the sons and descendants of the Grecian heroes who were killed in the first Theban war. The war of the Epigoni is famous in ancient history. It was undertaken ten years after the first. The sons of those who had perished in the first war, resolved to avenge the death of their fathers, and marched against Thebes, under the command of Thersander; or, according to others, of Alcmeon the son of Amphiaras, about 1307 years before Christ. The Argives were assisted by the Corinthians, the people of Messenia, Arcadia, and Megara. The Thebans had engaged all their neighbours in their quarrel, as in one common cause. These two hostile armies met and engaged on the banks of the Glifas. The fight was obstinate and bloody, but victory declared for the Epigoni, and some of the Thebans fled to Illyricum with Leodamas their general, while others retired into Thebes, where they were soon besieged, and forced to surrender. In this war Ægialus was the only one who was killed, and his father Adraetus was the only one who escaped alive in the first war. This whole war, as Paulanias observes, was written in verse; and Callinus, who quotes some of the verses, ascribes them to Homer, which opinion has been adopted by many writers. "For my part (continues the geographer), I own, that next to the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, I have never seen a finer poem." The descendants of the veteran Macedonians, who served under Alexander the Great, and who had children by Aflatic women, were also called Epigoni. (Justin.)

**EPICRIT**, in *Poetry*, a short poem in verse, treating only of one thing, and ending with some lively, ingenious, and natural thought or point. The word is formed of επιγραφη, inscription, of επιγραφειν, to inscribe, or write upon.

Epigrams then, originally signify inscriptions, and they derive their origin from those inscriptions placed by the ancients on their tombs, statues, temples, triumphal arches, &c. These, at first, were only simple monograms: afterwards, increasing their length, they made them in verse, to be the more easily retained: Herodotus and others have transmitted to us several of them. Such little poems retained the name of epigrams, even after the design of their first institution was varied, and people began to use them for the relation of little facts and accidents, the characterizing of persons, &c. The point or turn is a quality much insisted on by the critics, who require the epigram constantly to clothe with something poignant and unexpected, to which all the rest of the composition is only preparatory; while others, on the contrary, exclude the point, and require the thought to be equally disputed throughout the poem, without laying the whole stress on the close: the former is usually Martial's practice, and the latter that of Catullus.

The Greek epigrams have scarce any thing of the point or briskness of the Latin one: those collected in the Anthology have most of them a remarkable air of ease and simplicity, attended with something just and witty; such as we find in a sensible peasant, or a child that has wit. They have nothing that bites, but something that tickles. Though they want the fall of Martial, yet to a good taste they are not insipid; except a few of them, which are quite flat and spiritless. However, the general faintness and delicacy of the pleasantry in them has given occasion for a Greek epigram, or *epigram à la Grecque*, to denote, among the French, an epigram void of salt or sharpness.

The epigram admits of great variety of subjects: some are made to praise, and others to satirize; which last are much the easiest; ill-nature serving instead of point and wit. Boileau's epigrams are all satires on one or another; those of Des Reaux are all made in honour of his friends; and those of Mad. Scudery are so many eloges. The epigram being only a single thought, it would be ridiculous to express it in a great number of verses.