epyllion

epyllion (plural ‐llia), a miniature epic poem, resembling an epic in metre and/or style but not in length. The term dates from the 19th century, when it was applied to certain shorter narrative poems in Greek and Latin, usually dealing with a mythological love story in an elaborately digressive and allusive manner, as in Catullus' poem on Peleus and Thetis. The nearest equivalents in English poetry are the Elizabethan erotic narratives such as Marlowe's Hero and Leander (1598) and Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593), although the term has also been applied to later non‐erotic works including Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum (1853).

epyllion (Greek diminutive of epos, ‘epic’), in Greek and Latin literature, a very brief epic, i.e. a narrative poem a few hundred lines long, in hexameters, usually on the subject of the life and especially the loves of a mythical hero or heroine, and popular from the Hellenistic age (Theocritus' Idyll 24 on the infant Heracles is an example) to Ovid. The use of the word as a descriptive term appears to be modern.