Martial

Martial

full name Marcus Valerius Martialis. ?40--?104 ad, Latin epigrammatist and poet, born in Spain

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Martial

 

(Marcus Valerius Martialis). Born c. A.D. 40, in Bilbilis, Spain; died there c. A.D. 104. Roman poet.

Martial wrote 15 books of epigrams—three with a common theme (Liber spectaculorum, Apophoreta, Xenia) and 12 of mixed content. These witty epigrams depict the life of various social strata; they are apt, mocking, and refined miniatures. His works were highly thought of by G. E. Lessing and J. W. Goethe and, in Russia, by M. V. Lomonosov, P. A. Viazemskii, and A. S. Pushkin.

WORKS

Martialis epigrammaton, I-XIV. Edited by C. Giarratano. Turin, 1916; 3rd ed. Turin, 1951.
Epigrams, vols. 1-2. London, 1968.
In Russian translation:
Epigrammy. Moscow [1968].

REFERENCES

Istoriia rimskoi literatury, vol. 2. Edited by S. I. Sobolevskii [et al.]. Moscow, 1962.
Barwick, K. Martial und die zeitgenössische Rhetorik. Berlin, 1959.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.