8 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



Occasionally, however, even under kindly Athena's sky the epigram 

 takes on a radically different tone. An ill-starred bachelor will have this 

 appeahng epitaph, which surely represents the quintessence of pessimism, 

 well preserved in Cowper's translation: 



At three-score winters' end I died, 

 A cheerless being, sole and sad. 

 The nuptial knot I never tied, 

 And wish my father never had. 



Another misogamist snarls that the man who seeks second nuptials 

 is a foolish sailor, who after having been shipwrecked once sails again a 

 treacherous gulf. Or a waggish detractor pierces a physician with this 



shaft : 



Pheido nor hand nor touch to me applied; 

 Fevered I thought but of his name and died. 



But on the whole the snarl and the bitter shaft are rare. The Greek 

 epigram is more often lyric, idylhc, or epideictic rather than epigram- 

 matic according to the Roman and modem conception, so that Herder's 

 exquisite quatrain marks out a real hne of divergence. The Greek 

 epigram speaks: 



Dir [Martial] ist das Epigram die kleine geschaftige Biene 

 Die auf Blumen imiher flieget und sauset und sticht; 

 Mir ist das Epigram die kleine knospende Rose 

 Die aus Dornengebusch Nektarerfrischungen haucht. 



[For you the epigram is a little busy bee that flits about on the flowers, and buzzes 

 and stings; for me it is a tiny burgeoning rose that from the bush of thorns breathes 

 such quickening as nectar might bestow.] 



In Italy every variety of epigram that had sprung up in Greece was 

 reproduced as well as the difference in genius between the two peoples 

 would permit. As an actual inscription it was employed by the Romans 

 with a frequency sometimes overlooked. In literature the formal epi- 

 gram appears in Ennius, the father of Latin poetr>', and thenceforward 

 never lacks representation. Quintus Lutatius Catulus, Licinius Calvus, 

 and many others are httle more than names to most readers, and it is not 

 often recalled that the imperial hand of Augustus toyed with this form of 

 composition. Catullus and Martial, however, are famihar to all and 

 have come to be synonymous with epigram. In fact, the more incisive 



