the dramatists, Euripides, Menander, or Diphilus,[15] which have also
at one time or another become incorporated with it.

In brief then, the epigram in its first intention may be described as
a very short poem summing up as though in a memorial inscription what
it is desired to make permanently memorable in any action or
situation. It must have the compression and conciseness of a real
inscription, and in proportion to the smallness of its bulk must be
highly finished, evenly balanced, simple, and lucid. In literature it
holds something of the same place as is held in art by an engraved
gem. But if the definition of the epigram is only fixed thus, it is
difficult to exclude almost any very short poem that conforms
externally to this standard; while on the other hand the chance of
language has restricted the word in its modern use to a sense which it
never bore in Greek at all, defined in the line of Boileau, /un bon
mot de deux rimes orne/. This sense was made current more especially
by the epigrams of Martial, which as a rule lead up to a pointed end,
sometimes a witticism, sometimes a verbal fancy, and are quite apart
from the higher imaginative qualities. From looking too exclusively at
the Latin epigrammatists, who all belonged to a debased period in
literature, some persons have been led to speak of the Latin as
distinct from the Greek sense of the word "epigram". But in the Greek
Anthology the epigrams of contemporary writers have the same quality.
The fault was that of the age, not of the language. No good epigram
sacrifices its finer poetical qualities to the desire of making a
point; and none of the best depend on having a point at all.
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[1] Hdt. v. 59.