‘Nec sua plus debet tenui Verona Catullo
meque velit dici non minus illa suum.’
Ovid, of whom he has more than two hundred reminiscences, is Martial’s chief pattern for elegiacs. After these Martial’s chief model is Virgil, chiefly the Priapea; then Horace to a less extent; Propertius; and Tibullus. Domitius Marsus, Gaetulicus, Calvus, etc., are mentioned frequently, and doubtless imitated.
For Martial’s conception of himself as a painter of manners, cf. viii. 3, 19 (ad Musam),
‘At tu Romano lepidos sale tinge libellos:
adgnoscat mores vita legatque suos.
Angusta cantare licet videaris avena,
dum tua multorum vincat avena tubas.’
x. 4, 7,
‘Quid te vana iuvant miserae ludibria chartae?
hoc lege, quod possit dicere vita “Meum est.”
Non hic Centauros, non Gorgonas, Harpyiasque
invenies: hominem pagina nostra sapit.’
Martial satirizes people under manufactured or arbitrarily chosen names.
Cf. i. praef., ‘Spero me secutum in libellis meis tale temperamentum, ut de illis queri non possit, quisquis de se bene senserit, cum salva infimarum quoque personarum reverentia ludant.’
Some are tell-tale names, as Vetustilla, ‘an old woman,’ iii. 93; Dento, ‘a gourmand,’ v. 45; Eulogus, ‘a herald,’ vi. 8; but the same names, e.g. Zoilus, are often used to denote different types.
The chief forms of verse used are the elegiac distich (most frequent), scazons, and hendecasyllabics. In vi. 65 he apologizes for using the pure hexameter, which is found only four times. Other metres are extremely rare.