The earliest of the elegiac poets was Philitas of Cos.

The 1st century AD rhetorician Quintilian ranked Philitas second only to Callimachus among the elegiac poets.

In this book "Donald Justice establishes himself as an elegiac poet of the first order.

Tyrtaeus was predominantly an elegiac poet and elegy may be described as "a variation upon the heroic hexameter, in the direction of lyric poetry".

IN his fifth collection of poems, "The Sunset Maker," Donald Justice establishes himself as an elegiac poet of the first order.

Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age.

Mimnermus apparently was also capable of playing all by himself-Strabo described him as "both a pipe-player and an elegiac poet".

The earliest tradition comes from Callinus, an elegiac poet from Ephesus who lived in the mid-7th century BC.

Phanocles was Greek elegiac poet who probably flourished about the time of Alexander the Great.

Hesiod certainly predates the lyric and elegiac poets whose work has come down to the modern era.