The life of the Latin elegiac distich spans over a very long period of time, from its importation in Rome in II century B.C. to the late antiquity, to the Middle Ages and beyond. This study is based on almost all the available data from the elegiac Latin poetry from Catullus to Venantius Fortunatus and offers a new reconstruction of the main lines of the evolution of the Latin elegiac distich in the first eight centuries of its history.