Martial

Martial, in full Marcus Valerius Martialis, was a Roman poet born in Bilbilis in the province of Hispania, in what is now Spain, between 38 and 41 of the common era. He is best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103 under the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these short poems he satirises city life and the scandals of his acquaintances while looking back fondly on his provincial upbringing. About 1,561 of his epigrams survive, most of them in elegiac couplets. He is often called the greatest Latin epigrammatist, and he professed to belong to the school of Catullus, Pedo and Marsus. His influence runs through Juvenal and on into Renaissance and early modern poetry, until the growth of the Romantic movement made him unfashionable.