But, in a very large number of cases, there was no possibility of hoodwinking, nor any object in attempting the operation. In [Sidenote: _The style of the Epigrams._] the very numerous references to his own books, Martial shows us that he wrote, not at haphazard but with the keenest critical knowledge of the requirements of the form. That he recognises, in more places than one,[329] Catullus as his own master, model, and superior, is itself a critical document and testimonial of the first value. For it is notorious that the Romans, as a rule, by no means rated the great poet of Verona at his due; and though the sneer of Horace[330] may have been dictated by a sufficiently ignoble but very intelligible jealousy, the slight and passing note of Quintilian[331] admits of no such explanation. But it was the Catullus of the epigrams that Martial endeavoured to rival. In doing so he shows that he had a very definite, and a very just, notion of the versification and diction necessary to his purpose. His praise of the _Romana simplicitas_ shown in the style of the lampoon of Augustus on Fulvia, in respect to which one can only refer modern readers to the original,[332] is capable of being mistaken for a mere laudation of coarse language—for an anticipation of that curious fallacy which has more than once made men regret the withdrawal of the licence to “talk greasily.” But this is unfair both to the poet and to the Emperor. Martial certainly does talk greasily with a vengeance; but the last line of this Imperial fescenninity depends for its point by no means merely on the obscene, and is an excellent example of clear-cut, straight-hitting phrase. Footnote 328: iv. 14; vii. 63. Footnote 329: _E.g._, x. 78. Footnote 330: _V. supra_, p. 229. Footnote 331: _V. infra_, p. 311. Footnote 332: xi. 20.