"This new commentary illuminates the allusions to people, places, things, and cultural practices of late first-century Rome that pervade Martial's poetry. It analyzes the epigrammatist's poems as literary creations, treating such topics as the structure of the individual poems and of the book as a whole, and the influence of earlier texts on Martial's language and themes. This edition thus fills an important gap and will be of interest to readers of both Martial and ancient epigram, from advanced undergraduates to scholars."--BOOK JACKET.