SOURCE: "Martial, the Epigrammatist" in Martial, the Epigrammatist and Other Essays, The John Hopkins Press, 1918, pp. 13-36.

In the following excerpt, Smith offers a vigorous response to Martial's detractors, particularly those who have charged him with obsequiousness toward patrons. Smith stresses the tradition of the patron-client relationship—before as well as after Martial—and praises the poet's keen powers of observation, his candor, and his sense of proportion.

… I know of no ancient writer whose personal character has been more bitterly assailed by modern critics of a certain class. I know of few who have deserved it so little. We may say, at once, that all Martial's faults are on the surface. Otherwise, many of his critics never would have discerned them at all. The just and sympathetic appreciation of an ancient author demands a much larger background of knowledge and experience than seems to be generally supposed...