Unlike his Metamorphoses, Ovid wrote The Heroides in Elegiac couplets. This meter scans in pairs of lines: the first scans in dactylic hexameter, but the second line scans in an irregular pentameter: The first two feet can be either dactyl or spondee; the third foot contains two consecutive spondee syllables followed by two dactyl syllables, and the fourth foot is always dactyl. the fifth and final foot always contains a single spondee syllable.