CHAPTER XI
MARTIAL
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,[628] 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 (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.[629] Of the position of his parents, Valerius Fronto and Flaccilla,[630] we have no evidence. That they were not wealthy is clear from the circumstances of their son. But they were able to give him a regular literary education,[631] although, unlike his fellow-countrymen whom we have mentioned above, he was educated in his native province. But the life of a provincial did not satisfy him. Conscious, perhaps, of his literary gifts, he went, in 64 A.D.,[632] like so many a young provincial, to make his fortune at Rome. There he attached himself as client to the powerful Spanish family of the Senecas, and found a friendly reception also in the house of Calpurnius Piso.[633] But fortune was against him; as he was congratulating himself on his good luck in starting life at Rome under such favourable auspices, the Pisonian conspiracy (65 A.D.) failed, and his patrons fell before the wrath of Nero.[634] His career must be commenced anew. Of his life from this point to the reign of Domitian we know little. But this much is certain, that he endured all the indignities and hardships of a client's life,[635] and that he chose this degrading career in preference to the active career of the Roman bar. He had no taste for oratory, and rejected the advice of his friend Gaius[636] and his distinguished compatriot Quintilian to seek a livelihood as an advocate or as a politician. 'That is not life!' he replies to Quintilian:
vivere quod propero pauper nec inutilis annis,
da veniam: properat vivere nemo satis.
differat hoc patrios optat qui vincere census
atriaque immodicis artat imaginibus (ii. 90. 3).
His ideals and ambitions were low, and his choice had, as we shall see, a degrading effect upon his poetry. He chose rather to live on such modest fortune as he may have possessed, on the client's dole, and such gifts as his complimentary epigrams may have won from his patrons. These gifts must have been in many cases of a trifling description,[637] but they may occasionally have been on a more generous scale. At any rate, by the year 94 A. D., we find him the possessor of a little farm at Nomentum,[638] and a house on the Quirinal.[639] Although he must presumably have written a considerable quantity of verse in his earlier years, it is not till 80 A. D. that he makes an appearance on the stage of literature. In that year the Flavian amphitheatre was consecrated by the Emperor Titus, and Martial celebrated the fact by the publication of his first book, the Spectaculorum Liber. It is of small literary value, but it was his first step on the ladder of fame. Titus conferred on him the ius trium liberorum, although he seems not to have entered on the enjoyment of this privilege till the reign of Domitian.[640] He thus first came in touch with the imperial circle. From this time forward we get a continual stream of verse in fulsome praise of Domitian and his freedman. But his flattery met with small reward. There are many poems belauding the princeps, but few that thank him. The most that he acquired by his flattery was the honorary military tribunate and his elevation to the equestrian order.[641] Of material profit he got little,[642] save such as his improved social position may have conferred on him indirectly.
Four years after the publication of the Spectaculorum Liber (i.e. later in 84 and 85)[643] he published two books, the thirteenth and fourteenth, composed of neat but trifling poems on the presents (Xenia and Apophoreta) which it was customary to give at the feast of the Saturnalia. From this point his output was continuous and steady, as the following table will show:[644]
I, II. 85 or early in 86.
III. 87 or early in 88.
IV. December (Saturnalia) 88.
V. Autumn, 89.
VI. Summer or Autumn, 90.
VII. December, 92.
VIII. 93.
IX. Summer, 94.
X. 1. December, 95.
X. 2. 98.
XI. 97.
XII. Late in 101.
His life during this period was uneventful. He lived expensively and continually complains of lack of funds and of the miseries of a client's life. Once only (about 88) the discomfort of his existence seems to have induced him to abandon Rome. He took up his residence at Forum Cornelii, the modern Imola, but soon returned to Rome.[645] It was not till 98 that he decided to leave the capital for good and to return to his Spanish home. A new princeps was on the throne. Martial had associated his work too closely with Domitian and his court to feel at his ease with Nerva. He sent the new emperor a selection from his tenth and eleventh books, which we may, perhaps, conjecture to have been expurgated. He denounced the dead Domitian in a brilliant epigram which may have formed part of that selection, but which has only been preserved to us by the scholiast on Juvenal (iv. 38):
Flavia gens, quantum tibi tertius abstulit heres!
paene fuit tanti non habuisse duos.
How much thy third has wronged thee, Flavian race!
'Twere better ne'er to have bred the other brace. ANON.