SOURCE: "Martial" in Martial and the English Epigram from Sir Thomas Wyatt to Ben Jonson, The University of California Press, 1925, pp. 285-99.

In the following excerpt, Whipple discusses Martial's principal themes and classifies the epigrams by their content. He also provides a detailed analysis of their structure, emphasizing the poet's masterful use of rhetorical figures to enhance the essence and effect of his verses.

No author was ever more completely the product of his environment than Martial. Both in the material which he treats and in his attitude toward it, he is representative of Rome in the latter half of the first century after Christ. The same statement holds true of the form in which he casts his epigrams; it is the natural result of the rhetorical training of the time.

In the first place, his subject-matter is limited only by Rome as Martial knew the city, under...