City Readers Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library

Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ) (March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman poet from Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these short, witty poems he cheerfully satirises city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances, and romanticises his provincial upbringing. He wrote a total of 1,561 epigrams, of which 1,235 are in elegiac couplets.

Martial has been called the greatest Latin epigrammatist, and is considered the creator of the modern epigram.