SOURCE: "Juvenal and Martial on Social Mobility," The Classical Journal, Vol. 83, No. 2, Dec. / Jan., 1988, pp. 133-41.

In the essay below, Malnati remarks on the different attitudes toward social mobility expressed by Martial (in eight epigrams from Book 5) and by Juvenal (in a passage from the third satire). He contends that although both poets are dealing here with the same issue—the law reserving the best seats in a theater for men of equestrian status—Juvenal's treatment reveals an aristocratic bias against upstarts in general, while the principal target of Martial's satire is social pretentiousness.

Suetonius notes that Domitian, with the powers granted him as censor, issued an edict which revived the lex Roscia theatralis (Dom. 8.3).¹ The law, which had been proposed by L. Roscius Otho in 67 B.C., reserved the first fourteen rows behind the orchestra in the theater for members of the equestrian order. The effect of...