Heroic verse is a term that may be used to designate epic poems, but which is more usually used to describe the meter(s) in which those poems are most typically written (regardless of whether the content is "heroic" or not). Because the meter typically used to narrate heroic deeds differs by language and even within language by period, the specific meaning of "heroic verse" is dependent upon context.

The oldest Greek verseform, and the Greek line for heroic verse, is the dactylic hexameter, which was already well-established in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C.E. when the Iliad and Odyssey were composed in this meter.

The Saturnian was used in Latin epics of the 3rd century B.C.E., but few examples remain and the meter is little understood. Beginning at least with Ennius (239–169 B.C.E.) dactylic hexameter was introduced in imitation of the Greeks, thereafter becoming the Latin heroic meter.

The Greek/Roman dactylic hexameter exerted a huge influence over the subsequent poetic practice of much of Europe, whether by the new accentual verseforms it evolved into (as the medieval riming leonine verse), by attempts at reviving it either quantitatively or accentually (as by Alberti, Stanyhurst, Klopstock, Longfellow, Bridges, and many others), or simply as an ideal of what a nation's heroic verse should aspire to.

Alliterative verse (as exemplified by Beowulf) was the heroic verse of Old English, as, in several closely related forms, it was for all Germanic languages more or less during the first millennium C.E.

Then that sorry soul   suffered awhile,
most miserably,   he who in murk lingered.
Alone he listened   to the delight each day,
human happiness,   the hall loud with glee;
sweet was the singing,   sound of harping.

— Beowulf: An Imitative Translation, lines 86-90

The Alliterative Revival (mainly of the 14th century) likely constituted a continuation (though in evolved form) of the earlier tradition. However, around 1380 Geoffrey Chaucer developed the English iambic pentameter, based chiefly on the Italian endecasillabo and composed chiefly in couplets or in rime royal. Although Chaucer's practice was largely preserved to the north by the Scottish Chaucerians (James I of Scotland, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas), in England itself changes in pronunciation or taste soon rendered Chaucer's technique extinct, and iambic pentameter disappeared for over 100 years.