Abstract
Near the end of his life, Martin Luther wrote two Latin epigrams imitating Martial's Epigram 10.47 that have not been as well studied as they deserve to be. While not so thoroughly steeped in the classics as his friend and colleague, Philipp Melanchthon, Luther was familiar with a wide variety of classical authors, recommended some of them for continued use in Lutheran education, and himself not only read but also wrote Latin verse. Rather than simply rejecting the philosophy endorsed in Martial's epigram on how to live happily, Luther used Latin hendecasyllables to offer a para phrase of Psalm 128 as a corrective, Scriptural viewpoint on the blessed life and to de pict the unhappy afterlife that awaits the followers of the Epicurean world view. These Lutheran epigrams suggest that their author's relationship with the classics was deeper and more creative than is often assumed.
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