Thanks to open library stacks, I stumbled across the epigrams of Martial a while back. (Therein lies an argument for open stacks.) Marcus Valerius Martialis was so-named because he was born on March 1. He first saw the light of day circa A.D. 40 at Bilbilis in Hispania Tarraconensis. So far to me he seems a scribbler of no great importance, though he is entertaining, and, like Samuel Pepys, another scribbler of no great importance, he affords an insight into the times in which he lived and into the invariability of human folly. If I knew more of Martial, and more of Truman Capote, perhaps I would compare them: superficial, sycophantic, but prodigious in their quill-driving. In any case, here for leisurely consumption is one of Martial's more substantial epigrams, addressed to another Martial, his old friend Iulius Martialis:
If I were permitted, dear Martialis, to enjoy carefree days in your company, and to dispose of my leisure time, and to be at liberty for a truly full life, we should have no acquaintance with the entrance halls or houses of potentates, or grim lawsuits and the dismal forum, or proud ancestral images; but instead exercise, stories, light literature, the Campus, the portico, the shade, the Aqua Virgo, the baths — these would always be the scenes of our labours. As it is now, neither of us lives his life for his own benefit, and we feel that good sunny days are slipping away and disappearing, those days which are lost to us, but are reckoned up all the same. Does anyone, when he knows how to live life to the full, hang about waiting? (Martial Epigrams V, tr. Peter Howell, Warminster: Aris and Phillips Ltd, 1995, #20, p. 30. Nota bene: hyperlinks not in the Latin or in the translation!)
Si tecum mihi, care Martialis,
securis liceat frui diebus,
si disponere tempus otiousm
et verae pariter vacare vitae,
nec nos atria nec domos potentum
nec litis tetricas forumque triste
nossemus nec imagines superbas;
sed gestatio, fabulae, libelli,
campus, porticus, umbra, Virgo, thermae,
haec essent loca semper, hi labores.
nunc vivit necuter sibi, bonosque
soles effugere atque abire sentit,
qui nobis pereunt et imputantur.
quisquam, vivere cum sciat, moratur?