Note 333 — Chapter VIII · THE TWO PLINYS—MARTIAL—WAS THE ROD JOINTED?

Latin Literature (1906), p. 193. “Martial’s gift for occasional verse just enabled him to live up three pair of stairs in the city: in later years he could just afford a tiny country house among the Sabine hills.” This three-pair-back theory seems a bit strained, for he often speaks of his Nomentanus ager, a small farm at Nomentum, which yielded excellent wine. Cf. Ep., II. 38; VI. 43; XIII. 119. He owned, in addition to a house in Rome, apparently another small place at Tibur (IV. 80); so his complaints of being a “pauper” must be understood only in a relative sense. Thither he goes chiefly, he delicately insinuates, for the pleasure of seeing Ovid, who was his neighbour there. Cf. also VII. 93.