It has been suggested that Martí is identical with Avellaneda, the writer of a spurious continuation (1614) to _Don Quixote_; but he died before the first part of _Don Quixote_ was published (1605).
MARTIAL (MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIALIS), Latin epigrammatist, was born, in one of the years A.D. 38-41, for in book x., of which the poems were composed in the years 95-98, he is found celebrating his fifty-seventh birthday (x. 24). Our knowledge of his career is derived almost entirely from himself. Reference to public events enables us approximately to fix the date of the publication of the different books of epigrams, and from these dates to determine those of various important events in his life. The place of his birth was Bilbilis, officially Augusta Bilbilis, in Spain. His name seems to imply that he was born a Roman citizen, but he speaks of himself as "sprung from the Celts and Iberians, and a countryman of the Tagus;" and, in contrasting his own masculine appearance with that of an effeminate Greek, he draws especial attention to "his stiff Spanish hair" (x. 65, 7). His parents, Fronto and Flaccilla, appear to have died in his youth (v. 34). His home was evidently one of rude comfort and plenty, sufficiently in the country to afford him the amusements of hunting and fishing, which he often recalls with keen pleasure, and sufficiently near the town to afford him the companionship of many comrades, the few survivors of whom he looks forward to meeting again after his four-and-thirty years' absence (x. 104). The memories of this old home, and of other spots, the rough names and local associations which he delights to introduce into his verse, attest the enjoyment which he had in his early life, and were among the influences which kept his spirit alive in the routine of social life in Rome. But his Spanish home could impart, not only the vigorous vitality which was one condition of his success as a wit and poet, but the education which made him so accomplished a writer. The literary distinction obtained by the Senecas, by Lucan, by Quintilian, who belonged to a somewhat older generation, and by his friends and contemporaries, Licinianus of Bilbilis, Decianus of Emerita, and Canius of Gades, proves how eagerly the novel impulse of letters was received in Spain in the first century of the empire. The success of his countrymen may have been the motive which induced Martial to remove to Rome when he had completed his education. This he did in A.D. 64, one year before the fall of Seneca and Lucan, who were probably his earliest patrons.