Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis) was born between AD 38 and 41 in the Roman provincial town of Bilbilis (now Calatayud) in what is now Spain. He went to Rome as a young man and there obtained imperial patronage for his writing from Titus and Domitian. He wrote over 1,500 poems and ... read more

Peter Whigham was born in Oxford, England in 1925 and was largely self-educated. He worked as a gardener, a school teacher, an actor, a newspaper reporter, and a script writer before moving to live for some years in Italy. He moved again to the United States in 1966, the year in ... read more