The elegiac couplet or elegaic distich is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic.
The sentiment is summarized in a line from Ovid's Amores I.1.27 — Sex mihi surgat opus numeris, in quinque residat — "Let my work rise in six steps, fall back in five."
He composed several elegies celebrating his love for the flute girl Nanno, and though fragmentary today, his poetry was clearly influential in the later Roman development of the form.
A famous example of an elegiac couplet is the epitaph composed by Simonides of Ceos which Herodotus says was inscribed on a stone to commemorate those who died at the battle of Thermopylae in 490 BC: Cicero translates it as follows (Tusc.
1.42.101), also using an elegiac couplet: By the Hellenistic period, the Library of Alexandria made elegy its favorite and most highly developed form.
They preferred the briefer style associated with elegy in contrast to the lengthier epic forms, and made it the singular medium for short epigrams.
To read it correctly it is necessary to take account of the three elisions: Cornelius Gallus, an important statesman of this period, was also regarded by the ancients as a great elegist, but, except for a few lines, his work has been lost.
The trend continues through the remainder of the empire; short elegies appear in Apuleius's story of Cupid and Psyche and in the minor writings of Ausonius.
Various Christian writers also adopted the form; Venantius Fortunatus wrote some of his hymns in the meter, while later Alcuin and the Venerable Bede dabbled in the verse.
This trend continued down through the Recent Latin writers, whose close study of their Augustan counterparts reflects their general attempts to apply the cultural and literary forms of the ancient world to contemporary themes.