in ancient poetry, anything belonging to elegy. See Elegy.

Elegiac verses are alternately hexameter and pentameter, as in the following verses of Ovid. See Hexameter.

Flebilis indignor, elegia, solve capillos: Ab nimis ex vero nunc tibi nonen erit.

Who was the inventor of elegiac poetry is not known. Horace professes himself quite ignorant of it. The principal writers of elegiac verse, among the Latins, were Propertius, Ovid, and Tibullus, the latter whereof Quintilian esteems the best elegiac poet; but Pliny the younger gives the preference to the first: the chief writers of elegy among the Greeks were Callimachus, Parthenius, and Euphorion.