Marcial e o Teatro

Abstract

Martial’s poems came to fill a gap caused by the decadence of traditional dramatic genres, like tragedy and specially comedy: the Roman audience no longer appreciated those genres. Besides parodying the mythological themes, the unusual and complicated words, and seriousness of tragedy, as well as the three-actor rule, Martial criticised the practice, adopted by contemporary poets, of writing epistles similar to dramatic prefaces: nevertheless our author justifies some of his poetic options in his epistles. The “realism”, on drawing characters and situations, comes from observing the everyday life: he doesn’t care about everything he sees, but, like comedy, only the laughable part of reality. The mime inspired Martial’s latine loqui and our poet is one exceptional example of the Roman genius that diluted the limits of reality and art.