Two ancient epigrams

Funny and sad

The genre of epigram - short, thoughtful, witty, or pointed poems composed in elegiac metre (a longer line alternating with a shorter one) - flourished in Hellenistic Greece (3rd century BC on) and was emulated by Roman poets such as Martial in the first century AD.

Many epigrams were collected in anthologies, such as this touching one in the Greek Anthology (7.365) by Zonas of Sardis about the death of a child - unnamed other than as “the son of Cinyras”. The poem addresses Charon, ferryman of the dead to the Underworld:

Charon, encased in gloom and darkness dim,
Now setting out your shaky boat to row
Through reed-filled swamps to Hades’ palace grim:
Steady the ladder firm before you go.

Escort the son of Cinyras on deck,
Hold out a hand and help him come aboard;
The child is slipping in his sandals yet,
And scared to touch the sandy verge unshod.

Ἀίδῃ ὃς ταύτης καλαμώδεος ὕδατι λίμνης
  κωπεύεις νεκύων βᾶριν ἐλῶν ῤὀδάνην,
τῷ Κινύρου τὴν χεῖρα βατηρίδος ἐμβαίνοντι
  κλίμακος ἐκτείνας, δέξο, κελαινὲ Χάρον.
πλάζει γὰρ τὸν παῖδα τὰ σάνδαλα, γυμνὰ δὲ θεῖναι
  ἴχνια δειμαίνει ψάμμον ἔπ᾽ ᾐονίην.

Martial was more inclined to make fun of himself and those in his circle. In an epigram to his physician friend Symmachus, he follows the lead of the Greek comic playwright Menander, a line of whose runs πολλῶν ἰατρῶν εἴσοδός μ᾽ ἀπώλεσεν - “the visitation of numerous doctors killed me”.

I lay in bed, my friend, and you rushed round,
   A hundred trainee doctors in your wake.
A hundred freezing hands on me I found;
   Before I had no fever, now I ache. 

Languebam, sed tu comitatus protinus ad me
  venisti centum, Symmache, discipulis.
centum me tetigere manus Aquilone gelatae;
  non habui febrem, Symmache, nunc habeo.