SOURCE: "Martial" in Post-Augustan Poetry, from Seneca to Juvenal, Clarendon Press, 1909, pp. 251-86.

In the essay below, Butler offers a variety of judgments regarding Martial's life and work. He complains that Martial lacks seriousness and is guilty of lewdness, yet he credits the poet with an elegant style and a realistic view of his own abilities.

Marcus Valerius Martialis, like Quintilian, Seneca, and Lucan, was a Spaniard by birth, and, unlike those writers, never became thoroughly reconciled to life at Rome. He was born at Bilbilis,¹ a small town of Hispania Tarraconensis. The exact year of his birth is uncertain; but as the tenth book of his epigrams, written between 95 and 98 A.D., contains a reference (x. 24) to his fifty-seventh birthday, he must have been born between 38 and 41 A.D. His birthday was the 1st of March, a fact to which he owes his name Martialis.² Of the...