Virgil's Aeneid did not use a rhyme scheme. Though the genre of the epic poem was very common during the ancient period, most epic poems did not...

Does an epic poem have to rhyme?

The epic, a subgenre of narrative poetry, does not have a particular rhyme scheme. ... Sometimes that style involves rhyme, but more often it doesn't -- perhaps because rhyme can sound sing-songy and detract from the serious mood of the poem.

What is the meter rhyme scheme of the epic?

English epics have long used the heroic couplet, which is made up of iambic pentameter with stressed and unstressed syllables, and also with an AA, BB, CC rhyme scheme. Longfellow dug back through history and dusted off the dactylic hexameter familiar from Greek and Latin epics.