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26-759: Although the pyrrhic by itself is not used in analysis of classical Greek prosody, examples exist of epigrammatic poems that employ nothing but short syllables (except at line ends where a syllable always scans long), creating a pyrrhic-like effect, such as an epigram addressed to the Cynic philosopher Diogenes and recorded in the Suda : Διόγενες, ἄγε, λέγε, τίς ἔλαβέ σε μόρος ἐς Ἄϊδος; ἔλαβέ με κυνὸς ὀδάξ . Diógenes, áge, lége, tís élabé se móros es Áïdos? élabé me kunòs odáx . Tennyson used pyrrhics and spondees quite frequently, for example, in In Memoriam : When

52-611: A couplet . Since 1600, the couplet has been featured as a part of the longer sonnet form, most notably in William Shakespeare 's sonnets. Sonnet 76 is an example. The two-line poetic form as a closed couplet was also used by William Blake in his poem " Auguries of Innocence ", and also by Byron in his poem Don Juan , by John Gay in his fables, and by Alexander Pope in his An Essay on Man . The first work of English literature penned in North America

78-572: A doublesided page. A work isn't long if you can't take anything out of it, but you, Cosconius, write even a couplet too long. Poets known for their epigrams whose work has been lost include Cornificia . In early English literature the short couplet poem was dominated by the poetic epigram and proverb , especially in the translations of the Bible and the Greek and Roman poets . Two successive lines of verse that rhyme with each other are known as

104-550: A less educated person. Its content makes it clear how popular such poems were: Admiror, O paries, te non cecidisse ruinis qui tot scriptorum taedia sustineas. I'm astonished, wall, that you haven't collapsed into ruins, since you're holding up the weary verse of so many poets. However, in the literary world, epigrams were most often gifts to patrons or entertaining verse to be published, not inscriptions. Many Roman writers seem to have composed epigrams, including Domitius Marsus , whose collection Cicuta (now lost)

130-495: A residual pressure to keep things concise , even when they were recited in Hellenistic times. Many of the characteristic types of literary epigram look back to inscriptional contexts, particularly funerary epigram, which in the Hellenistic era becomes a literary exercise. Many "sympotic" epigrams combine sympotic and funerary elements – they tell their readers (or listeners) to drink and live for today because life

156-448: A sentence of "It is a fact that most arguments must try to convince readers, that is the audience, that the arguments are true." may be expressed more concisely as "Most arguments must demonstrate their truth to readers." – the observations that the statement is a fact and that readers are its audience are redundant, and it is unnecessary to repeat the word "arguments" in the sentence. " Laconic " speech or writing refers to

182-471: A title for the couplet, as is shown in Sonnet VIII of the sequence. During the early 20th century, the rhymed epigram couplet form developed into a fixed verse image form, with an integral title as the third line. Adelaide Crapsey codified the couplet form into a two-line rhymed verse of ten syllables per line with her image couplet poem On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees , first published in 1915. By

208-419: Is a communication principle of eliminating redundancy , generally achieved by using as few words as possible in a sentence while preserving its meaning . More generally, it is achieved through the omission of parts that impart information that was already given, that is obvious or that is irrelevant. Outside of linguistics, a message may be similarly "dense" in other forms of communication . For example,

234-659: Is considered to be the master of the Latin epigram. His technique relies heavily on the satirical poem with a joke in the last line, thus drawing him closer to the modern idea of epigram as a genre. Here he defines his genre against a (probably fictional) critic (in the latter half of 2.77): Disce quod ignoras: Marsi doctique Pedonis saepe duplex unum pagina tractat opus. Non sunt longa quibus nihil est quod demere possis, sed tu, Cosconi, disticha longa facis. Learn what you don't know: one work of (Domitius) Marsus or learned Pedo often stretches out over

260-502: Is purely chimerical, and the insisting on so perplexing a nonentity as a foot of two short syllables, affords, perhaps, the best evidence of the gross irrationality and subservience to authority which characterise our Prosody. By extension, this rhythmic pattern apparently formed the basis of an identically named ancient Greek war dance . Proclus thought it was the same as the hyporcheme ( hyporchēma ), while Athenaeus distinguished them; this may have depended on whether song accompanied

286-436: Is short. Generally, any theme found in classical elegies could be and were adapted for later literary epigrams. Hellenistic epigrams are also thought of as having a "point" – that is, the poem ends in a punchline or satirical twist. By no means do all Greek epigrams behave this way; many are simply descriptive, but Meleager of Gadara and Philippus of Thessalonica , the first comprehensive anthologists, preferred

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312-445: Is taught to students at all levels. It is valued highly in expository English writing , but less by some other cultures. In an influential study by educational psychologist Richard E. Mayer and others, succinctness of textbook and lecture content was linked to better understanding of the material. In computing, succinct data structures balance minimal storage use against efficiency of access. In algorithmic game theory,

338-884: The Hellenistic period through the Imperial period and Late Antiquity into the compiler's own Byzantine era – a thousand years of short elegiac texts on every topic under the sun. The Anthology includes one book of Christian epigrams as well as one book of erotic and amorous homosexual epigrams called the Μοῦσα Παιδικἠ ( Mousa Paidike , "The Boyish Muse"). Roman epigrams owe much to their Greek predecessors and contemporaries. Roman epigrams, however, were often more satirical than Greek ones, and at times used obscene language for effect. Latin epigrams could be composed as inscriptions or graffiti , such as this one from Pompeii , which exists in several versions and seems from its inexact meter to have been composed by

364-488: The blood creeps and the nerves prick. "When the" and "and the" in the second line may be considered as pyrrhics (also analyzable as ionic meter ). Pyrrhics alone are not used to construct an entire poem in English due to the monotonous effect. Edgar Allan Poe observed that many experts rejected it from English metrics and concurred: The pyrrhic is rightfully dismissed. Its existence in either ancient or modern rhythm

390-552: The 1930s, the five-line cinquain verse form became widely known in the poetry of the Scottish poet William Soutar . These were originally labelled epigrams but later identified as image cinquains in the style of Adelaide Crapsey . J. V. Cunningham was also a noted writer of epigrams (a medium suited to a "short-breathed" person). Concision In common usage and linguistics , concision (also called conciseness , succinctness , terseness , brevity , or laconicism )

416-456: The Spartans, passersby..." . These original epigrams did the same job as a short prose text might have done, but in verse . Epigram became a literary genre in the Hellenistic period , probably developing out of scholarly collections of inscriptional epigrams. Though modern epigrams are usually thought of as very short, Greek literary epigram was not always as short as later examples, and

442-409: The dance. Citing Aristoxenus , Athenaeus said the pyrrhic is a Spartan dance for boys carrying spears to prepare for war, and noted the intense speed of the dance. In Plato 's Laws , the dance is described as representing the offensive and defensive movements in battle. Other Greeks associated it with Dionysus . There are a number of Classical and later reliefs that depict pyrrhic dancers, even if

468-439: The divide between "epigram" and " elegy " is sometimes indistinct (they share a characteristic metre , elegiac couplets ). In the classical period , the clear distinction between them was that epigrams were inscribed and meant to be read, while elegies were recited and meant to be heard. Some elegies could be quite short, but only public epigrams were longer than ten lines. All the same, the origin of epigram in inscription exerted

494-577: The genre, aligning it with the indigenous Roman tradition of "satura", hexameter satire , as practised by (among others) his contemporary Juvenal . Greek epigram was actually much more diverse, as the Milan Papyrus now indicates. A major source for Greek literary epigram is the Greek Anthology , a compilation from the 10th century AD based on older collections, including those of Meleager and Philippus. It contains epigrams ranging from

520-946: The motif was not widely used during the Roman era. This poetry -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek ἐπίγραμμα ( epígramma , "inscription", from ἐπιγράφειν [ epigráphein ], "to write on, to inscribe"). This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia. The presence of wit or sarcasm tends to distinguish non-poetic epigrams from aphorisms and adages , which typically do not show those qualities. The Greek tradition of epigrams began as poems inscribed on votive offerings at sanctuaries – including statues of athletes – and on funerary monuments, for example "Go tell it to

546-495: The pithy bluntness that the Laconian people of ancient Greece were reputedly known for. In linguistic research, there have been approaches to analyze the level of succinctness of texts using semantic analysis. Polymath Blaise Pascal wrote in a 1657 letter : Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. I have made this longer than usual, only because I have not had

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572-435: The prolific American poet Emily Dickinson . Her poem No. 1534 is a typical example of her eleven poetic epigrams. The novelist George Eliot also included couplets throughout her writings. Her best example is in her sequenced sonnet poem entitled Brother and Sister in which each of the eleven sequenced sonnet ends with a couplet. In her sonnets, the preceding lead-in-line, to the couplet ending of each, could be thought of as

598-527: The short and witty epigram. Since their collections helped form knowledge of the genre in Rome and then later throughout Europe, Epigram came to be associated with 'point', especially because the European epigram tradition takes the Latin poet Martial as its principal model; he copied and adapted Greek models (particularly the contemporary poets Lucillius and Nicarchus ) selectively and in the process redefined

624-675: The time to make it shorter. William Strunk and E. B. White 's The Elements of Style , an American English style guide , says of concision that: A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. Joseph M. Williams 's Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace suggests six principles for concision: Concision

650-412: Was Robert Hayman 's Quodlibets, Lately Come Over from New Britaniola, Old Newfoundland , which is a collection of over 300 epigrams, many of which do not conform to the two-line rule or trend. While the collection was written between 1618 and 1628 in what is now Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, it was published shortly after his return to Britain. In Victorian times the epigram couplet was often used by

676-500: Was named after the poisonous plant Cicuta for its biting wit, and Lucan , more famous for his epic Pharsalia . Authors whose epigrams survive include Catullus , who wrote both invectives and love epigrams – his poem 85 is one of the latter. Odi et amo. Quare id faciam fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior. I hate and I love. Maybe you'd like to know why I do? I don't know, but I feel it happening, and I am tormented. Martial , however,

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