Therefore we have excluded all shameful and licentious epigrams not only in deference to morals and religion but also to good taste and civilization. Of this Catullus and Martial in Antiquity witness that they had no perception at all, for they filled up their works with a good deal of ill-bred filth, and on that account must be regarded not only as dissolute but also as vulgar, uncultivated, and, to use Catullus' own phrase, "goat-milkers and ditch-diggers."[18]
_On the cheap subject-matter of some epigrams._
But it is not only faulty and unpolished to offer the reader a shameful and obscene picture but also in general to depict whatever is cheap, ugly, and unwelcome. Hence those epigrams cannot be regarded as beautiful and polished whose subject is a toothless hag, a poetaster with a threadbare cloak, a rank old goat, a filthy nose, or a glutton vomiting on the table--all of which are a fertile ground of jokes for actors--since ugliness of that sort can never be redeemed by the point.
For this reason we have admitted none of such kind in the epigrams of Martial which we have subjoined to this treatise, and a good many epigrams that we have run across we have put aside, such as Buchanan's in which he depicts the unattractive and unpleasant picture of a lank old man:
While Naevolus yells he can outbellow Stentor, And roars and roars, "All men are animals," He has slipped by almost his ninetieth year And bent senility shakes his weak step. Now three hairs only cling to his smooth head, And he sees what a night-owl sees at dawn. The snot is dripping from his frosty nose, And stringed saliva falls on his wet breast-- Not an odd tooth in his defenceless gums, Not an old ape so engraved with wrinkles. Naevolus, for shame leave this frivolity And no more cry, "All men," since you are none.[19]
Again, the baseness of the subject and the hardly pleasant or civilized image of a hanging man is a fault in this epigram of Sannazaro's, although it has an element of humor:
In your desire to learn your fortune, sir, You questioned every tripod, every rune; "You'll stand out above gods and men," at last Answered the god in truth-revealing voice. What arrogance you drew from this! You were Immediately lord of the universe. Now you ascend the cross. God was no cheat: The whole world lies spread out beneath your feet.[20]