Marcus Valerius Martialis, later called Martial, was
born at Bilbilis, a town in northeast Spain, to parents
named Fronto and Flacilla. Then a province of
the Roman Empire, Spain was also the birthplace
of the first-century writers SENECA, LUCAN, and
QUINTILIAN. In 64, during the reign of Nero, Martial
went to Rome. He received a thorough education
in grammar and rhetoric, which was standard
for the time, but declined to pursue a profession.
Because he wanted to write poetry, he sought the
favor of wealthy patrons who would compensate
him for his work in return for flattery. He never
married but still enjoyed the social benefits reserved
for those who had parented three children.
Emperor Titus made him a tribune, which raised
him to the equestrian class.
Though he spent most of his working life in one
of the multilevel flats that housed the bulk of the
common population of Rome, Martial also had a
small country estate,where he took up residence in
94. Four years later, he returned to his birthplace,
aided by his friend PLINY THE YOUNGER. His patroness
there, a generous lady named Marcella,
made life so agreeable that Martial wrote to his
friend JUVENAL expressing his delight with country
life. Though he missed the city, he never returned
to Rome.
Martial scorned the artificial style of EPIC writers
like Statius and instead adopted the straightforward,
personable style he admired in the poet Gaius Valerius
CATULLUS, which his audience appreciated.His
earliest surviving work is The Book of Spectacles,
written to celebrate the opening of the Colosseum
in 80.He wrote The Xenia in 83 and The Apophoreta
in 85 to celebrate the Roman feast of the Saturnalia.
Xenia was a word used to describe the leftovers of
the feast as gifts, and apophoreta referred to traditional
gifts. These early epigrams were so popular
that Martial thereafter began to write whole books
of them, collected in the 12 books of Epigrams that
appeared between 85 and 102.
The epigram emerged originally in Greece as a
verse form used in inscriptions on monuments or
artworks, or to accompany gifts.Concise out of necessity,
the poem could be simply descriptive or
commemorate a person or event. After CALLIMACHUS,
other poets employed the form for a wide
variety of subjects, but it remained extremely simple
and stylistically pure. After Martial, the epigram
was irrevocably linked with satire. In the
words of scholar Peter Howell, Martial brought
this short but powerful form to “a pitch of technical
perfection never afterwards rivalled.”
Later generations found the Epigrams somewhat
obscene, but Martial’s frankness is familiar
to the modern eye. The satire in most of the
poems is comparatively gentle, since a man of his
position could scarcely afford to alienate the
wealthy and influential. It required shrewdness
and ingenuity to live the life of a perpetual
hanger-on; therefore, when Martial pokes fun at
his fellows, it seems in good spirit, as can be seen
in James Michie’s translation of the third poem
of Book I:
. . . Nobody sneers as loud
As a Roman: old or young, even newlyborn,
He turns his nose up like a rhino horn.
As a whole, the Epigrams offer a vivid picture of
life in Rome near the end of the first century. The
poems reveal practices of city life as well as common
attitudes, for instance in the complaint that
appears in the ninth poem of Book V:
I was unwell. You hurried round,
surrounded
By ninety students, Doctor. Ninety chill,
North-wind-chapped hands then pawed
and probed and pounded.
I was unwell: now I’m extremely ill.
In all the 12 books of the Epigrams, the voice of
the poet mocks the foolishness and vanity of
human nature but never seems to hold himself
apart or superior. As Howell says of Martial,
“mankind is his concern. It is his acute perception
of human nature, and boundless interest in the life
around him, that makes him so permanently interesting.”
Martial’s influence spread through the late
Roman poets to the medieval writers, and Renaissance
and Baroque authors revived the epigram as
a way of making a concise and cutting statement.
Eighteenth-century poets and writers in the European
tradition,with their relish for caricature, considered
Martial the master, and even poets of the
19th century, such as Lord Byron, found that even
if one did not appreciate Martial, it was still necessary
to read him.
English Versions of Works by Martial
Martial: The Epigrams. Translated by James Michie.
New York: Penguin Books, 1973.
Martial: Select Epigrams. Translated by Lindsay Watson,
et al. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2003.
Works about Martial
Boyle, A. J. and J. P. Sullivan, eds. Martial in English.
New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
Hull, K.W. D., ed. Martial and His Times. London:
Bell, 1967.