Live today

Valerius Martial was writing at the end of the first century AD, and his poetry gives an astonishingly vivid account of everyday life then. He conjures up a very tactile and sense-rich picture of ancient Rome and the everyday encounters you could expect there.

But what makes his writing so enduring is that his concerns are so contemporary. His emotions, his voice, his anxieties and pet peeves - all are real, 3D, familiar.

Amongst all those his obsession with living now returns over and again. It seems to have been a very deep drive in him, and he expressed a determination to make the most of Now in many different ways. Maybe it's this limpet embrace of the Now which carries him so vitally across the 60 or 70 generations that separate us. His urgency, still for so long now, speaks clearly to interrupt our internal monologue which is so often engaged with the same pre-occupations.

Here's Martial:

sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie
(Living tomorrow is too late: live today.)

And again:

Quisquam vivere cum sciat moratur ?
(Who delays if he really knows how to live ?)

And again:

Properat vivere nemo satis
(Nobody can be in too much of a hurry to live.)

And he talks, too, about the quality of life. Not for him the attractions of being a workaholic. Instead:

..... gestatio, fabulae, libelli
campus, porticus, umbra, virgo, thermae
haec essent loca semper, hi labores
(exercise, conversation, books, the open air, colonnades, fresh water, the shade, the baths
These would be our haunts always, these our labours)

Yes, Martial had a point.