Metre
The elegy in European literature has come to
mean a lament of meditative tone, but its origin is Greek, where it was
used widely for epitaphs, inscriptions and epigrams, before being
refined for extended compositions by Philetas and Callimachus of
Alexandria. The form was introduced into Latin by Quintus Ennius,
employed a little by Catullus, at length by Propertius, Tibullus and
Ovid, and became the most popular of metres for everything except the
epic. {1} {2} Put simply, the Latin elegy is built in couplets
(distiches).
A hexameter with a hardly pronounced caesura: {6}
¯ x x ¯ x x ¯ || x x ¯ x x ¯ u u ¯ f
is followed by what is sometimes called a pentameter, though really two
half-lines separated by a diaeresis (coincidence of word and metre end:
no run on): {6}
¯ x x ¯ x x ¯ | ¯ u u ¯ u u f
Where short syllables are shown as u, two short syllables that can fuse
into a long syllable are shown as x, and the concluding syllable,
counted as long but able to fall on what would be counted a short
syllable in everyday speech, is shown as f.
The first couplet of Elegy 1 in Book Four runs:
Hoc, quod cum que vi des, ho spes, qua ma xi ma Ro mast,
¯ x x ¯ x x ¯ x x ¯ x x ¯ u u ¯ f
an te Phry gem Ae nean co llis et her ba fu it;
¯ x x ¯ x x ¯ | ¯ u u ¯ u u f
At its smoothest, as in this example, and in Tibullus and Ovid
generally, the pentameter ends in a two-syllable word.
