Of the _gravitas_ or dignity of character specially associated with Rome he shows equally few traces. His outlook on life is not sufficiently serious, he shows little interest in Rome of the past, and has nothing of the retrospective note so prominent in Lucan, Juvenal, or Tacitus; he lives in and for the present. He writes, it is true, of the famous suicide of Arria and Caecina Paetus,[671] of the death of Portia the wife of Brutus,[672] of the bravery of Mucius Scaevola.[673] But in none of these poems does he give us of his best. They lack, if not sincerity, at least enthusiasm; emotion is sacrificed to point. He is out of sympathy with Stoicism, and the suicide doctrinaire does not interest him. 'Live while you may' is his motto, 'and make the best of circumstances.' It is possible to live a reasonably virtuous life without going to the lengths of Thrasea: quod magni Thraseae consummatique Catonis dogmata sic sequeris salvus ut esse velis, pectore nec nudo strictos incurris in enses, quod fecisse velim te, Deciane, facis. nolo virum facili redimit qui sanguine famam; hunc volo, laudari qui sine morte potest (i. 8). That you, like Thrasea or Cato, great, Pursue their maxims, but decline their fate; Nor rashly point the dagger to your heart; More to my wish you act a Roman's part. I like not him who fame by death retrieves, Give me the man who merits praise and lives. HAY. The sentiment is full of common sense, but it is undeniably unheroic. Martial is not quixotic, and refuses to treat life more seriously than is necessary. Our complaint against him is that he scarcely takes it seriously enough. It would be unjust to demand a deep fund of earnestness from a professed epigrammatist dowered with a gift of humour and a turn for satire. But it is doing Martial no injustice to style him the laureate of triviality. For his satire is neither genial nor earnest. His kindly temper led him to avoid direct personalities, but his invective is directed against vice, not primarily because it is wicked, but rather because it is grotesque or not _comme il faut_. His humour, too, though often sparkling enough, is more often strained and most often filthy. Many of his epigrams were not worth writing, by whatever standard they be judged.[674] The point is hard to illustrate, since a large proportion of his inferior work is fatuously obscene. But the following may be taken at random from two books: Eutrapelus tonsor dum circuit ora Luperci expingitque genas, altera barba subit (vii. 83). Eutrapelus the barber works so slow, That while he shaves, the beard anew does grow. ANON., 1695. invitas ad aprum, ponis mihi, Gallice, porcum. hybrida sum, si das, Gallice, verba mihi (viii. 22).