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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MAR-MEC |
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MARTIAL (MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIALIS) , Latin epigrammatist, was born in one of the years A.D. 38-41, for in book x., of which the poems were composed in the years 95-98, he is found celebrating his fifty-seventh birthday (x. 24). Our knowledge of his career is derived almost entirely from himself. Reference to public events enables us approximately to fix the date of the publication of the different books of epigrams, and from these dates to determine those of various important events in his life. The place of his birth was Bilbilis, officially Augusta Bilbilis, in Spain. His name seems to imply that he was born a Roman citizen, but he speaks of himself as " sprung from the Celts and Iberians, and a countryman of the Tagus; " and, in contrasting his own masculine appearance with that of an effeminate Greek, he draws especial attention to " his stiff Spanish hair " (x. 65, 7). His parents, Fronto and Flaccilla, appear to have died in his youth (v. 34). His home was evidently one of rude comfort and plenty, sufficiently in the country to afford him the amusements of hunting and fishing, which he often recalls with keen pleasure, and sufficiently near the town to afford him the companionship of many comrades, the few survivors of whom he looks forward to meeting again after his four-and-thirty years' absence (x. 104). The memories of this old home, and of other spots, the rough names and local associations which he delights to introduce into his verse, attest the enjoyment which he had in his early life, and were among the influences which kept his spirit alive in the routine of social life in Rome. But his Spanish home could impart, not only the vigorous vitality which was one condition of his success as a wit and poet, but the education which made him so accomplished a writer. The literary distinction obtained by the Senecas, by Lucan, by Quintilian, who belonged to a somewhat older generation, and by his friends and contemporaries, Licinianus of Bilbilis, Decianus of Emerita, and Canius of Gades, proves how eagerly the novel impulse of letters was received in Spain in the first century of the empire. The position, and apparently the difficulties of meeting the ordinary success of his countrymen may have been the motive which induced Martial to remove to Rome when he had completed his education. This he did in A.D. 64, one year before the fall of Seneca and Lucan, who were probably his earliest patrons. Of the details of his life for the first twenty years or so after he came to Rome we do not know much. He published some juvenile poems of which he thought very little in his maturer years, and he laughs at a foolish bookseller who would not allow them to die a natural death (i. 113). Martial had neither youthful passion nor youthful enthusiasm to make him precociously a poet. His faculty ripened with experience and with the knowledge of that social life which was both his theme and his inspiration; and many of his best epigrams are among those written in his last years. From many answers which he makes to the remonstrances of friendsamong others to those of Quintilianit may be inferred that he was urged to practise at the bar, but that he preferred his own lazy Bohemian kind of life. He made many influential friends and patrons, and secured the favour both of Titus and Domitian. From them he obtained various privileges, among others the semestris tribunatus, which conferred on him equestrian rank. He failed, however, in his application to the latter for more substantial advantages, although he commemorates the glory
exile , for whose monument Martial afterwards wrote a eulogistic epitaph. The two books, numbered by editors xiii. and xiv., and known by the names of Xenia and Apophoretainscriptions in two lines each for presents,were published at the Saturnalia of 84. In 86 he gave to the world the first two of the twelve books on which his reputation rests. From that time till his return to Spain in A.D. 98 he published a volume almost every year. The first nine books and the first edition of book x. appeared in the reign of Domitian; and book xi. at the end of A.D. 96, shortly after the accession of Nerva. A revised edition of book x., that which we now possess, appeared in A.D. 98, about the time of the entrance of Trajan into Rome. The last book was written after three years' absence in Spain, shortly before his death, which happened about the year A.D. 102 or 103.These twelve books bring Martial's ordinary mode of life between the age of five-and-forty and sixty very fully before us. His regular home for five-and-thirty years was Rome. He lived at first up three pairs of stairs, and his " garret " overlooked the laurels in front of the portico of Agrippa. He had a small villa and unproductive farm near Nomentum, in the Sabine territory, to which he occasionally retired from the bores and noises of the city (ii. 38, xii. 57). In his later years he had also a small house
consolation
exile was the society of a lady, Marcella, of whom he writes rather as if she were his patronessand it seems to have been a necessity of his being to have always a patron or patronessthan his wife or mistress.During his life at Rome, although he never rose to a position of real independence, and had always a hard struggle with poverty, he seems to have known everybody, especially every one of any eminence at the bar or in literature. In addition to Lucan and Quintilian, he numbered among his friends or more intimate acquaintances Silius Italicus, Juvenal, the younger Pliny; and there were many others of high position whose society and patronage he enjoyed. The silence which he and Statius, although authors writing at the same time, having common friends and treating often of the same subjects, maintain in regard to one another may be explained by mutual dislike or want of sympathy. Martial in many places shows an undisguised contempt for the artificial kind of epic on which Statius's reputation chiefly rests; and it seems quite natural that the respectable author of the Thebaid and the Silvae should feel little admiration for either the life or the works of the Bohemian epigrammatist. Martial's faults are of the most glaring kind, and are exhibited without the least concealment. Living under perhaps the worst of the many bad emperors who ruled the world in the 1st century, he addresses him and his favourites with the most servile flattery in his lifetime, censures him immediately after his death (xii. 6), and offers incense at the shrine of his successor. He is not ashamed to be dependent on his wealthy friends and patrons for gifts of money, for his dinner, and even for his dress. We cannot feel sure that even what seem his sincerest tributes of regard may not be prompted by the hope of payment. Further, there are in every book epigrams which cannot be read with any other feelings than those of extreme distaste. These faults are so unmistakable and undeniable that many have formed their whole estimate of Martial from them, and have declined to make any further acquaintance with him. Even those who greatly admire his genius, and find the freshest interest
Horace on account of the favours which they received from Augustus
Augustus
house
the ground that he had to amuse a peculiarly corrupt public. Although there is the most cynical effrontery and want of self-respect in Martial's use of language, there is not much trace of the satyr in himmuch less, many readers will think, than in Juvenal. It remains to ask, What were those qualities of nature and intellect which enable us to read his best workeven the great body of his workwith the freshest sense of pleasure in the present day? He had the keenest capacity for enjoyment, the keenest curiosity and power of observation. He had also a very just discernment. It is rare to find any one endowed with so quick
Honour and sincerity (fides and simplicitas) are the qualities which he most admires in his friends. Though many of his epigrams indicate a cynical disbelief in the character of women, yet others prove that he could respect and almost reverence a fefined and courteous lady. His own life in Rome afforded him no experience of domestic virtue; but his epigrams show that, even in the age which is known to modern readers chiefly from the Satires of Juvenal, virtue was recognized as the purest source of happiness. The tenderest element in Martial's nature seems, however, to have been his affection for children and for his dependents. - The permanent literary interest
The best separate edition of the text is that of Lindsay (Oxford, 19o2); earlier editions of importance are those of Schneidewin (1842 and 1853), and of Gilbert ( Leipzig
Leipzig
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