Martial’s first book of epigrams–some seven hundred lines long–was priced at 20 sestertii (= 5 denarii), and his thirteenth (276 lines) at 4 sestertii (= 1 denarius). To give some idea of value, Martial himself says that ‘you could get a chick-pea dinner and a woman for an as each’. Since an as was worth 1/18 of a denarius, then as John Barsby puts it, ‘You could have had forty-five chick-pea dinners plus forty-five nights of love for the price of a copy of Martial’s book of epigrams. It is a wonder he sold any copies at all.’
