AUTHORITIES.--The MSS. of Martial are divided by editors into three families according to the recension of the text which they offer. Of these the oldest and best is represented by three MSS. which contain only selected extracts. The second family is derived from an inferior source, a MS. which was edited in A.D. 401 by Torquatus Gennadius; it comprises four MSS. and contains the whole of the text. The third family, of which the MSS. are very numerous, also contains the whole of the text in a recension slightly different from that of the other two; the best representative of this family is the MS. preserved in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh.
The best separate edition of the text is that of Lindsay (Oxford, 1902); earlier editions of importance are those of Schneidewin (1842 and 1853), and of Gilbert (Leipzig, 1886). The best commentary is that of L. Friedländer (Leipzig, 1886) in two volumes with German notes) and in the same scholar's _Sittengeschichte Roms_ much will be found that explains and illustrates Martial's epigrams. There is a large selection from the epigrams with English notes by Paley and Stone (1875), a smaller selection with notes by Stephenson (1880); see also Edwin Post, _Selected Epigrams of Martial_ (1908), with introduction and notes. The translation into English verse by Elphinston (London, 1782) is famous for its absurdity, which drew an epigram from Burns. (W. Y. S.)
MARTIALIS, QUINTUS GARGILIUS, a Latin writer on horticultural subjects. He has been identified by some with the military commander of the same name, mentioned in a Latin inscription of A.D. 260 (_C. I. L._ viii. 9047) as having lost his life in the colony of Auzia (_Aumale_) in Mauretania Caesariensis. Considerable fragments of his work (probably called _De hortis_), which treated of the cultivation of trees and vegetables, and also of their medicinal properties, have survived, chiefly in the body of and as an appendix to the _Medicina Plinii_ (an anonymous 4th century handbook of medical recipes based upon Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xx.-xxxii.). Extant sections treat of apples, peaches, quinces, almonds and chestnuts. Gargilius also wrote a treatise on the tending of cattle (_De curis boum_), and a biography of the emperor Alexander Severus is attributed by two of the Scriptores historiae Augustae (Aelius Lampridius and Flavius Vopiscus) to a Gargilius Martialis, who may be the same person.