noun
definition
A poem composed in the couplet style of classical elegies: a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter.
Examples of elegiacs in a Sentence
In the matter of the rhythms, caesuras and elisions which it allows, the metrical treatment is much more severe than that of Catullus, whose elegiacs are comparatively rude and barbarous; but it is not bound hand and foot, like the Ovidian distich, in a formal and conventional system.
In the Latin elegiacs of the Stultifera Navis (1497) of Jacob Locher the book was read throughout Europe.
Neckam also wrote Corrogationes Promethei, a scriptural commentary prefaced by a treatise on grammatical criticism; a translation of Aesop into Latin elegiacs (six fables from this version, as given in a Paris MS., are printed in Robert's Fables inedites); commentaries, still unprinted, on portions of Aristotle, Martianus Capella and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and other works.
His epitaph was written by Hrabanus Maurus, whose elegiacs praise him for being the faithful guardian of his monastery.
Another version of Romulus in Latin elegiacs was made by Alexander Neckam, born at St Albans in 1157.
Avianus (of uncertain date, perhaps the 4th century) translated 42 of the fables into Latin elegiacs.