Literature and Integration in Martial and Pliny the Younger

Abstract

As variegated collections of sundry literary pieces addressed to many recipients, Martial’s Epigrams and Pliny’s Letters can be said to symbolise the intricacies of our topic, that is, the integration of diversity into a complex whole: the books of epigrams, the collection of letters, the Roman Empire. This chapter first focuses on how these authors’ literary works encompass different (even contradictory) ideas about the integration of regional, cultural and social diversity. It then enquires into how literature itself becomes a non-formal vehicle for integration, not always seen as a unidirectional force – irradiating from the centre to the peripheries – but as an apparently multidirectional exchange. The final section takes a more evasive, speculative approach, which chimes with the elusiveness of the object of study, analysing Martial’s use of a literary topos – books personified as migrants – as a reflection of his personal and artistic struggle to integrate.