Dactylic pentameter in the context of Long syllable

The elegiac couplet or elegiac distich is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later. As with the English heroic couplet, each pair of lines usually makes sense on its own, while forming part of a larger work.

Each couplet consists of a dactylic hexameter verse followed by a dactylic pentameter verse. The following is a graphic representation of its scansion:

The adjective elegiac has two possible meanings. First, it can refer to something of, relating to, or involving, an elegy or something that expresses similar mournfulness or sorrow. Second, it can refer more specifically to poetry composed in the form of elegiac couplets.

An elegiac couplet consists of one line of poetry in dactylic hexameter followed by a line in dactylic pentameter. Because dactylic hexameter is used throughout epic poetry, and because the elegiac form was always considered "lower style" than epic, elegists, or poets who wrote elegies, frequently wrote with epic poetry in mind and positioned themselves in relation to epic.

Biceps is a point in a metrical pattern where a pair of short syllables can freely be replaced by a long one. In Greek and Latin poetry, it is found in the dactylic hexameter and the first half of a dactylic pentameter, and also in anapaestic metres.

It is not to be confused with resolution, which is a phenomenon where a normally long syllable in a line is sometimes replaced by two shorts. Resolution is typically found in an iambic metre such as the iambic trimeter or a trochaic metre such as the trochaic septenarius.