Elegiac Couplet - Roman Elegy

Roman Elegy

Like all Greek forms, elegy was adapted by the Romans for their own literature. The fragments of Ennius contain a few couplets, and scattered verses attributed to Roman public figures like Cicero and Julius Caesar also survive.

But it is the elegists of the mid-to-late first century BCE who are most commonly associated with the distinctive Roman form of the elegiac couplet. Catullus, the first of these, is an invaluable link between the Alexandrine school and the subsequent elegies of Tibullus and Propertius a generation later. His collection, for example, shows a familiarity with the usual Alexandrine style of terse epigram and a wealth of mythological learning, while his 66th poem is a direct translation of Callimachus' Coma Berenices. Arguably the most famous elegiac couplet in Latin is his two-line 85th poem Odi et Amo:

Cornelius Gallus is another important statesman/writer of this period, one who was generally regarded by the ancients as the greatest of the elegists. Other than a few scant lines, all of his work has been lost.