(= ἑπτάμετρον, five, πέραν, a measure), a peculiar kind of verse, consisting, as the name implies, of five feet or metres. The first and second feet may be either dactyls or spondees; the third is always a spondee; and the last two anapests. A pentameter line subjoined to an hexameter constitutes what is called elegiac verse. Numerous specimens of this verse are to be found among the Greek and Latin classics. Callimachus, Tyrtæus, Mimermus, Theognis, and Solon, in Greece; and Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, in Rome, were the most celebrated of the ancient elegiac writers. Goethe and Schiller have attempted the introduction of this species of versification into German poetry; and the characterization of the hexameter and pentameter distich by the latter poet is well known through Coleridge's version:

"In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column, In the pentameter aye falling in melody back."