epigram or took part in the satirical talk of his companions. Such a
number of cold and secure censors is not surprising in a city like
Rome, where the checks upon open speech are so many, and where priests
and spies exercise so close a scrutiny over the thoughts and words of
men. Oppression begets hypocrisy, and a tyrant adds to the faults of
his subjects the vices of cowardice and secrecy. Caustic Forsyth,
speaking of the Romans, begins with the bitter remark, that "the
national character is the most ruined thing at Rome"; and in the same
section he adds, "Their humor is naturally caustic; but they lampoon,
as they stab, only in the dark. The danger attending open attacks
forces them to confine their satire within epigram; and thus
pasquinade is but the offspring of hypocrisy, the only resource of
wits who are obliged to be grave on so many absurdities in religion,
and respectful to so many upstarts in purple." Thus if the Romans
lampoon only in the dark, the fault is to be charged against their
rulers rather than themselves. The talent for sarcastic epigram is
hereditary with the people. The pointed style of Martial was handed
down through successive generations. The epigram in his hands was no
longer a mere inscription, an idyl, or an elegy; it had lost its
ancient grace, but it took on a new energy, and it set the model,
which the later Romans knew well how to copy, of satire condensed into
wit, in lines each of whose words had a sting.

The first true Pasquinades--that is, the first of the epigrams which
were affixed to Pasquin, and hence derived their name--are perhaps
those which belong to the reign of Leo X. We at least have found no
earlier ones of undoubted genuineness; but satires similar to those of
Pasquin, and possibly originating with him, as they now go under the
general name of Pasquinades, were published against the Popes who
preceded Leo. The infamous Alexander VI., the Pope who has made his