EPYLLION

brief narrative poem in dactylic hexameter of ancient Greece, usually dealing with mythological and romantic themes. It is characterized by lively description, scholarly allusion, and an elevated tone similar to the elegy. Such poems were especially popular during the Greek Alexandrian period (c. 4th3rd century BC), as seen in the works of Callimachus and Theocritus, although the term epyllion was not applied to them until the 19th century. Late Republican and early Augustan Latin poetry, such as Catullus's poem on the marriage of Pythius and Thetis and Ovid's Metamorphoses (c. AD 18), reflect the influence of the epyllion, as do the troubadour songs of the Middle Ages and the modern Greek Klephtic ballads. William Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece (1594) and Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum (1853) are examples of epyllions in English.