Classical poets are the major poets of ancient Greece and Rome whose work became a model for later writers. Figures such as Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid helped shape ideas about epic, lyric, satire, and the proper use of form, balance, and restraint.
In literary study, the phrase can also point to poets who write in a classical style, but it most often means the poets of the classical ancient world.
Example
Students of poetry still turn to Homer for epic scale, to Horace for polished lyric, and to Ovid for inventive myth-making, all hallmarks of the classical poets.