sacrifices, the origin of which was that animals were offered as an atonement to the gods for having devoured crops under their protection, or sacred herbs. The February festival was for the purification of the flocks and herds. March took its name from Mars, the father of Remus and Romulus; and April, the poet says, means the spring or opening time. For May he cannot give the derivation, but it was the month for teaching the young to reverence age. June was in honour of the goddess Juno, and sacred to marriage and family bonds. The books relating to the remainder of the year are unfortunately lost. For each of the six months, astronomical notices, religious ceremonials, and historical anniversaries are duly recorded, and mythological stories are introduced wherever possible. Amongst the most noticeable of them is the tale of the Fabii who fell on the plains of Veii, which Livy also records, and the deification of Romulus. There is also an amusing legend in connection with the festival of the old rivernymph, Perenna, who disguised herself as Minerva, in order to make fun of Mars, besides many other entertaining and elegantly-written episodes.

We now come to the poet's exile at Kustendje, where he was permitted to receive the income of his property. He narrates in verse his voyage thither, and describes the place in very gloomy language, the climate being so severe that the snow lay unmelted for two years together, and the inhabitants were obliged to take bites of their wine, instead of draughts. The Danube, too, and even the sea, he says, froze, whilst the neighbouring barbarians scoured and desolated the country with their poisoned arrows. He notes also, as a curious fact, that the fish retained their vitality even when firmly embedded in ice.

During the eight years of his banishment, which terminated with his death, he wrote his 'Sorrows,' 'Letters from the Pontus,' and 'Ibis.' The 'Sorrows,' which extend to nearly six thousand lines, are addressed generally to his friends in Rome, entreating their help in obtaining a mitigation of his sentence; but, beyond a few graphic sketches of scenery and character, they lack the genius of his previous compositions. In the second book he appeals

direct to the emperor, urging various motives for his clemency which he thinks many influence him, and apologising for his offending poems. In another book he compares his loneliness with the happy enjoyments of spring by those at home, and remonstrates with the anniversary of his birth for reminding him of his former celebrations of the day, in the following lines :

'What dost thou here? Has angry Cæsar sent
Thee to share my hopeless banishment?
Shall honeyed cakes do honour to the day,
While I in words of happy omen pray?
Not such my lot. A cruel fate and stern
Forbids me thus to welcome thy return;
I burn no incense to unheeding skies,
From heart so sad no words of blessing rise;
If yet for me one fitting prayer remain,
'Tis this,-return not to these shores again.'

Church.

In an elegy to his wife he gives a pitiful account of his failing health, and makes himself miserable with the idea that his poems are no longer read, and that his reputation is ruined. He also bemoans the want of literary resources, and the savage manners and dress of the people he is amongst. In some verses to his daughter Perilla he says,―

'Each has its little day;

Gifts of the soul alone defy decay.

I live of friends, of country, home, bereft ;
All I could lose, but genius still is left;

This is my solace, this my constant friend;

Ere this be reached e'en Cæsar's power must end.'

His 'Letters from the Pontus' are full of unvailing complaints of the misery of his exile; but he admits that he is kindly treated by those amongst whom his lot is cast, and that he has written a book in their language. On the death of Augustus he appealed to his successor, Tiberius, through his nephew and other friends, with most abject servility and hypocritical professions of worship. A flattering Letter to Cotys, a tributary king of Thrace, who aspired

to be a scholar and a poet, is famous for the often quoted sentence 'Diligently to acquire a liberal education softens men's manners, and forbids them to grow rude.'

The 'Ibis' is a poem of more than six hundred lines, full of imprecations against a personal enemy who had spoken ill of him in his banishment, and made himself otherwise obnoxious, although at one time on terms of intimate friendship with him. The style is imitated from the Greek of Callimachus, and the curses are as various as they are far-fetched, for instance,-may he fall over a staircase; may he be killed by a bee-sting in the eye; may he be devoured by horses; and may he leap into the sea.

Of Ovid's other compositions, fragments only remain of a work an Cosmetics,' and of another on Fishing,' and his tragedy of 'Medea' has been entirely lost.

MARTI A L.

DIED A.D. 104.

6

ARTIAL was a native of Bilbilis in Spain, but passed thirty-five years of his life in Rome, where, under the patronage of the emperors Titus and Domitian, he published fourteen volumes of short satirical poems entitled Epigrammata.' Some of them are forced and laboured in style, and the meaning obscure; whilst others are full of wit, and characterised by great felicity of expression, the point being generally contained in the last line. They include a wide range of subjects, and illustrate the manners of the dissolute age he lived in more fully than the works of any other Roman writer.

The following selections are from Mr Bohn's very complete volume of "The Epigrams of Martial in English prose and verse.' As an older translator, however, remarks, it needs much skill in the art of distillation to transfuse the spirit and essence of the originals without great loss by evaporation, the Latin language possessing a peculiar happiness in brevity and perspicuity for epigrammatical compositions.

Prefixed to the Epigrams are some poems on the publicshows:

On the Amphitheatre.

'Egypt, forbear thy pyramids to praise,
A barbarous work up to a wonder raise;

Let Babylon cease th' incessant toil to prize,

Which made her walls to such immenseness rise;

Nor let th' Ephesians boast the curious art
Which wonder to their temple does impart.
Delos, dissemble, too, the high renown
Which did thy horn-framed altar lately crown;
Caria, to vaunt thy mausoleum spare,
Sumptuous for cost, and yet for art more rare,
As not borne up, but pendulous in the air.
All works to Cæsar's theatre give place;
This wonder fame above the rest does grace.'

On Strangers in Rome.

'What land so barbarous, Cæsar, so remote,
Whose natives come not to admire thy court?
Rough Thracians hither from Mount Homus speed;
Fierce Tartars, who on flesh of horses feed;
Who the Nile drink at its first spring and head;
Britons from utmost Thule hither led.

Arabs make haste, Cilicians posting come,

And in their saffron showers are drenched at Rome;
Germans with rolling locks in knots up-furled ;
Ethiops after a different fashion curled.

Various their voices sound, but hearts, we see,
And the whole jargon, does in one agree,
When Father of thy country all style thee.'

On an Elephant kneeling to Domitian.
'That thee an elephant suppliant did adore,
Who struck with terror a fierce bull before,
To his keeper's art cannot imputed be;
We must ascribe it to thy deity.'

On two Gladiators.

'These Myrinus, Triumphus these demand;
Indulgent Cæsar waves his either hand.
Who better could the nice distinction hit?
Unrivalled prince, how gracious is thy wit!'

On an unequal Combat.

'To bow to nobler foes is almost fame;

The basely-yielded palm alone is shame.'

The poet commences his first book of Epigrammata with the expression of a hope that he has avoided offence even to persons of the humblest station in life, and begs that none will interpret his jests ill-naturedly.