equivalent to the Latin word "inscription"; and it probably came into
use in this sense at a very early period of Greek history, anterior
even to the invention of prose. Inscriptions at that time, if they
went beyond a mere name or set of names, or perhaps the bare statement
of a single fact, were necessarily in verse, then the single vehicle
of organised expression. Even after prose was in use, an obvious
propriety remained in the metrical form as being at once more striking
and more easily retained in the memory; while in the case of epitaphs
and dedications--for the earlier epigram falls almost entirely under
these two heads--religious feeling and a sense of what was due to
ancient custom aided the continuance of the old tradition. Herodotus
in the course of his History quotes epigrams of both kinds; and with
him the word {epigramma} is just on the point of acquiring its
literary sense, though this is not yet fixed definitely. In his
account of the three ancient tripods dedicated in the temple of Apollo
at Thebes,[1] he says of one of them, {o men de eis ton tripodon
epigramma ekhei}, and then quotes the single hexameter line engraved
upon it. Of the other two he says simply, "they say in hexameter,"
{legei en exametro tono}. Again, where he describes the funeral
monuments at Thermopylae,[2] he uses the words {gramma} and
{epigramma} almost in the sense of sepulchural epigrams; {epigegrammai
grammata legonta tade}, and a little further on, {epixosmesantes
epigrammasi xai stelesi}, "epitaphs and monuments". Among these
epitaphs is the celebrated couplet of Simonides[3] which has found a
place in all subsequent Anthologies.

In the Anthology itself the word does not however in fact occur till a
late period. The proem of Meleager to his collection uses the words
{soide}, {umnos}, {melisma}, {elegos}, all vaguely, but has no term
which corresponds in any degree to our epigram. That of Philippus has