An edition of a collection of Latin epigrams by the poet Martial to celebrate games held in the Colosseum. An introduction sets the epigrams in their literary and social context. Each epigram is followed by an English translation and a detailed commentary discussing matters of linguistic, literary, and historical interest.

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Eighteen Martial satires in contemporary (un)dress, their targets the latter-day Romans of New York City. These versions, by one of modern English poetry's most accomplished and versatile translators, render Martial's Latin vernacular into the fruity argot of the Big Apple. "A Poundian regrounding of the satiric originals in the ambience of New York, some are close imitations of Martial and some just in the satirical spirit of the poet. All of them, however, are ultra-modern and brutally frank, representing at least one side of Martial's talents, perhaps the side that speaks most clearly to the modern reader.

One of the volumes in the Poets in Translation series (a series which will include Homer, Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Petrarch, Dante, Baudelaire and the Bible). Its purpose is to offer, within one volume per poet, the best verse translations of major classical and European poets, from the middle ages onwards.

Written to celebrate the 80 CE opening of the Roman Colosseum, Martial's first book of poems, "On the Spectacles," tells of the shows in the new arena. The great Latin epigrammist's twelve subsequent books capture the spirit of Roman life in vivid detail. Fortune hunters and busybodies, orators and lawyers, schoolmasters and acrobats, doctors and plagiarists, beautiful slaves and generous hosts populate his witty verses. We glimpse here the theater, public games, life in the countryside, banquets, lions in the amphitheater, the eruption of Vesuvius. Martial's epigrams are sometimes obscene, sometimes affectionate and amusing, and always pointed. Like his contemporary Statius, though, Martial shamelessly flatters his patron Domitian, one of Rome's worst-reputed emperors. Shackleton Bailey's translation of Martial's often difficult Latin eliminates many misunderstandings in previous versions. The text is mainly that of his highly praised Teubner edition of 1990 ("greatly superior to its predecessors," R. G. M. Nisbet wrote in Classical Review). These volumes replace the earlier Loeb edition with translation by Walter C. A. Ker (1919).