What’s Up with Ancient Greek Epitaphs

There are epitaphs, there are epigrams, and there are epigraphs. Creates a lot of confusion. (The other case like this, for me, is friable, frangible, and fungible. I’ve given up all hope on that one.)

So try and concentrate. An epigram is, strictly speaking, a little poem that makes a point. It doesn’t necessarily dramatize; it doesn’t necessarily have an image. But it has to say something. This is an epigram:

THEIR SEX LIFE

One failure on
Top of another

Haikus are not epigrams. “Pigeons on the grass, alas” is not an epigram. It might be clearer to say an epigram doesn’t just make a point. An epigram scores a point.

An epigraph is one of those little quotations you see at the beginning of a novel or, say, a T. S. Eliot poem. The epigraph to Anna Karenina is from the Bible: “Vengeance is mine; I shall repay.” The epigraph to Jude the Obscure is “The letter killeth.”

Naturally, epigrams can be used as epigraphs, but let’s not even. This article is about epitaphs. An is a little dab of poetry that you stick on