theamericanscholar:[Martial] was like later gossip columnists, out night after night prowling for wh

theamericanscholar:[Martial] was like later gossip columnists, out night after night prowling for what they can devour by denouncing. He is a Walter Winchell in elegiac distichs. Or, more properly, he is like the gossip columnist in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, who makes a living off the absurdities and vices of his own society by mocking them. He is a complicitous critic, half enjoying what he sneers at, mixing entertainment with revulsion. He is a reforming voyeur, a compromised Savonarola. It is a complex role, not reducible to any one of its components.When the first-century poet Martial turned his stylus on you, you got the point. Gary Wills on “Rome’s Gossip Columnist.”  -- source link

More pics about