Epigrammata

Epigrams

• 1
  Epigram 1

  The Liber Spectaculorum and opening book. Epigrams on the Colosseum games, poems of flattery to Domitian, and the first salvoes of Martial's social satire.

  851 lines
• 2
  Epigram 2

  Xenia — gift tags for Saturnalia presents. Each two-line poem accompanies a gift: wine, cheese, sausages, napkins, toothpicks. Witty, disposable, brilliant.

  562 lines
• 3
  Epigram 3

  Apophoreta — more Saturnalia gift tags, this time for the lottery gifts given at dinner parties. Paired cheap and expensive items with clever verses.

  648 lines
• 4
  Epigram 4

  The programme poems and early satire. Martial establishes his voice: sharp, funny, obscene when needed, always readable. Rome's social life at street level.

  669 lines
• 5
  Epigram 5

  Dinner invitations, insults to plagiarists, jokes about bad poets and worse doctors. Martial finds his targets in every corner of Roman life.

  648 lines
• 6
  Epigram 6

  The empire of Domitian at its peak. Martial flatters the emperor while skewering everyone below him — legacy hunters, drunks, social climbers, pretentious Greeks.

  618 lines
• 7
  Epigram 7

  Love poems (to both sexes), attacks on misers, and the famous poems to Domitian's court. Martial's range from the tender to the savage in a single page.

  737 lines
• 8
  Epigram 8

  The midpoint of the collection. Poems on death, friendship, and the pleasures of the countryside begin to balance the urban satire.

  679 lines
• 9
  Epigram 9

  Martial in full command. Some of his best-known epigrams — on the good life, on fraudulent wealth, on what matters and what does not.

  861 lines
• 10
  Epigram 10

  Poems of the late Domitianic period. The edge sharpens as the regime darkens. Martial negotiates between flattery and honesty.

  898 lines
• 11
  Epigram 11

  Domitian falls. Martial pivots to the new regime of Nerva. The transition is handled with characteristic agility and only slight embarrassment.

  809 lines
• 12
  Epigram 12

  Poems of the Nervan and early Trajanic period. Martial begins to tire of Rome and contemplate retirement to Spain.

  750 lines
• 13
  Epigram 13

  Martial returns to Bilbilis in Spain. He writes about his quiet life, his farm, and his boredom. The city he mocked is the city he misses.

  274 lines
• 14
  Epigram 14

  A selection of additional epigrams, including poems that circulated outside the main collection.

  458 lines