Epigrams and Satire in Latin Poetry

Abstract

“Epigram” is from a Greek word that means “inscription.” Greek epigrams originally were inscriptions on objects or monuments (often tombs), intended to identify their owner or maker, and are usually defined as pointed and witty maxims or adages. Latin epigrams, too, can be identified as early funerary inscriptions, but they also comprise the erotic and occasional verse of the sort that Catullus wrote and the extant Priapea, a collection of poems about the phallic god Priapus and attributed to an unnamed group of poets who met at the house of Maecenas (the patron of Vergil, Horace, and Propertius, among others). Similar poems, largely lost, were attributed to such authors as Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Ovid, Seneca, Pliny, and Petronius. From a later period there are epigrams by Claudian, Ausonius, Paulinus of Nola, Pope Damasus I, and those authors represented by the Anthologia Latina. By far the greatest body of extant Latin epigram, however, is the collected poetry of Martial, who, in his 1,561 poems, changed the epigram into something almost uniquely his own. Martial will therefore be the focus of this portion of this article. Epigrams fall into four categories: (1) inscriptions, (2) short erotic poems, (3) special verses for social occasions, and (4) the short satirical poem having a “point.” This fourth category causes epigram to be most closely allied to satire. Roman satire, like Latin love elegy (“elegiac poetry”), is considered to be a uniquely Roman poetic form. Originally a mix of verse forms, or of both prose and verse forms, it soon acquired its own character as an ironic or humorous treatment of human faults and foibles. Menippean satires, named after the 3rd-century bce Cynic philosopher Menippus of Gadara (in Palestine), were a mixture of prose and verse. They were imitated by Varro, L. Annaeus Seneca, Petronius Arbiter, and the emperor Julian. “Roman satire,” however, most often refers to the dactylic hexameter satirical poetry (“Roman verse satire”) of Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal.