which once prevailed, of building our judgments of Athenian statesmen on the libels of Aristophanes or Eupolis1. But we do not seem to have yet completely learnt to extend the same justice to Romans, greater than Cleon and equals at the least of Pericles, and to treat with merited contempt the calumnies of Catullus and Calvus, which have even a smaller basis of reality than the scurrilous jests of Aristophanes. Catullus however belonged to one of the latest generations to which law and opinion conceded this unbridled licence: he himself can write with jaunty self-complacency 'Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi uelle placere Nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo'; and he would have been anything but flattered, if he could have read what the grave Quintilian says of him in x1 1 38, negat se magni facere aliquis poetarum, utrum Caesar ater an albus homo sit, insania: uerte, ut idem Caesar de illo dixerit, adrogantia est. Of course the almost unrestricted licence of assailing living personages which Aristophanes and Catullus possessed or usurped gave life to their attacks; and the strongest proof of Martial's unrivalled genius for epigram is the never-failing vigour and fecundity which his poems exhibit in dealing with wholly fictitious persons and incidents: cum salua infimarum quoque personarum reuerentia ludant; quae adeo antiquis auctoribus defuit, ut nominibus non tantum ueris abusi sint, sed et magnis. I have to make a few, and only a few, criticisms on the criticisms which have been made on me. 4 ante: I am surprised to see Ellis still argue for uncti. 8 haut idoneus: this, the virtual reading of Mss., I still look upon as giving the most satisfactory sense; and I cannot, tho' the latest editor Baehrens accepts 'Adoneus', 1 κεκολλόπευκας· τοιγαροῦν ῥήτωρ ἔσει. see any suitableness in the comparison of the Catullian Mamurra with the beautiful and chaste Adonis. I do not deny that this or that passage may be found-in Greek, not Latin-where one may be called an Adonis for his beauty and youth alone. But Mamurra had neither youth nor beauty: Ellis actually quotes ' niueum Adonem' from Propertius where the poet is talking of Adonis' death by the boar's tusk; but Mamurra was not 'niueus' and was not killed by a boar. 20 Et huicne Gallia et metet Britannia: I am vain enough still to prefer this conjecture to any that has been made before or after it. Ellis still argues for his own conjecture, which wanders away from the Mss. and, as I have endeavoured to shew above, yields no proper sense. But a word on his criticisms of my reading: it 'has always seemed to me unlike Catullus, not only in the position of ne, but in the place of metet, and the only half-obscured assonance Gallia Britannia'. The 'halfobscured assonance' is too refined for my ear, tho', as I have observed elsewhere, I might, but would not, write 'et metent (metēt) Britanniae'. Then as to the ne I protest it has, if not the only, yet far the best place it can have in the verse: it cannot be annexed to Et. I could cite 100 examples from all the best writers of ne having a position such as it has in Horace's Praeter cetera me Romaene poemata censes Scribere posse? but I will confine myself to two or three examples which closely resemble Et huicne: Ter. Andr. 492 aut itane tandem cet.; eun. 848 Sed estne hic Thais? hec. 81 Sed uideon Philotimum? Plaut. most. 522 Sed tu etiamne rogas? will this suffice? But the place of metet? I presume he means that the natural position would be 'et Britannia metet': so it would be, but tho' Catullus does not so often indulge, as Horace does, in these and much more irregular arrangements of words, yet not only have I cited from him elsewhere several very much harsher collocations, such as: Non, ita me diui, uera gemunt, iuerint: an excessively strange and awkward sentence; but in the very next poem, 30 3 Iam me prodere, iam non dubitas fallere, perfide? and also 5 Quom tu neglegis ac me miserum deseris in malis, as I read, exactly resemble our passage: the first of the two Ellis must accept as a parallel. And surely to a criticism. like this a tu quoque is allowable: well, this is Ellis' own verse' Neque una Gallia aut timent Britanniae'! As I said above, I cannot believe Catullus would have used the plur. ' Britanniae'. เ 21 malum: I proposed above with hesitation to take this for the interjection: 'why, the mischief': this usage is common enough in Cicero, and I had marked down a passage, de off. 11 53, which I observe is quoted by Ellis, beginning 'quae te, malum! ratio', where Cicero is translating a royal address of Philip to his son Alexander. But, says Ellis, 'to me this seems beneath the dignity and the indignation of the poem'. In proceeding to comment on the other half of the verse: quid hic potest Nisi: he says it is a 'comic formula': thus in one and the same verse an expression which Cicero thinks not beneath the dignity and the indignation of Philip, sober and angry, is beneath the dignity and indignation of this verse; while a comic formula is not. Truly Ellis applies a different standard to his neighbour and to himself. The strongest argument perhaps, and one not mentioned by Ellis, for making malum the adjective, comes from Catullus himself, 64 175 Nec malus hic...hospes: but there the subst. makes a decided difference; and the repetition here of 'quid hic' seems to me in favour of 'Quid hunc, malum!' we made co my own Ir as ir f which have Bars and in IDAS TOUS Ispositions and Sunt cum for Que, and me knie: às seems to I assume thate and o, nistagristable in some TIS TIC e it instead Qun Guarinus, T rum Esapt rightly Els de in be the poet's, sted. 4 Nee for As I tave illustrated Sus does shews that 10 desideratoque acquiescimus lecto? hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis. 13 uosque o uiuidae scripsi. uos quoque lidie V. เ This bright poem is in most parts as pellucid as its own beautiful lake. In 1 the rare paene insula or paeninsula is illustrated by Caes. bell. Gall. vi 36 2 paene obsessionem; and Victorius uar. lect. Ix 9 is worth comparing on Ocelle in 2. 8 peregr. Lab., ' labour undergone in foreign parts', in contrast with 'larem nostrum seems quite capable of defence: Baehrens reads Ab orbe' for 'Labore'. But comp. Mart. XIII 29 Pruna peregrinae carie rugosa senectae Sume: 'age acquired in foreign parts': Livy III 16 4 id malum...tum quoque peregrino terrore sopitum uidebatur: 'by terror arising from foreigners'; just as ib. § 3'terror seruilis' means 'terror caused by slaves' tho' it might mean 'terror felt by slaves': comp. too 'praetor peregrinus' with 'mulier peregrina' 'uir peregrinus'. 13 has given occasion to nearly as many conjectures as 25 5: 'uosque o lucidae', 'limpidae' 'uos quoque incitae', have all been proposed, and may any of them be right. But neither Scaliger's 'ludiae' nor Lachmann's 'Libuae' seems to me admissible; nor again 'Lydiae'; for the transference of the epithet to 'undae', is very unlike Catullus, as well as the obtrusive antiquarian reference, the parts hereabout once on a time having belonged to the Etruscans, and the Etruscans being supposed to have come from Lydia. My reading was suggested by Mart. x 30 11 Hic summa leni stringitur Thetis uento, Nec languet aequor, uiua sed quies ponti |