EACH ACCOMPANIED BY ONE OR MORE VERSE TRANSLATIONS, LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1877. THE NEW YORK PULI LILRARY 165247B A. LENGK AND TLDER FOUNDATIONS 1942 L LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS, PREFACE. It is a singular fact that Martial is the only Latin poet of mark who has not hitherto been completely translated into the English language. If not so interesting as Poets of the Augustan Age for his latinity, he is more so for his pictures of the manners and customs of Rome at that very interesting period the commencement of the Christian era. It must be premised that his constant and severe castigation of the two great vices which prevailed in his time, and the unflinching boldness with which he proclaims them, has given him the reputation of an obscene poet; but his lashings were well directed, and, no doubt, had a beneficial effect. Horace, Virgil, Juvenal, Catullus, and several other of the great poets of antiquity, have indulged in similar freedoms, although not to the same extent, and the character of the age permitted and almost seemed to demand them. In our own modern times, that is, in the brilliant literary epoch which includes Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Swift, Prior, Fielding, Pope, and Byron, we have a similar tendency, but he must be very squeamish who would entirely banish these valuable authors on account of it. I am not, however, intending to enter the lists in defence of Martial, and have merely said thus much in excuse for giving him a place in the present Library, which, sooner or later, is intended to include all the leading Greek and Roman classics. Elphinston, in his preface, ventures to assert that Martial laboured in the detection of error, the vindication of innocence, the diffusion of knowledge, and the display of truth; |
