Introduction to Epigrams

We will begin our foray into poetic friendship with seven distichs (epigrams comprised of a single couplet) drawn from across almost 1700 years of Latin verse composition. Although most of the poems are relatively simple, each will include a facing commentary highlighting any challenging constructions, as well as any uncommon vocabulary. They are followed by a more lengthy but still compressed contemplation of true friendship by Martial. After Martial, follow many more epigrams on the topic of friendship, most with no or minimal glossing, as they employ quite common vocabulary and (by now) familiar forms.

Epigrams are (usually) short poems that capture a single idea or moment in life. Latin epigrams—at least most of those after Martial, the greatest Latin epigrammatist in antiquity—often possess a memorable twist or punchy ending.

The most common poetic mode for epigram was the elegiac couplet which featured a line of hexameter followed by a line contain two half-hexameters (sometimes called a pentameter, although this is misleading). To illustrate this structure, the two elements of the second sentence of the first five epigrams are spaced apart; the final epigram is presented in the more conventional manner.

For a fuller introduction to elegiac couplets and Latin meter, see “The Rhythm of Latin Poetry :: “Scanning” Meter” in the Appendices  and the “Introduction to Scansion” (with helpful videos) in the DCC’s commentary to Ovid’s Amores.