This is an introduction to the ancient genre of epigram, short poems literally written or inscribed on' an object or figuratively on' a topic. The authors set out what epigram means and why it matters, exploring its roots in inscriptions on stone and its literary flourishing in the Hellenistic world after Alexander. They trace its migration from Greece to Rome, where its most famous exponent was Martial, and consider the continuation of Greek epigram under the Roman empire in the so-called Second Sophistic'. The final chapter shows how Greek epigram achieved new importance in the nineteenth...