MISCELLANEOUS EPIGRAMS.

WHEN the pretensions of birth are not immoderately urged, the public are disposed to treat it with all due respect. On the other hand, persons of low origin, raised to a high station, if they give not themselves the airs of aboriginal aristocracy, if they shrink not from the remembrance of what they once were, will not be painfully reminded of it by others. Agathocles, king of the Syracusans, was entitled to much credit in that respect. The acts of tyranny committed by him were indeed atrocious; but somewhat of the censure attaching to his general character is softened, by his remembrance without shame, in his prosperous fortune, that he was the son of a potter. That the circumstance might never be absent from his mind, as well as in honour of his father's memory, and of his own origin, his side-board was set out with earthen dishes introduced among the gold and silver plate. Ausonius has made this the subject of an elegant epigram :

Fama est fictilibus cœnasse Agathoclea regem,
Atque abacum Samio sæpe onerasse luto.
Fercula gemmatis quum poneret horrida vasis;
Et misceret opes, pauperiemque simul:

Quærenti causam, respondit: Rex ego qui sum
Sicaniæ, figulo sum genitore satus.

Fortunam reverenter habe, quicunque repente
Dives ab exili progrediere loco.

Rabelais is elegantly complimented by Beza, in a celebrated epigram among his Juvenilia:

Qui sic nugatur, tractantem ut seria vincat,
Seria cum faciet, dic, rogo, quantus erit?

Barbers were brought to Rome from Sicily by Publius Ticinius Mena. For upwards of 400 years, the ancient Romans never shaved.

has an epigram on long beards :

Εἰ τὸ τρέφειν πώγωνα δοκεῖς σοφίαν περιποιεῖν,
Καὶ τράγος εὐπώγων εὔτοχος ἐςὶ Πλάτων.

Philo reasons thus on a foolish old age:

Αἱ γὰρ ἄτες νοῦ,

Μᾶλλον τῶν πολλῶν εἰσὶν ὄνειδος ἐτῶν·

Lucian

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Massinger, in The Old Law, seems to have had his eye on Lucian's epigram, in the observations of a courtier on the Duke of Epire's proposed reformation:

It will have heats though, when they see the painting Go an inch deep i' the wrinkle, and take up

A box more than their gossips: but for men, my lord,
That should be the sole bravery of a palace,

To walk with hollow eyes and long white beards,
As if a prince dwelt in a land of goats;

With clothes as if they sat on their backs on purpose
To arraign a fashion, and condemn't to exile;
Their pockets in their sleeves, as if they laid
Their ear to avarice, and heard the devils whisper!
Now ours lie downward here close to the flank,
Right spending pockets, as a son's should be

That lives i' the fashion; where our diseased fathers,
Worried with the sciatica and aches,

Brought up your paned hose first, which ladies laugh'd at,
Giving no reverence to the place distrain'd:
They love a doublet that's three hours a buttoning,
And sits so close makes a man groan again,

And his soul mutter half a day; yet these are those
That carry sway and worth: prick'd up in clothes,
Why should we fear our rising?

The value of Martial is to the full as great to the classical antiquary, as to the searcher after wit. The following passage from one of the epigrams states the various uses of the Endromis :

Seu lentum ceroma teris, tepidumve trigona,
Sive harpasta manu pulverulenta rapis:
Plumea seu laxi partiris pondera follis:

Sive levem cursu vincere quæris Atham.
Ne madidos intret penetrabile frigus in artus,
Neve gravis subita te premat Iris aqua.
Ridebis ventos hoc munere tectus et imbres.

Lib. iv, epig. 19.

Wooden toothpicks, made of the lentisk, were preferred to quills by the Romans :

Lentiscum melius: sed si tibi frondea cuspis

Defuerit, dentes penna levare potest.

Lib. xiv. epig. 22.

The point of honour is sometimes placed on a whimsical object. There is an epigram of Lucilius in the Anthology, on the subject of one Diophon, who being condemned to the punishment of crucifixion, died of envy at seeing the cross of another criminal taller than his own:

Μακροτέρῳ σαυρῷ σαυρούμενον ἄλλον ἑαυτοῖ
Ο φθόνερος Διοφῶν ἐγγὺς ἰδὼν ἐτάκη.

Martial's epigrams on the Saturnalian hospitalities, throw much light on the state of manners, and of natural history at this time. In this latter respect, they often illustrate Pliny : —

Mollis in æquorea quæ crevit spina Ravenna
Non erit incultis gratior asparagis.

Lib. xiii. epig. 21.

Pliny mentions in more passages than one the pleasantness and prolific character of the gardens at Ravenna.

The splendour or plainness of the exterior should be proportioned to the much or little worth of the interior; as illustrated by the following epigram on an ivory coffer :

Hos nisi de flava loculos implere moneta

Non decet: argentum vilia ligna ferant.

Lib. xiv. epig. 12.

The vicissitudes of fashion in the arrangement of the table are not unhappily touched upon in the following question of Martial : —

Claudere quæ cœnas lactuca solebat avorum,

Dic mihi, cur nostras inchoat illa dapes?

BB

Lib. xiii. epig. 14.

Martial also gives us an account of what was called a many-match lamp :

Illustrem cum tota meis convivia flammis,
Totque geram myxas, una lucerna vocor,

In the thirteenth epigram of Catullus, there is much humour in the following description of empty-pursed poverty leaving ample room for spiders to spin their cobwebs. The poet has been furnishing his friend with a copious list of requisites, which, if he bring with him, he will be sure of a good supper;

Hæc si, inquam, attuleris, venuste noster,
Cœnabis bene; nam tui Catulli

Plenus sacculus est aranearum.

The following allusion to the meat and drink of the gods, with their acceptance of more humble fare from their sacrificers, is in the true spirit of 'epigram, and highly complimentary to the poet's friend:

Miraris, docto quod carmina mitto Severo,

Ad cœnam quod te, docte Severe, vocem?
Jupiter ambrosia satur est, et nectare vivit;
Nos tamen exta Jovi cruda, merumque damus.
Martial, lib. xi. epig. 58.

Martial, in another epigram, points out a pleasant invention of the ancients, in drinking as many glasses of wine as there were letters in the names of their mistresses. This is the earliest mode of toasting; and the practice served as a comment on the sober or Bacchanalian character of the lover.