elegiac poetry, Greek
elegiac poetry, GreekThis may be initially defined as poetry in elegiac couplets (hexameter followed by pentameter), one of the most popular metres throughout antiquity. The term elegeion, normally meaning ‘elegiac couplet’, is derived from elegos, a sung lament that must have been characteristically in this metre, but the metre was always used for many other purposes. We also find the feminine elegeia, ‘elegy’, i.e. a poem or poetry in elegiacs.
A stricter definition distinguishes between elegiac poetry (elegy) and epigram (which was often but not necessarily in elegiac metre). Elegy, in the early period, was composed for oral delivery in a social setting, as a communication from the poet to others; an epigram was information written on an object (a tombstone, a dedication, etc.). The distinction was not always so clear after the 4th cent. bc, when the epigram came to be cultivated as a literary genre, but on the whole...
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