List of classical meters
The following meters were used in Greek poetry and adapted for Latin poetry:
Major forms
- Dactylic hexameter, the meter of the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid, used for epic and other narrative and didactic poetry
- Elegiac couplet, consisting of a line of dactylic hexameter and one of dactylic pentameter, employed by Ovid for all his extant works except the Metamorphoses
- Iambic trimeter, the most common meter in the dialogue portions of tragedy and comedy
Aeolics
- Glyconic and pherecratean
- Asclepiad
- Sapphic stanza, so called for Sappho
- Alcaic stanza, so called for Alcaeus
- Hendecasyllabic verse
- Adonean
Other meters
- Choliambic, also known as limping iambs or scazon
- Ionic
- Anacreonteus
- Anapestic
- Trochaic
- Dactylo-epitrite
- Dochmiac
- Galliambic, a relatively rare form of which Carmen 63 by Catullus is the only complete example from antiquity
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