Delicate irony and pointed epigram take the place of broad humour.
The father died five days after his son in 4 B.C. He had done much for the Jews, thanks to the favour he had won and kept in spite of all from the successive heads of the Roman state; he had observed the Law publicly - in fact, as the traditional epigram of Augustus says, "it was better to be Herod's swine than a son of Herod."
He is the long man with the short epigram.
Lessing's theory of the origin of the epigram is somewhat fanciful, but no other critic has offered so many pregnant hints as to the laws of epigrammatic verse, or defended with so much force and ingenuity the character of Martial.
A limerick is a kind of burlesque epigram, written in five lines.