Short poem treating concisely, pointedly, and often satirically a single thought or event and often ending with a witticism or ingenious turn of thought.
By extension, the term applies to a terse, sage, or witty (often paradoxical) saying, usually in the form of a generalization. Writers of Latin epigrams included Martial . The form was revived in the Renaissance. Later masters of the epigram have included Ben Jonson ; François VI, duke de La Rochefoucauld ; Voltaire ; {{link=Pope, Alexander">Alexander Pope ; Samuel Taylor Coleridge ; Oscar Wilde ; and George Bernard Shaw .