Epigrams are short, witty or instructive statements, often in verse. They originated as ancient Greek funerary inscriptions and can take various forms, such as puns, adages, paradoxes, or chiasmus. Epigrams were also popular in ancient Rome and continue to be used in English-speaking countries. They can be proverbs, double meanings, or insults, and are often confused with epigraphs, epitaphs, and epithets.
Epigrams are short statements, typically in verse, that can be witty, instructive, or both. Originally used as ancient Greek funerary inscriptions, the epigram now references a terse statement, such as Ronald Reagan’s statement: “The difference between them and us is that we want to control government spending and they want to spend government allowances.” . An epigram can be a pun, an adage, a paradox, or a chiasmus.
In ancient Greece, epigrams were inscribed on graves. Typical of these poems is the epigram of Simonides, written after the battle of Thermopylae. It can be literally translated: “Stranger, announce to the Spartans that here / We lie, having carried out their orders”.
Masters of the ancient Roman epigram include Marcus Valerius Martial, Gaius Valerius Catullus and Domito Marso. Roman epigrams are shorter than their Greek predecessors and often include a joke or insult in the last line. For example, Martial wrote: “You give me nothing during your life, but you promise to provide for me when you die. If you are not a fool, you know what I desire!”
Rhyming couplets are the most popular form of epigram in English-speaking countries. The seventeenth-century author John Dryden composed the following: “Here lies my wife: here let her lie! / Now she is at rest, and so am I.” In the mid-1900s, Ogden Nash published the rhyming poem “Reflections on Ice-Breaking,” which reads “Candy / Is Dandy, / But liquor / Is faster.” Some writers prefer prose to poetry, such as Oscar Wilde’s “I’m Not Young Enough to Know Everything.
Many epigrams are also proverbs. Benjamin Franklin mastered this type with adages like “Little strokes / Fell great oaks.” Others are written in the form of the chiasmus, with parallel but reversed sentences. An example from Dwight D. Eisenhower is: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
Other epigrams are paradoxes and double meanings. Oscar Wilde said: “I can resist anything but temptation.” Comedian Will Rogers advised people to “Make crime pay. He becomes a lawyer ”and the writer Dorothy Parker parodied Shakespeare with“ Brevity is the soul of lingerie ”.
Epigrams are often confused with the similar-sounding terms epigraph, epitaph, and epithet. An epigram can also be an epigraph if it is quoted at the beginning of a book or chapter, or an epitaph if it is inscribed on a tombstone. When epigrams insult someone, they are also epithets, like Katharine Hepburn’s description of Dorothy Parker: “She runs the full range of emotions from A to B.”
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