Martial's faults are of the most glaring kind, and are exhibited without the least concealment. Living under perhaps the worst of the many bad emperors who ruled the world in the 1st century, he addresses him and his favourites with the most servile flattery in his lifetime, censures him immediately after his death (xii. 6), and offers incense at the shrine of his successor. He is not ashamed to be dependent on his wealthy friends and patrons for gifts of money, for his dinner, and even for his dress. We cannot feel sure that even what seem his sincerest tributes of regard may not be prompted by the hope of payment. Further, there are in every book epigrams which cannot be read with any other feelings than those of extreme distaste.
These faults are so unmistakable and undeniable that many have formed their whole estimate of Martial from them, and have declined to make any further acquaintance with him. Even those who greatly admire his genius, and find the freshest interest in his representation of Roman life and his sketches of manners and character, do not attempt to palliate his faults, though they may partially account for them by reference to the morals of his age and the circumstances of his life. The age was one when literature had either to be silent or to be servile. Martial was essentially a man of letters: he was bound either to gain favour by his writings or to starve. Even Statius, whose writings are in other respects irreproachable, is nearly as fulsome in his adulation. The relation of client to patron had been recognized as an honourable one by the best Roman traditions. No blame had attached to Virgil or Horace on account of the favours which they received from Augustus and Maecenas, or of the return which they made for these favours in their verse. That old honourable relationship had, however, greatly changed between Augustus and Domitian. Men of good birth and education, and sometimes even of high official position (Juv. i. 117), accepted the dole (_sportula_). Martial was merely following a general fashion in paying his court to "a lord," and he made the best of the custom. In his earlier career he used to accompany his patrons to their villas at Baiae or Tibur, and to attend their morning levées. Later on he went to his own small country house, near Nomentum, and sent a poem, or a small volume of his poems, as his representative at the early visit. The fault of grossness Martial shares with nearly all ancient and many modern writers who treat of life from the baser or more ridiculous side. That he offends more than perhaps any of them is not, apparently, to be explained on the ground that he had to amuse a peculiarly corrupt public. Although there is the most cynical effrontery and want of self-respect in Martial's use of language, there is not much trace of the satyr in him--much less, many readers will think, than in Juvenal.