Epigram - Ancient Roman

Ancient Roman

Roman epigrams owe much to their Greek predecessors and contemporaries. Roman epigrams, however, were often more satirical than Greek ones, and at times used obscene language for effect. Latin epigrams could be composed as inscriptions or graffiti, such as this one from Pompeii, which exists in several versions and seems from its inexact meter to have been composed by a less educated person. Its content, of course, makes it clear how popular such poems were:

Admiror, O paries, te non cecidisse ruinis

qui tot scriptorum taedia sustineas.

I'm astonished, wall, that you haven't collapsed into ruins,

since you're holding up the weary verse of so many poets.

However, in the literary world, epigrams were most often gifts to patrons or entertaining verse to be published, not inscriptions. Many Roman writers seem to have composed epigrams, including Domitius Marsus, whose collection Cicuta (now lost) was named after the poisonous plant Cicuta for its biting wit, and Lucan, more famous for his epic Pharsalia. Authors whose epigrams survive include Catullus, who wrote both invectives and love epigrams – his poem 85 is one of the latter.

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam fortasse requires.

Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.

I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do this.

I know not, but I feel that it is happening, and am tormented greatly.

The master of the Latin epigram, however, is Martial. His technique relies heavily on the satirical poem with a joke in the last line, thus drawing him closer to the modern idea of epigram as a genre. Here he defines his genre against a (probably fictional) critic (in the latter half of 2.77):

Disce quod ignoras: Marsi doctique Pedonis

saepe duplex unum pagina tractat opus.

Non sunt longa quibus nihil est quod demere possis,

sed tu, Cosconi, disticha longa facis.

Learn what you don't know: one work of (Domitius) Marsus or learned Pedo

often stretches out over a doublesided page.

A work isn't long if you can't take anything out of it,

but you, Cosconius, write even a couplet too long.

Another example of an epigram by Martial:

Mentula tam magna est quantus tibi, Papyle, nasus,

ut possis, quotiens arrigis, olfacere.

Your penis is as large as your nose, Papylus,

so you can smell it when it's erect.

Poets known for their epigrams whose work has been lost include Cornificia.