‘Quot mihi Caesareo facti sunt munere cives’;
and was occasionally invited to the emperor’s table; cf. ix. 91. Domitian, however, refused to assist him pecuniarily (vi. 10). A description of Martial’s life as a client of great houses is found, e.g., in v. 20. Among the friends of high rank whom Martial made after A.D. 86 were the poet Silius Italicus (iv. 14), the future emperor Nerva (v. 28), the author S. Iulius Frontinus (x. 58), the younger Pliny (x. 19). Martial also mentions Quintilian (ii. 90) and other literary men from Spain, and Juvenal (vii. 24, etc.). Statius he never mentions, and was probably at enmity with him; cf. his sneers at mythological epics (x. 4, etc.), which hint indirectly at the Thebais. Martial also attacks his critics (i. 3; xi. 20, etc.), plagiarists (e.g. xi. 94), and those who wrote scurrilous verses in his name (e.g. x. 3).
Martial received rewards in return for his poetry, and often begs for gifts, and complains of his poverty and the unproductiveness of his estate at Nomentum (xii. 57); v. 36,
‘Laudatus nostro quidam, Faustina, libello
dissimulat, quasi nil debeat: imposuit’;
vii. 16,
‘Aera domi non sunt, superest hoc, Regule, solum,
ut tua vendamus munera: numquid emis?’
From 86 to 90 A.D. Martial lived in lodgings on the Quirinal, three stairs up; i. 117, 6,
‘Longum est, si velit ad Pirum venire, et scalis habito tribus, sed altis.’
Later he had a house of his own (ix. 18, 2, etc.), and mentions his slaves (i. 101; v. 34, etc.). That he was still poor in A.D. 98 is evident from Pliny, Ep. iii. 21, 2, ‘Prosecutus eram viatico secedentem: dederam hoc amicitiae, dederam etiam versiculis quos de me composuit.’
Martial was evidently never married (ii. 92). In A.D. 98 he left Rome and went to Spain, where he had liberal friends, as Terentius Priscus (xii. 4), and Marcella (xii. 21), who gave him an estate, described in xii. 18. From xii. praef. we see his longing for Rome: