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