he did not like it at the time, or because Sparsus had died, or fallen from favour, or for any other reason, until he was assembling his twelfth book for publication. I have just drunk some consular wine. The affection of his children has laid him Though the wintry Northern Bear, the barbarous Peuce,1 the Danube warmed by the trampling of horses' feet, and the Rhine, with its presumptuous horn already thrice broken, may withhold you from us, O sovereign ruler of the earth, and father of the world, whilst you are subduing the realms of a perfidious race, yet you canst not be absent from our prayers. The stern Secundus calls upon me with harsh voice to repay him. ‘little’ would infer that this estate is more of a symbol of status. means figs; also piles or those afflicted with them. And if you wish to enhance your friend's trifling present, let a young slave carry any verses; not such a one as, fed with the milk of a Getic heifer, plays with Sarmatian hoop upon frozen rivers, but a rosy youth, bought of a Mitylenean dealer, or one from Lacedaemon not yet whipped by his mother's order.