As epigraphs, both epigram and inscriptio are the results of a poetic procedure as old as writing itself. Whether in stones, manuscripts or books, they are eye-catchers, perceivable at a glance, they can be seen before they are read. 

Both epigram and inscriptio were negotiated in the early modern period as small masterpieces in lapidary style. They are fundamentally figured by ancient rhetoric, situated between ars rhetorica and ars poetica. The genre characteristics that link them across the verse-prose boundary are argutia and brevitas, astuteness and brevity. Even in centuries in which they have detached themselves from the stone, they preserve the phantom pain of the material object in or on which they were written, whether it was real or fictitious. And, in their economy of signs, they are able to turn their media into platforms of free speech. 

Today, epigram and inscriptio are seemingly forgotten, although their echoes can be found in ubiquitous media practices of the 21st century – on walls, posters, everyday objects and in the so-called ‘social media’. The analog and digital heirs of epigram and inscriptio are actuality machines, they all have an affinity for the present: disputes, revolutions, movements, crises, wars are breeding grounds for these micro-media of dissidence – or panegyric. Epigrammatic or inscriptional speech acts are troublemakers, they seldom come alone and rather like to appear in packs, aimed at disruption and irritation. 

While today’s small forms tend to disappear before they can be theorized, their multi-layered ephemeral media practices can be illuminated by recourse to ancient and early modern rhetorics, to ancient and early modern (genre) theory and practice of epigram and inscriptio.