Marcus Valerius Martialis was a Roman poet born in Bilbilis, Hispania, best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these poems he satirises city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances and romanticises his provincial upbringing. A total of 1,561 epigrams written by him have survived, of which 1,235 are in elegiac couplets.