Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology | Page 5

definite, but unfortunately
ambiguous in expression. It runs thus:
{Pagxalon eot epigramma to distikhon en de parelthes
tous treis
rapsodeis xoux epigramma legeis}
The meaning of the first part is plain; an epigram may be complete
within the limits of a single couplet. But do "the three" mean three lines
or three couplets? "Exceeding three" would, in the one case, mean an
epigram of four lines, in the other of eight. As there cannot properly be
an epigram of three lines, it would seem rather to mean the latter. Even
so the statement is an exaggeration; many of the best epigrams are in
six and eight lines. But it is true that the epigram may "have its nature",
in the phrase of Aristotle,[6] in a single couplet; and we shall generally

find that in those of eight lines, as always without exception in those of
more than eight, there is either some repetition of idea not necessary to
the full expression of the thought, or some redundance of epithet or
detail too florid for the best taste, or, as in most of the Byzantine
epigrams, a natural verbosity which affects the style throughout and
weakens the force and directness of the epigram.
The notorious difficulty of giving any satisfactory definition of poetry
is almost equalled by the difficulty of defining with precision any one
of its kinds; and the epigram in Greek, while it always remained
conditioned by being in its essence and origin an
inscriptional poem,
took in the later periods so wide a range of subject and treatment that it
can perhaps only be limited by certain abstract conventions of length
and metre. Sometimes it becomes in all but metrical form a lyric;
sometimes it hardly rises beyond the versified statement of a fact or an
idea; sometimes it is barely distinguishable from a snatch of pastoral.
The shorter pieces of the elegiac poets might very often well be classed
as epigrams but for the uncertainty, due to the form in which their text
has come down to us, whether they are not in all cases, as they
undoubtedly are in some, portions of longer poems. Many couplets and
quatrains of Theognis fall under this head; and an excellent instance on
a larger scale is the fragment of fourteen lines by Simonides of
Amorgos,[7] which is the exact type on which many of the later
epigrams of life are moulded. In such cases /respice auctoris animum/
is a safe rule; what was not written as an epigram is not an epigram.
Yet it has seemed worth while to illustrate this rule by its exceptions;
and there will be found in this collection fragments of Mimnermus and
Theognis[8] which in everything but the actual circumstance of their
origin satisfy any requirement which can be made. In the Palatine
Anthology itself, indeed, there are a few instances[9] where this very
thing is done. As a rule, however, these short passages belong to the
class of {gromai} or moral sentences, which, even when expressed in
elegiac verse, is sufficiently distinct from the true epigram. One
instance will suffice. In the Anthology there occurs this couplet:[10]
{Pan to peritton axaipon epei logos esti palaios
os xai tou melitos to
pleon esti khole}

This is a sentence merely; an abstract moral idea, with an
illustration
attached to it. Compare with it another couplet[11] in the Anthology:
{Aion panta pserei dolikhos khronos oioen ameibein
ounoma xai
morpsen xai psuain ede tukhen}
Here too there is a moral idea; but in the expression, abstract as it is,
there is just that high note, that imaginative touch, which gives it at
once the gravity of an inscription and the quality of a poem.
Again, many of the so-called epideictic epigrams are little more than
stories told shortly in elegiac verse, much like the stories in Ovid's Fasti.
Here the inscriptional quality is the surest test. It is this quality, perhaps
in many instances due to the verses having been actually written for
paintings or sculptures, that just makes an epigram of the sea-story told
by Antipater of Thessalonica, and of the legend of Eunomus the
harp-player[12]; while other stories, such as those told of Pittacus, of
Euctemon, of Serapis and the murderer,[13] both tend to exceed the
reasonable limit of length, and have in no degree either the lapidary
precision of the half lyrical passion which would be necessary to make
them more than tales in verse. Once more, the fragments of idyllic
poetry which by chance have come down to us incorporated in the
Anthology,[14] beautiful as they are, are in no sense epigrams any
more than the lyrics ascribed to Anacreon which form an appendix to
the Palatine collection, or the quotations from the dramatists, Euripides,
Menander, or Diphilus,[15] which have also at one time or another
become incorporated with it.