Ah they and welcome to Emperor's of Rome, a podcast about the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always is Dr.

Rianna Evans, a lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe University.

This is episode L II-X. Marshall.

Marshall was a poet writing in the times of Demission, Nerva and Trajan,

and I like to think of him as not so much a poet, but perhaps the stand-up comedian of his time.

Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with his work, he was quite a fan of dirty words.

And it's important to present these historical figures in an uncensored environment,

so his poems will not be bleeped.

Consider yourself warned and please give a warm up standing welcome to Marshall.

Here's Rianna Evans.

Marshall was a very prolific poet who wrote in the first century CE.

He wrote a lot of very short poems that we call epigrams, so he's an epigramist.

And he is originally from Spain but spent a lot of his life in

Rome so he's kind of a token of the way things are changing in the Roman Empire.

So we've got emperors from Spain, we've got writers coming from Spain,

we've already talked about Seneca whose family was from Spain.

It's kind of the rise of the West in a way that he's part of. He's very notable at Rome for his fame and he seems to be part of sort of coterie of late first century writers who rise to prominence.

What do we have then that's written by Mars?

You said epigrams. What are epigrams?

Epigrams are usually very short poems and most of his are. They can be as short as two

lines and he wrote a lot of two liners. Or they might be maybe 20 lines about the

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