All I know of this gem is that Martial wrote it of a critic of his; the chap must have curled up and died. I read this ages ago and the fragments have been buzzing around in my head ever since we got onto this theme. Classy little number, this one.

— Salil

Minstrels Links

The theme referred to above was one on epigrams, run earlier this year:

 Poem #665, Dreams -- Robert Herrick
 Poem #666, Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog which I gave to His

Royal Highness – Alexander Pope

 Poem #667, Reflections on Ice-Breaking -- Ogden Nash
 Poem #668, On Problems -- Piet Hein
 Poem #669, Epigram on Charles II -- John Wilmot

Note that the last of the epigrammists above took Martial’s advice, and composed his couplets while Charles was still alive.

Biography

Marcus Valerius Martialis was a Roman poet who brought the Latin epigram to perfection and provided in it a picture of Roman society during the early empire. Martial was born in a Roman colony in Spain. In his early 20s Martial made his way to the capital of the empire and attached himself as client to the powerful and talented family of the Senecas, who were Spaniards like himself. Yet precisely how Martial lived between AD 65 and 80 is not known.

When he first came to Rome, Martial lived in rather humble circumstances in a garret on the Quirinal Hill. He gradually earned recognition, however, and was able to acquire, in addition to a town house on the Quirinal, a small country estate near Nomentum (about 12 miles northeast of Rome). In time Martial gained the notice of the court. As his fame grew, he became acquainted with the literary circles of his day.

Martial’s first book, On the Spectacles (AD 80), contained 33 undistinguished epigrams celebrating the shows held in the Colosseum. These poems are scarcely improved by their gross adulation of the emperor Domitian. In the year 84 or 85 appeared two undistinguished books that consist almost entirely of couplets describing presents given to guests at the December festival of the Saturnalia. In the next 15 or 16 years, however, appeared the 12 books of epigrams on which his renown rests. After 34 years in Rome, Martial returned to Spain, where his last book was published, probably in AD 102. He died not much over a year later in his early 60s.

Martial is virtually the creator of the modern epigram. Though some of the epigrams (1,561 in all) are devoted to scenic descriptions, most are about people. Martial made frequent use of the mordant epigram bearing a “sting” in its tail, i.e. a single unexpected word at the poem’s end that completes a pun, antithesis, or an ingenious ambiguity. Poems of this sort would later greatly influence the use of the epigram in the literature of England, France, Spain, and Italy.

– http://library.thinkquest.org/11402/bio_martial.html