Martial

Written to celebrate the 80 CE opening of the Roman Colosseum, Martial's first book of poems, Epigrams, Volume I, 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...