Outside, there were other mice—Martial thought of himself and his fellows as mice—scurrying along the dark streets toward the proud houses of their patrons. Such was the life of a humble client, and Martial, after a moment’s thought, turned his steps to the house of one Paulus, who lived on the fashionable Esquiline Hill, a strenuous walk away. As he walked, he thrust his large head forward as if against an invisible wind. It was his characteristic gait and suggested a personality that combined extroversion, aggression, and a dogged determination to show a brave face to a world that undervalued him.
By the time he arrived, his toga was wet with sweat and he was in a foul mood. And then to be told by the exquisite door-slave that Master was not holding a salutatio this morning!
Merda! thought Martial. He’s probably dancing attendance on some patron of his own. Oh, the ignominy of being a slave’s slave!
Cursing all the way, he barely arrived in time to receive a measly handout of twenty-five coppers from Arruntius Stella, another patron, who happened to dwell in the same region of the city. With this pittance in his purse and the sun rising over the crest of the hill, Martial set about his day; a day that would end by changing his life in ways that even his rich imagination could not have pictured.
Making his way down the Argiletum toward the Forum Romanum, he stopped at a sidewalk barbershop and took his place on the bench of waiting customers.
Martial was a swarthy and hirsute man, covered cheek, chest, and leg with coarse black hair, like the true Spaniard he was; and this in a city where men and women of fashion regularly depilated themselves. After two or three days without a shave you could have painted an eye on his forehead and passed him off for Cyclops. Women, who were accustomed to smooth-skinned men, were sometimes contrarily attracted to the hairiness of him, but to sleek young boys, whom he much preferred, his body seemed a kind of insult to their own, and they shied away from him, though he pursued them tirelessly.
The barber greeted him with a toothy smile. The man had a tolerably good hand; he didn’t slash more than one or two throats a week. Yet at that particular moment he was attempting to plaster a rather nasty cut with spider’s web soaked in oil and vinegar.
The principal business of a sidewalk barbershop, however, was gossip. To the snip-snap of the iron shears, to the rasp of the razor and the occasional yelp of pain, a desultory commentary on the week’s events went on among the bystanders. Not that one ever spoke carelessly. Even poor people had learned to be guarded. It was well known that plainclothesmen of the Prefecture hung about in taverns, and in the baths and basilicas listening for rumors, for the careless joke, the murmur of complaint.
The chief topic, even two days after the event, was still the Verpa affair. It was not only senators who felt themselves vitally interested in the outcome of that case; anything that touched upon slaves was bound to engage the Roman proletariat, a great many of whom were of slave descent. Martial, who had spent the last several days shut up in his garret, writing feverishly and, when inspiration flagged, drinking himself into a stupor, was very likely the only man in Rome who had heard nothing about it, and so he listened intently to the handful of facts and the basketful of speculation that was going the rounds.
Warding off the barber’s attempt to perfume his hair—for how could he ridicule scented dandies in his poems if he smelt like one himself?—Martial paid and went on his way.
By now the sun was climbing the sky and the streets were filling with holiday-makers. Tendrils of smoke rising from the Capitolium carried the aroma of burnt flesh out over the city. Passing a street-corner urinal, he unlimbered a mentula of noble proportions and directed his stream into the foaming contents. It would be collected by the fullers and contribute to the process by which togas were whitened. While he pissed long and thoughtfully, a small crowd of onlookers gathered round.
“That’s Martial,” whispered one to another, “the one that writes the dirty poems.”
A glow of pride suffused him. He was known everywhere!
Strolling farther down the Argiletum, he found himself at Atrectus’ bookstore, one of his favorite haunts. Its doorposts from top to bottom bore advertisements of the poets whose works were for sale. Inside, pigeon holes containing the tightly rolled scrolls of authors, living and dead, lined the walls. And in one of them, tagged with a price of five silver denarii, was his latest volume of epigrams—biting, satirical, abusive, indecent. Would anyone read them if they weren’t? And people did read them. Still, he reflected bitterly, the imperial patronage that he longed for eluded him.
Exchanging pleasantries with the proprietor, he made to leave, only to find his way blocked by a small army of clients on the door step, the entourage, he guessed immediately, of Publius Papinius Statius, most favored of the emperor’s court poets. The two men detested each other.