A related type of poetry is the
epyllion (plural: epyllia), a brief narrative poem with a
romantic or
mythological theme. The term, which means "little epic", came into use in the nineteenth century. It refers primarily to the erudite, shorter hexameter poems of the
Hellenistic period and the similar works composed at Rome from the age of the
neoterics; to a lesser degree, the term includes some poems of the
English Renaissance, particularly those influenced by
Ovid.The most famous example of
classical epyllion is perhaps
Catullus 64.