He attacks every kind of social abuse, and does not even spare the ladies—­some are too fast, some are learned and pedantic, some cruel to their slaves—­even scourging them with cowhides.  “What fault,” he asks, “has the girl committed, if your own nose has displeased you?” As to religion, that has disappeared altogether.  “What a laugh your simplicity would raise in public, if you were to require of anyone that he should not perjure himself, but believe that there was some deity in the temple, or at the ensanguined altar!  That the souls of the departed are anything, and the realms below, and the punt-pole and frogs of the Stygian pool, and that so many thousands pass over in one boat, not even the boys believe, except those who are too young to pay for their bath.”

The language used in the last passage is no doubt an example of the profane manner in which some men spoke at that day, but in general, we must remember that these pictures are humorous and overdrawn.  Still, some of the offences spoken of with horror by Juvenal were treated almost as lightly by contemporary poets as they had been by Aristophanes.

There is a slightly foreign complexion about the productions of Martial, which reminds us that he was a Spaniard.  Even at this time there seems to have been a sparkle and richness in the thoughts that budded in that sunny clime.  Martial was a contemporary of Juvenal, and addressed two or three of his epigrams to him.  His works consisted of fourteen books, containing altogether more than fifteen hundred of these short poems.

The appearance of such works may be taken as indicative of the condition of Rome at the time.  The calls of business had become more urgent from the increase of the population and development of commerce, while the unsatisfactory state of the Government and of foreign affairs kept men’s minds in agitation and suspense.  Martial himself observes that those were no times for poems of any length, and that some of his friends would not even read his longer pieces, though they never exceeded thirty lines.  The period demanded something light and short—­a book which could be taken up and laid down without any interruption of the narrative.  But the swifter current of affairs had also produced a keener or more active turn of mind, so that it was necessary not only to be short, but also pithy.  It was not necessary to be humorous, but it was essential to be concise and interesting, and thus Martial gave to the epigram that character for point which it has since maintained.

Nothing could be more attractive than allusions to contemporary men, passing scenes, or novelties of the day, and when we read his works we seem to be transported by magic into the streets and houses of ancient Rome.  On one page we have the sanguinary scenes of the circus; in another we see the ladies waving their purple fans, and hear them toasted in as many glasses as they have letters to their names.