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.
It remains to ask, What were those qualities of nature and intellect which enable us to read his best work—even the great body of his work—with the freshest sense of pleasure in the present day? He had the keenest capacity for enjoyment, the keenest curiosity and power of observation. He had also a very just discernment. It is rare to find any one endowed with so quick a perception of the ridiculous who is so little of a caricaturist. He was himself singularly free from cant, pedantry or affectation of any kind. Though tolerant of most vices, he had a hearty scorn of hypocrisy. There are few better satirists of social and literary pretenders in ancient or modern times. Living in a very artificial age, he was quite natural, hating pomp and show, and desiring to secure in life only what really gave him pleasure. To live one’s own life heartily from day to day without looking before or after, and to be one’s self without trying to be that for which nature did not intend him, is the sum of his philosophy. Further, while tolerant of much that is bad and base—the characters of Crispinus and Regulus, for instance—he shows himself genuinely grateful for kindness and appreciative of excellence. He has no bitterness, malice or envy in his composition. He professes to avoid personalities in his satire;—“Ludimus innocui” is the character he claims for it. Pliny, in the short tribute which he pays to him on hearing of his death, says, “He had as much good-nature as wit and pungency in his writings” (Ep. iii. 21).
Honour and sincerity (fides and simplicitas) are the qualities which he most admires in his friends. Though many of his epigrams indicate a cynical disbelief in the character of women, yet others prove that he could respect and almost reverence a refined and courteous lady. His own life in Rome afforded him no experience of domestic virtue; but his epigrams show that, even in the age which is known to modern readers chiefly from the Satires of Juvenal, virtue was recognized as the purest source of happiness. The tenderest element in Martial’s nature seems, however, to have been his affection for children and for his dependents.
The permanent literary interest of Martial’s epigrams arises not so much from their verbal brilliancy, though in this they are unsurpassed, as from the amount of human life and character which they contain. He, better than any other writer, enables us to revive the outward spectacle of the imperial Rome. If Juvenal enforces the lesson of that time, and has penetrated more deeply into the heart of society, Martial has sketched its external aspect with a much fairer pencil and from a much more intimate contact with it. Martial was to Rome in the decay of its ancient virtue and patriotism what Menander was to Athens in its decline. They were both men of cosmopolitan rather than of a national type, and had a closer affinity to the life of Paris or London in the 18th century than to that of Rome in the days of the Scipios or of Athens in the age of Pericles. The form of epigram was fitted to the critical temper of Rome as the comedy of manners was fitted to the dramatic genius of Greece. Martial professes to be of the school of Catullus, Pedo, and Marsus, and admits his inferiority only to the first. But, though he is a poet of a less pure and genuine inspiration he is a greater epigrammatist even than his master. Indeed the epigram bears to this day the form impressed upon it by his unrivalled skill.
Authorities.—The MSS. of Martial are divided by editors into three families according to the recension of the text which they offer. Of these the oldest and best is represented by three MSS. which contain only selected extracts. The second family is derived from an inferior source, a MS. which was edited in A.D. 401 by Torquatus Gennadius; it comprises four MSS. and contains the whole of the text. The third family, of which the MSS. are very numerous, also contains the whole of the text in a recension slightly different from that of the other two; the best representative of this family is the MS. preserved in the Advocates’ Library at Edinburgh.
The best separate edition of the text is that of Lindsay (Oxford, 1902); earlier editions of importance are those of Schneidewin (1842 and 1853), and of Gilbert (Leipzig, 1886). The best commentary is that of L. Friedländer (Leipzig, 1886) in two volumes with German notes) and in the same scholar’s Sittengeschichte Roms much will be found that explains and illustrates Martial’s epigrams. There is a large selection from the epigrams with English notes by Paley and Stone (1875), a smaller selection with notes by Stephenson (1880); see also Edwin Post, Selected Epigrams of Martial (1908), with introduction and notes. The translation into English verse by Elphinston (London, 1782) is famous for its absurdity, which drew an epigram from Burns. (W. Y. S.)
MARTIALIS, QUINTUS GARGILIUS, a Latin writer on
horticultural subjects. He has been identified by some with the military commander of the same name, mentioned in a Latin inscription of A.D. 260 (C. I. L. viii. 9047) as having lost his life in the colony of Auzia (Aumale) in Mauretania
Caesariensis. Considerable fragments of his work (probably
called De hortis), which treated of the cultivation of trees and
vegetables, and also of their medicinal properties, have survived,
chiefly in the body of and as an appendix to the Medicina
Plinii (an anonymous 4th century handbook of medical recipes
based upon Pliny, Nat. Hist. xx.–xxxii.). Extant sections
treat of apples, peaches, quinces, almonds and chestnuts.
Gargilius also wrote a treatise on the tending of cattle (De curis
boum), and a biography of the emperor Alexander Severus is
attributed by two of the Scriptores historiae Augustae (Aelius
Lampridius and Flavius Vopiscus) to a Gargilius Martialis,
who may be the same person.
Bibliography.—Gargilii Martialis . . . fragmenta, ed. A. Mai (1846); Plinii secundi quae fertur medicina, ed. V. Rose (1876); De curis boum, ed. E. Lommatzsch (1903) with Vegetius Renatus’s Mulomedicina; “Gargilius Martialis und die Maurenkriege,” C. Cichorius in G. Curtius, Leipziger Studien, x. (1887), where the inscription referred to above is fully discussed: see also Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans.), § 380.
MARTIAL LAW. “Martial law” is an unfortunate term and in a sense a misnomer. It describes a suspension of ordinary law, rendered necessary by circumstances of war or rebellion. The confusion arose from the fact that the marshal’s court administered military law before the introduction of articles of war, which were in their turn merged in the Army Act. But martial law is not a law in the proper sense of the term. It is the exercise of the will of the military commander, who takes upon himself the responsibility of suspending ordinary law in order to ensure the safety of the state. It is declared, by a proclamation issued by the executive, that ordinary law is inadequate to cope with the circumstances, and provides exceptional means of arrest and punishment of persons who resist the government or aid the enemy. But such a proclamation, while invariably issued in order to give publicity to the suspension of ordinary law, does not invest the step with the force of law. It is simply military authority exercised in accordance with the laws and usages of war, and is limited by military necessity. Yet in reality it is part of common law which justifies acts done by necessity for the defence of the commonwealth when there is war. H. W. Halleck in his work on International Law (i. 544), says, “Martial law originates either in the prerogative of the crown, as in Great Britain, or from the exigency of the occasion, as in other states: it is one of the rights of sovereignty, and is essential to the existence of a state, as is the right to declare or to carry on war.”
This opinion, however, must be read, as regards the British Empire, with the passage in the Petition of Right which is reproduced in the preamble of each annual Army Act, and asserts the illegality of martial law in time of peace in the following terms:—“No man shall be fore-judged or subjected in time of peace to any kind of punishment within this realm by martial law.” Therefore, whilst martial law is declared illegal in time of peace, it is indirectly declared lawful in time of war and intestinal commotion when the courts are closed, or when there is no time for their cumbrous action. C. M. Clode, in Military Forces of the Crown, argues that the words of the Petition of Right and of the Military Act since the reign of Anne are plain in this respect “that ... the crown possesses
