I, II. 85 or early in 86. III. 87 or early in 88. IV. December (Saturnalia) 88. V. Autumn, 89. VI. Summer or Autumn, 90. VII. December, 92. VIII. 93. IX. Summer, 94. X. 1. December, 95. X. 2. 98. XI. 97. XII. Late in 101.
His life during this period was uneventful. He lived expensively and continually complains of lack of funds and of the miseries of a client's life. Once only (about 88) the discomfort of his existence seems to have induced him to abandon Rome. He took up his residence at Forum Cornelii, the modern Imola, but soon returned to Rome.[645] It was not till 98 that he decided to leave the capital for good and to return to his Spanish home. A new princeps was on the throne. Martial had associated his work too closely with Domitian and his court to feel at his ease with Nerva. He sent the new emperor a selection from his tenth and eleventh books, which we may, perhaps, conjecture to have been expurgated. He denounced the dead Domitian in a brilliant epigram which may have formed part of that selection, but which has only been preserved to us by the scholiast on Juvenal (iv. 38):
Flavia gens, quantum tibi tertius abstulit heres! paene fuit tanti non habuisse duos.
How much thy third has wronged thee, Flavian race! 'Twere better ne'er to have bred the other brace. ANON.
But he felt that times were changed and that there was no place now for his peculiar talent for flattery (x. 72. 8):
non est hic dominus sed imperator, sed iustissimus omnium senator, per quem de Stygia domo reducta est siccis rustica Veritas capillis. hoc sub principe, si sapis, caveto verbis, Roma, prioribus loquaris.
an emperor Is ours, no master as of yore, Himself the Senate's very crown Of justice, who has called from down In her deep Stygian duress The hoyden Truth, with tangled tress. Be wise, Rome, see you shape anew Your tongue; your prince would have it true. A. E. STREET.
Let flattery fly to Parthia. Rome is no place for her (ib. 4). Martial had made his name: he was read far and wide throughout the Empire.[646] He could afford to retire from the city that had given him much fame and much pleasure, but had balanced its gifts by a thousand vexations and indignities. Pliny assisted him with journey-money, and after a thirty-four years' sojourn in Italy he returned to Bilbilis to live a life of _dolce far niente_. The kindness of a wealthy friend, a Spanish lady named Marcella,[647] gave him an estate on which he lived in comfort, if not in affluence. He published but one book in Spain, the twelfth, written, he says in the preface, in a very few days. He lived in peace and happiness, though at times he sighed for the welcome of the public for whom he had catered so long,[648] and chafed under the lack of sympathy and culture among his Spanish neighbours.[649] He died in 104. 'Martial is dead,' says Pliny, 'and I am grieved to hear it. He was a man of genius, with a shrewd and vigorous wit. His verses are full of point and sting, and as frank as they are witty. I provided him with money for his journey when he left Rome; I owed it to my friendship for him, and to the verses which he wrote in my honour'--then follows Mart. x. 20--'Was I not right to speed him on his way, and am I not justified in mourning his death, seeing that he wrote thus concerning me? He gave me what he could, he would have given more had he been able. And yet what greater gift can one man give another than by handing down his name and fame to all eternity. I hear you say that Martial's verses will not live to all eternity? You may be right; at any rate, he hoped for their immortality when he wrote them' (Plin. _Ep._ iii. 21).