dust while he is yet alive.[6] Some in complete seriousness put the
argument for happiness with the full force of logic and sarcasm. "All
the ways of life are pleasant," cries Julianus in reply to the
weariness expressed by an earlier poet;[7] "in country or town, alone
or among fellow-men, dowered with the graciousness of wife and
children, or living on in the free and careless life of youth; all is
well, live!" And the answer to melancholy has never been put in a
concrete form with finer and more penetrating wit than in the couplet
of Lucian on the man who must needs be sober when all were drinking,
and so appeared in respect of his company to be the one drunk man
there.[8]

It is here that the epigrams of comedy reach their high-water mark; in
contrast to them is another class in which the lightness is a little
forced and the humour touches cynicism. In these the natural brutality
of the Roman mind makes the Latin epigram heavier and keener-pointed;
the greater number indeed of the Greek epigrams of this complexion are
of the Roman period; and many of them appear to be directly imitated
from Martial and Juvenal, though possibly in some cases it is the
Latin poet who is the copyist.

Though they are not actually kept separate--nor indeed would a
complete separation be possible--the heading of this section of the
Palatine Anthology distinguishes the {sumpotika}, the epigrams of
youth and pleasure, from the {skoptika}, the witty or humorous verses
which have accidentally in modern English come almost to absorb the
full signification of the word epigram. The latter come principally
under two heads: one, where the point of the epigram depends on an
unexpected verbal turn, the other, where the humour lies in some gross
exaggeration of statement. Or these may be combined; in some of the