MARCUS VALERIUS, a famous Latin poet, born at Bilbilis, now called Bubiera, in the kingdom of Aragon, in Spain, was of the equestrian order. He went to Rome about the age of twenty-one, and staid there thirty-five years, under the reign of Galba and the succeeding emperors, till that of Trajan; and having acquired the esteem of Titus and Domitian, he was created tribune. At length, finding that he was neglected by Trajan, he returned to his own country, Bilbilis, where he married a wife, and had the happiness to live with her several years. He admires and commends her much, telling us that she alone was sufficient to supply the want of everything which he had enjoyed at Rome. *Romam tu mihi sola facis*, says he, in the twenty-first epigram of the twelfth book. She appears likewise to have been a lady of a very large fortune; for, in the thirty-first epigram of the same book, he extols the magnificence of the house and gardens which he had received from her, and says that she had made him a kind of little monarch.

*Munera sunt domino: post septima lustra reverso, Has Marcella domos, parvaque regna dedit.*

There are still extant fourteen books of his epigrams, filled with points, and plays upon words, and obscure allusions. The style is in general affected. A few of his epigrams are no doubt excellent, but some of them are not above mediocrity, and the greater part are bad; so that Martial never spoke a greater truth than when he said of his own works,

*Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plura.*

There has also been attributed to him a book on the spectacles of the amphitheatre; but the most learned critics think that this last work was not written by Martial. The best editions of Martial are that in Usum Delphini, 4to, Paris, 1617, and that cum Notis Variorum.