The city at the heart of epigram's social-poetic identity is a stinking, oppressive place, despite its monumental glories. The epigrammatist manages to squeeze out a living, so the story goes, with the stingiest, scrappiest poetry, in a vast metropolis where there is no more space to move. ‘There's no place in Rome for a poor man to think or rest’ (nec cogitandi … nec quiescendi / in urbe locus est pauperi), he complains at 12.57.3–4. Senators rub shoulders with moneychangers, hookers and hangers-on in claustrophobic markets, squares and alleyways; thighs touch in steamy public baths and the packed rows of amphitheatres, and disease is rife. Many epigrams feature the victims of gout, coughs and colds, eye ailments, hernias, cancers and curious swellings, as well as the more mundane halitosis, piles, herpes and rotting teeth. Martial is fond of the Dr Death gag, joking that medics, gladiators, undertakers and hit men are all in the same business. He spends much of his time doing the client's social rounds and avoiding a ‘plague’ of kissers; even if he were cursed himself with ‘bright blisters’, ‘dirty scabs’ and a ‘dripping nose’ (by implication, all the ghastly blemishes he has to nuzzle up to daily), he couldn't put these people off (11.98, cf. 12.59, 10.22 and 7.95).