Martial, properly Marcus Valerius Martialis c.40-c.104AD
Roman poet and epigrammatist

Born in Bilbilis, Spain, he went to Rome in AD64 and became a client of the influential Spanish house of the Senecas, through which he found a patron in Calpurnius Piso. The failure of the Pisonian plot to assassinate Cicero lost Martial his closest friends - Lucan and Seneca. When the Emperor Titus dedicated the Colosseum in 80, Martial's epigrams in Liber Spectaculorum ('Book of Spectacles') brought him equestrian rank. In 86 appeared the first 12 books of the Epigrams, satirical comments on contemporary events and society. His admirers included Pliny, the Younger, from whom he borrowed the means of returning to Bilbilis.

Bibliography: P Nixon, Martial and the Modern Epigram (1927)