Epigram, in modern usage, is a neat, witty, and pointed utterance briefly couched in verse form, usually satiric, and reserving its sting to the last line; sometimes made the vehicle of a quaintly-turned compliment, as, for example, in Pope's couplet to Chesterfield, when asked to write something with that nobleman's pencil;—
“Accept a miracle; instead of wit,
See two dull lines by Stanhope's pencil writ.”
The Latin epigrammatists, especially Martial and Catullus, were the first to give a satirical turn to the epigram, their predecessors the Greeks having employed it merely for purposes of epitaph and monumental inscriptions of a laudatory nature.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Epigoni * Epilepsy