Abstract
In this paper we have examined all lines from Martial’s 15 books of Epigrammata displaying a metrical unity as well as making a complete and gnomic sense, thus enabling us to consider them specifically as sententiae. As a result we have detached from their context 112 discrete maxims, the analysis of which suggests a vision of Martial as a moralist, reflecting deeply and sometimes bitterly on everlasting questions like human anxiety, the transience of life and happiness, the injust alloting of wealth and the good, the inevitable misfortune of unbounded loving and craving. Further it can be seen how Martial condemns all falsehood as well as the vices of mankind, praising the virtues that mould true man, such as modesty, courage, kindness and dignity. Analysis of the 112 sententiae and of the disfigured image arising from their reading must be reckoned as a sort of warning against the danger of trying to reconstitute complete literary works from remaining fragments. We need, then, to avoid building up nice theories and quoting preconceivedly from texts, but rather to have in mind what ought to be the only and true object of study: the text that has actually reached us.
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