Some Name Traditions in Epigrammatic Satire

Abstract

N AntE-CALLING AND WORDPLAY seem to have gone hand in hand since earliest recorded literature. Analogous sounds suggest play of meaning. Names based upon personal characteristics frequently have innate satire. When satire found its way into brief pungent verses, headed either by a name-title or incorporating the name into the lines, we have one form, perhaps the most clearly recognized form of the epigram. The Greek Anthologyl contains the earliest large corpus of epigrams in the Western World. The range of its material makes inclusive definition very difficult. The variety of patterns include all known topics of short lyric verses. The oldest, perhaps the point of departure, lie in simple, at first, laudatory inscriptions, the ancestors of the serious epitaphs. The collection, however, contains both pagan and Christian proems, dedicatory, theological, declamatory, descriptive, hortatory, admonitory, invocative, convivial, and satirical representations, to say nothing of riddles, oracles, proverbs, and arithmetical problems. In most categories names appear. The complimentary verses were probably addressed to real persons, living or dead. Patronage poetry has an unbroken tradition down to modern times. Name-play and satiric name-usage form only a segment of the Anthology. True names as well as wordplay names appear in the uncomplimentary names. Actual persons may be referred to, or the implications may be disguised behind common or figurative associations. The Anthology contains three specific epigrams (XI, 210, 222, 181) which depend for their points upon wordplay. Aulus, the cowardly soldier, a name which in the seventeenth century found