Greatest poem of all time?
Shelley's 'Ozymandias'.
Babington Macaulay's 'Horatius at the bridge'.
The entirety of Martial's 'Epigrams', but only the American translations. The British ones are prudish and not bawdy at all.
'She's half and half inclined
to sleep with me. No? Yes?
What's in that tiny little mind?
Impossible to guess.'
Martial also owned slaves, not all of whom lived long lives.
This was a poem he inscribed on the headstone of one of his slaves:
'Here, six years old, by destiny's crime,
Made a ghost before her time, Erotion lies.
Whomever you be, next lord of my small property,
See that the dues of death are paid annually,
to her slender shade;
and may your hearth burn bright and strong,
Your household thrive, and yourself live long,
and this small stone throughout your years
remain your only cause for tears.'
And another:
'To you, my parents, I send on
this little girl Erotion,
this slave I loved, that by your side,
her spirit is not terrified
of the darkness underground,
nor the jaws of Hades' hound.
This last year she would have completed
her sixth year had she not been cheated
by six mere days;
Lisping my name, may she continue our sweet game,
of childhood happily down there.
Lie light upon her, earth and dew;
She put so little weight on you.'
But he was also keen on scathing critique:
'Lesbia claims she's never laid
without good money being paid
It's very true- when she's on fire
She's lots of cash for the hose's hire'
'You're an informer and a tool of slander
A well-known swindler and a pander,
a gay cocksucker, a thug, a whore;
Vacerra, I don't get how you're poor'
There's more, many more. Martial, the original troll, pissed off so many people in power that he eventually was rusticated, ie expelled from Rome for life.
