This edition provides an English translation of and detailed commentary on the second book of epigrams published by the Latin poet Marcus Valerius Martialis. This new commentary carefully illuminates the allusions to people, places, things, and cultural practices of late first-century Rome that pervade Martial's poetry.

Abbreviations Introduction 1: Martial's Life and Works 2: Epigram before Martial 3: Characteristics of Martial's Epigrams 3.1: Themes 3.2: Characters 3.3: Formal Features: Point, Bipartite Structure, Length, and Meter 3.4: Book Structure 4: Nachleben and Reception 5: Manuscript Tradition Text, Translation, and Commentary Bibliography Indices

"An enjoyable book which engages the attention throughout, marks a useful advance in the study of Martial's works, and establishes a firm foundation from which to mount further investigations."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review "The commentary is wonderfully focused and manageable.... Williams has created a very fine tool for perceiving and appreciating much of what Martial was doing in the poems.... Williams gives the reader just what is wanted and needed in a commentary."--New England Classical Journal "What Williams has to offer is solid and reliable, the work of a skilled and diligent philologist, and for future studies of the genre his book will be indispensable."--Classical World "An enjoyable book which engages the attention throughout, marks a useful advance in the study of Martial's works, and establishes a firm foundation from which to mount further investigations."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review "The commentary is wonderfully focused and manageable.... Williams has created a very fine tool for perceiving and appreciating much of what Martial was doing in the poems.... Williams gives the reader just what is wanted and needed in a commentary."--New England Classical Journal "What Williams has to offer is solid and reliable, the work of a skilled and diligent philologist, and for future studies of the genre his book will be indispensable."--Classical World

Craig A. Williams is Associate Professor of Classics at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity.