Short answers, pulled from the story.
Epigram derives from the Greek epígramma, meaning inscription, which comes from the verb epigráphein, meaning to write on or inscribe. The form originated as short poems carved onto votive offerings at sanctuaries and onto funerary monuments in ancient Greece.
Martial is considered the master of the Latin epigram. His technique relied on the satirical poem with a joke in the last line, and he drew closely from Greek models including Lucillius and Nicarchus while aligning the genre with the Roman tradition of satire.
The Greek Anthology is a compilation from the tenth century AD built on older collections, including those of Meleager of Gadara and Philippus of Thessalonica. It spans roughly a thousand years of short elegiac texts and remains a major source for Greek literary epigram.
Robert Hayman's Quodlibets, Lately Come Over from New Britaniola, Old Newfoundland is considered the first work of English literature composed in North America. Written between 1618 and 1628 in what is now Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, it is a collection of over 300 epigrams.
The presence of wit or sarcasm tends to distinguish epigrams from aphorisms and adages. Aphorisms and adages typically deal in general truths without those qualities, while epigrams often carry a satirical or surprising element.
Adelaide Crapsey codified a two-line rhymed verse form of ten syllables per line, known as the image couplet. Her poem On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees, first published in 1915, established this form, which later influenced William Soutar's cinquain poems in the 1930s.