Prosody (Latin)
Encyclopedia
Latin prosody deals with the science of Latin versification and its laws of meter. This article provides an overview of those laws as practised by Latin poets in the late Roman republic
and early Roman empire
, with verses by Catullus
, Horace
and Virgil
as models. Latin poets borrowed their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences in the two languages, and part of this article addresses the significant issues raised by that Greek heritage.
, at Rome in 240 BC. Livius translated Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, using meters that were basically those of Greek drama, modified to the needs of Latin. His successors Plautus
and Terence
further refined these theatrical borrowings, and their somewhat more flexible version of the meters of Greek drama set the standard for later Roman comic poets. The principles of scansion observed by Plautus and Terence are mostly the same as in classical Latin verse, with some exceptions. The traditional meter of Greek epic, the dactylic hexameter, was introduced into Latin literature by Ennius
(239-169 BC), virtually a contemporary of Livius, who substituted it for the jerky native Italic Saturnian meter in which Livius had attempted composing epic verses. Ennius moulded a poetic diction and style suited to the imported hexameter, providing a foundation for later poets to build on. The late republic saw the emergence of Neoteric Poets, notably Catullus. Rich young men from the Italian provinces, they were conscious of metropolitan sophistication and looked to the scholarly Alexandrian poet Callimachus
for inspiration. The Alexandrian's preference for short poems influenced Catullus to experiment with a variety of meters borrowed from Greece, including Aeolian
forms such as hendecasyllabic verse, the Sapphic stanza
and Greater Asclepiad
, as well as iambic verses such as the choliamb
and the iambic tetrameter catalectic
(a dialogue meter borrowed from Old Comedy). Horace
, whose career spanned both republic and empire, followed Catullus' lead in employing Greek lyrical forms. He identified in particular with Alcaeus of Mytilene, composing Alcaic stanzas, and with Archilochus
, composing poetic invectives in the Iambus
tradition (in which he adopted the metrical form of the Epode or 'Iambic Distich'). Horace also wrote verses in dactylic hexameter, employing a conversational and epistolary style. Virgil
, his contemporary, composed dactylic hexameters on light and serious themes and his verses are generally regarded as "the supreme metrical system of Latin literature."
Modern scholars have developed different theories about how Latin prosody was influenced by these adaptations from Greek models.
Latin, like English, was characterized by a stress accent, whereas ancient Greek was characterized by a pitch accent
. In English poetry, words are stressed to beat out the rhythm. In ancient Greek poetry, on the other hand, pitch accent
rose and fell independently of the rhythm, just as musical pitch isn't governed by the duration of musical notes. Some modern scholars have argued that the stress accent in Latin turned into a pitch accent under the Greek influence and thus Latin verse could have functioned in the melodic manner of Greek verse, yet most scholars today reject such a theory as unrealistic. Latin poets might instead have recited long and short syllables as if they were stressed and unstressed, or perhaps they gave words their natural stress and more or less disregarded the meter when reciting. Here for example is dactylic verse from Virgil's Georgics when the words are given their natural stress:
and here is the same verse when syllable length is allowed to determine the stress:
Thus, while Latin poets composed verses according to rules of syllable length, they probably retained a stress accent, yet it might or might not have been the word stress they were used to in daily speech. Possibly the Greek meter's presence was felt as an orderly undercurrent to natural speech, the rhythm being held in suspense until stress and meter happened to coincide (as in "sídere térram" above). English-speaking readers of Latin tend to observe the natural word stress, an approach to Latin verse that was also practised in ancient times (a fifth century A.D. papyrus shows hexameter verse with accents recorded separately from the meter), yet there is also an ancient precedent for letting the meter produce an artificial stress accent. However, in the hands of a master poet such as Vergil, the natural stress accent sometimes functions as a second rhythm, whose interplay with the quantitative rhythm is a source of unique aesthetic effects.
Otherwise syllables are counted as short durations, though a few exceptions to this rule may be found. For the above rules to apply
)In Greek, the terms Rise (Arsis) and Fall (Thesis) originally defined the movement of human feet in dancing and/or marching, with Arsis signifying the lifting of the foot, and Thesis signifying the placement of the footin the Greek scheme, Thesis was the dominant part of the meter, but the Romans changed the meaning, so that Arsis came to signify the lifting of the voice and thus the dominant part of the meter (William W. Goodwin, Greek Grammar, MacMillan Education (1894), page 348) or heavy and light
(a linguistic
term), or long and short, a convention followed here in this article. Sometimes the dominant part of the foot, in either quantitative or stressed verse, is call the ictus
.
Long and short syllables are marked (-) and (u) respectively. Thus the main feet in Latin are:
According to the laws of quantity, 1 long = 2 shorts (or 1 rise = 2 falls, or ¼ note = 2 x ⅛ notes). Thus a Tribrach, Iamb and Trochee all equate to the same durations or morae
: each of them comprises 3 morae. Similarly a Dactyl, an Anapaest and a Spondee are quantitavely equal, each being 4 morae. These equivalences allow for easy substitutions of one foot by another e.g. a spondee can be substituted for a dactyl. However, in certain circumstances, unequal substitutions are also permitted. Thus for example a 3 morae Trochee sometimes took the place of a 4 morae Spondee or Dactyl, as in the dactylic verse quoted from the Georgics above (sídere + térram = 4 morae + 3 morae).
. As an example: fémineó ululátú would usually be scanned as if it were fémineululátú, in seven sylables, but a poet can choose to pronounce fémineó ululátú with a pause between words, so that the phrase scans as eight syllables (this forced pause might also lengthen the final short vowel of the first word).
A word ending in vowel + m received the same treatment, but in this case it was called Ecthlipsis: thus O quantum est in rebus inane reads as O quant est in rebus inane.
The ending of a word and foot together is termed Diaresis and able poets avoided its overuse. The place where a word ends anywhere else in a foot is called a Caesura
('Cutting'), here marked (||):
There are two kinds of Caesuras:
Typically the caesura is metrically significant when it occurs near the middle of the line and correlates with a break of sense in the line, such as a punctuation mark. The caesura divides the line and allows the poet to vary the basic metrical pattern he is working with.
' and meter often takes the name of the scanned feet, such as Iambic, Trochaic, dactylic and Anaepestic meters. Sometimes meter is named after the subject matter (as in Epic or Heroic meter), sometimes after the musical instrument that accompanied the poetry (such as Lyric meter, accompanied by the lyre
), and sometimes according to the verse form (such as Sapphic
, Alcaic and Elegiac
meter).
was used for the most serious Latin verse. Influenced by Homer
's Greek
epics, dactylic hexameter was considered the best meter for weighty and important matters, and thus it was used in Virgil's Aeneid
, Ennius's
Annals, and Lucretius's
On The Nature of Things, and yet it was also used in Juvenal
's caustic satires and Horace
's genial Talks
and Letters.
Dactylic hexameter is composed of six feet per line. The first four feet may be Dactyls or Spondees, the fifth must be a Dactyl (rarely a Spondee), and the last is always a Spondee.According to the stress-timed theory of Latin prosody, there is a strong tendency to harmonize word-stress and verse-ictus in the final two feet of a hexameter. The fifth foot, therefore, is almost always a dactyl whereas the sixth foot consists of a spondee; this line ending is perhaps the most notable feature of the meter. In classical times, it was the only readily audible metrical feature, and Romans unfamiliar with Greek literature and versification often heard no sound pattern at all save in the stress-pattern of the last two feet (William Sidney Allen, Vox Latina: a Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press (2003) ISBN 0-521-37936-9, pages 86, 127). The list of possible substitutions of dactyls by other feet allows for considerable variety in the vocabulary that can be used in this meter. Since Latin was richer in long syllables than was Greek, resolution of Dactylic meter into Spondees was more common among Roman poets. Neoteric poets of the late republic, such as Catullus, sometimes even employed Dactyls in the fifth foot, a practice Greek poets generally avoided and which became rare among later Roman poets.
|-
|Variations
| 1st
| 2nd
| 3rd
| 4th
| 5th
| 6th
|-
| A
| — u u
| — u u
| — u u
| — u u
| — u u
| — —
|-
| B
| — —
| — —
| — —
| — —
|
|
|}
Note: In some schemes, the final syllable in the 6th foot is marked either long or short to reflect the natural syllable length but it is always long by position and it is therefore only marked long here.
By far the most common caesura in the dactylic hexameter occurs in the third foot (when it is called 'Penthemimeral'), next most often in the fourth foot ('Hephthemimeral'), and sometimes in the second ('Trihemimeral Caesura'). Dactylic hexameter often has a bucolic diaeresis (a diaeresis between the fourth and fifth feet of a line), as in one of the following lines from the introduction to Virgil's epic poem, Aeneid
.
Note the multiple elisions in line 3 and the bucolic diaresis in line 1 (quī | prīmus ). Venit and iram at the ends of lines 2 and 4 count as spondees by brevis in longo, despite their naturally short second syllables. The 'i' in 'Troiae' and 'iactatus', the first 'i' in 'Iunonis' and the second 'i' in 'Laviniaque' are all treated as consonants.
|-
|Variations
| 1st
| 2nd
| ½
| 3rd
| 4th
| ½
|-
| A
| — u u
| — u u
| —
| — u u
| — u u
| —
|-
| B
| — —
| — —
|
|
|
|
|}
Note: The principal caesura comes after the first half foot, breaking the line into two equal parts. As with dactylic hexameter, the final syllable is recorded as long or short in some schemes but it is always long by position.
In a series of elegiac couplets, the sense of the hexameter frequently runs into the pentameter line, a flow-on effect known as enjambment
, but the pentameter almost never runs into the longer line. The pentameter came into Latin usage later than did the hexameter and therefore it was not always handled with skill by Catullus, compared for example with the later poets Ovid
or Propertius. He often over-used elisions and sometimes he allowed an elision to span the central diaresis (e.g. Carmina 77.4). The following is one of his most famous elegies, mourning for a lost brother (Carmina 101).
Note the bucolic diaeresis in line 1 and the elisions in line 2 (o) and line 4 (am). The latter elision spans the central diaeresis in the last line. The plosive + liquid 'dl' in adloquerer is treated here as two consonants to make 'ad' a long syllable.
Sometimes a single hemiepes constitutes a line of verse, as in Horace's Carmina 4.7, where it forms couplets with the dactylic hexameter.
, such as Horace's Carmina 1.7 and 1.28, but also in Iambi
.
|-
|Variations
| 1st
| 2nd
| 3rd
| 4th
|-
| A
| — u u
| — u u
| — u u
| — —
|-
| B
|
| — —
|
|
|}
Note: the final syllable in the 4th foot is marked long or short in some schemes to indicate natural syllable length but it is always long by position
This meter is sometimes joined to the dactylic hexameter to form a couplet termed the First Archilochian
, named after the Iambic poet Archilochus
, as in the odes (carmina) mentioned above and here in Horace's Epode 12.
Note that the plosive + liquid combination pr in 'capreaeque', syllabified ca.pre.ae.que, leaves the first open syllable metrically short.
Poets such as Horace and Catuluus employed iambic feet in pairs, each called a metron, in which fewer substitutions were allowed. Such a line of verse has three metra and the meter in that case is called 'iambic trimeter'. Here is the list of substitutions found in Horace, which are more numerous than those in Catullus. (For the classification of the variations as anceps
[B], resolution
[C], and substitution, see iambic trimeter
.)
|-
|Variations
| 1a
| 1b
| 2a
| 2b
| 3a
| 3b
|-
| A
| u —
| u —
| u —
| u —
| u —
| u —
|-
| B
| — —
|
| — —
|
| — —
|
|-
| C
| uuu
| uuu
| uuu
| uuu
|
|
|-
| D
| —uu
|
|
|
|
|
|-
| E
| uu—
|
|
|
|
|
|}
The caesura usually follows the first syllable of the third foot (2a), and sometimes the first syllable of the fourth foot (2b). The following example is from Horace's Epode 5:
Note that long syllables are resolved into two shorts (uu) in the first metron (1a-1b), an effect that may have been intended to suggest the quick movement of tiny snakes that Canidia has tied to her hair. The second foot (1b) is read as a tribrach (uuu) since 'br' in 'brevibus' can be taken as one syllable, making the preceding 'a' short.
After the classical period, the pronunciation of Latin changed and the distinction between long and short vowels was lost in the popular language. Some authors continued writing verse in the classical meters, but this way of pronouncing long and short vowels was not natural to them; they used it only in poetry. Popular poetry, including the bulk of Christian Latin poetry, continued to be written in accentual meters (sometimes incorporating rhyme, which was never systematically used in classical verse) just like modern European languages. This accentual Latin verse was called sequentia
, especially when used for a Christian sacred subject.
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...
and early Roman empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, with verses by Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
, Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
and Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
as models. Latin poets borrowed their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences in the two languages, and part of this article addresses the significant issues raised by that Greek heritage.
A brief history
The start of Latin literature is conventionally dated to the first performance of a play in verse by a Greek slave, Livius AndronicusLivius Andronicus
Lucius Livius Andronicus , not to be confused with the later historian Livy, was a Greco-Roman dramatist and epic poet of the Old Latin period. He began as an educator in the service of a noble family at Rome by translating Greek works into Latin, including Homer’s Odyssey. They were meant at...
, at Rome in 240 BC. Livius translated Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, using meters that were basically those of Greek drama, modified to the needs of Latin. His successors Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
and Terence
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer , better known in English as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic, of North African descent. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on,...
further refined these theatrical borrowings, and their somewhat more flexible version of the meters of Greek drama set the standard for later Roman comic poets. The principles of scansion observed by Plautus and Terence are mostly the same as in classical Latin verse, with some exceptions. The traditional meter of Greek epic, the dactylic hexameter, was introduced into Latin literature by Ennius
Ennius
Quintus Ennius was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent...
(239-169 BC), virtually a contemporary of Livius, who substituted it for the jerky native Italic Saturnian meter in which Livius had attempted composing epic verses. Ennius moulded a poetic diction and style suited to the imported hexameter, providing a foundation for later poets to build on. The late republic saw the emergence of Neoteric Poets, notably Catullus. Rich young men from the Italian provinces, they were conscious of metropolitan sophistication and looked to the scholarly Alexandrian poet Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
for inspiration. The Alexandrian's preference for short poems influenced Catullus to experiment with a variety of meters borrowed from Greece, including Aeolian
Aeolic verse
Aeolic verse is a classification of Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed in their native Aeolic dialect...
forms such as hendecasyllabic verse, the Sapphic stanza
Sapphic stanza
The Sapphic stanza, named after Sappho, is an Aeolic verse form spanning four lines ....
and Greater Asclepiad
Asclepiad
Asclepiad may refer to:* A plant of the former family Asclepiadoideae* An Asclepiad , a type of metrical line used in lyric poetry* An Asclepiad , an ancient Greek title of uncertain profession, possibly, a physician or priest...
, as well as iambic verses such as the choliamb
Choliamb
Choliambic verse is a form of meter in poetry. It is found in both Greek and Latin poetry in the classical period. Choliambic verse is sometimes called scazon, or "lame iambic", because it brings the reader down on the wrong "foot" by reversing the stresses of the last few beats...
and the iambic tetrameter catalectic
Iambic tetrameter
Iambic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of four iambic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that there are four feet in the line; iambic tetrameter is a line comprising four iambs...
(a dialogue meter borrowed from Old Comedy). Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
, whose career spanned both republic and empire, followed Catullus' lead in employing Greek lyrical forms. He identified in particular with Alcaeus of Mytilene, composing Alcaic stanzas, and with Archilochus
Archilochus
Archilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...
, composing poetic invectives in the Iambus
Iambus (genre)
Iambus was a genre of ancient Greek poetry that included but was not restricted to the iambic meter and whose origins modern scholars have traced to the cults of Demeter and Dionysus. The genre featured insulting and obscene language...
tradition (in which he adopted the metrical form of the Epode or 'Iambic Distich'). Horace also wrote verses in dactylic hexameter, employing a conversational and epistolary style. Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, his contemporary, composed dactylic hexameters on light and serious themes and his verses are generally regarded as "the supreme metrical system of Latin literature."
Modern scholars have developed different theories about how Latin prosody was influenced by these adaptations from Greek models.
Two rhythms
English meter is said to be stress timed: the regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables produces an 'accentual rhythm'. Classical Greek meter is said to be mora timed: the alternation of long and short syllables produces a 'quantitative rhythm'. Latin meter obeyed rules of syllable length, like the Greek, but its rhythm might have been accentual, like the English.Latin, like English, was characterized by a stress accent, whereas ancient Greek was characterized by a pitch accent
Pitch accent
Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
. In English poetry, words are stressed to beat out the rhythm. In ancient Greek poetry, on the other hand, pitch accent
Pitch accent
Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
rose and fell independently of the rhythm, just as musical pitch isn't governed by the duration of musical notes. Some modern scholars have argued that the stress accent in Latin turned into a pitch accent under the Greek influence and thus Latin verse could have functioned in the melodic manner of Greek verse, yet most scholars today reject such a theory as unrealistic. Latin poets might instead have recited long and short syllables as if they were stressed and unstressed, or perhaps they gave words their natural stress and more or less disregarded the meter when reciting. Here for example is dactylic verse from Virgil's Georgics when the words are given their natural stress:
- quíd fáciat laétas ségetes, quó sídere térram,
and here is the same verse when syllable length is allowed to determine the stress:
- quíd faciát laetás segetés, quo sídere térram.
Thus, while Latin poets composed verses according to rules of syllable length, they probably retained a stress accent, yet it might or might not have been the word stress they were used to in daily speech. Possibly the Greek meter's presence was felt as an orderly undercurrent to natural speech, the rhythm being held in suspense until stress and meter happened to coincide (as in "sídere térram" above). English-speaking readers of Latin tend to observe the natural word stress, an approach to Latin verse that was also practised in ancient times (a fifth century A.D. papyrus shows hexameter verse with accents recorded separately from the meter), yet there is also an ancient precedent for letting the meter produce an artificial stress accent. However, in the hands of a master poet such as Vergil, the natural stress accent sometimes functions as a second rhythm, whose interplay with the quantitative rhythm is a source of unique aesthetic effects.
Quantity
Generally a syllable in Latin verse is counted as long when- it has a long vowel or diphthong (scrī-bae)
- it ends in two consonants or a compound consonant (dant, dux)
- it ends in a single consonant followed by a syllable that begins with a consonant (mul-tos); Note: The consonants in a following word can also make a syllable long by position (dat sonitum).
- it is the final syllable in a line of verse i.e. brevis in longoBrevis in longoIn Greek and Latin meter, a short syllable at the end of a line can be counted as long; this phenomenon is known as brevis in longo.The term comes from Latin, and means "a short [syllable] in place of a long [syllable]." Brevis in longo is possible in any classical meter that requires a long...
(this also is said to be "long by position").
Otherwise syllables are counted as short durations, though a few exceptions to this rule may be found. For the above rules to apply
- h, and the u in qu and gu, do not count as consonants; thus the digraphs ch, qu, th, and ph, and the gv in sangvis, etc., count as one consonant.
- the double consonants x, z, and intervocalic i (e.g. eius, huius) always count as two consonants (thus for example e in eius is pronounced long).
- A plosive (p,b,t,d,c,g) plus a liquidLiquid consonantIn phonetics, liquids or liquid consonants are a class of consonants consisting of lateral consonants together with rhotics.-Description:...
(r,l) can make the preceding syllable long by position (with the two consonants divided between the two syllables) or not (with the two consonants treated as part of the following syllable), at the discretion of the poet. At the beginning of a word, the combination always forms part of the following syllable; where two elements are joined by composition, the consonants remain separate. Thus in triplex, tr do not make position, and pl can be treated either way. Ab-rumpo, on the other hand, begins with a long syllable and will not be resyllabified a-brumpo.
Feet
A verse comprises 'feet'. The metrically dominant part of the foot is sometimes called the 'Rise' and the other is called the 'Fall', but they also have the names 'Arsis' and 'Thesis' (borrowed from the GreeksAncient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
)In Greek, the terms Rise (Arsis) and Fall (Thesis) originally defined the movement of human feet in dancing and/or marching, with Arsis signifying the lifting of the foot, and Thesis signifying the placement of the footin the Greek scheme, Thesis was the dominant part of the meter, but the Romans changed the meaning, so that Arsis came to signify the lifting of the voice and thus the dominant part of the meter (William W. Goodwin, Greek Grammar, MacMillan Education (1894), page 348) or heavy and light
Syllable weight
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical poetry, both Greek and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line....
(a linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
term), or long and short, a convention followed here in this article. Sometimes the dominant part of the foot, in either quantitative or stressed verse, is call the ictus
Ictus
-Medicine:*ictus, a sudden event such as a stroke, seizure, collapse, or faint-Music and poetry:*ictus, in music and conducting, the instant when a beat occurs*ictus, in poetry, a way of indicating a stressed syllable...
.
Long and short syllables are marked (-) and (u) respectively. Thus the main feet in Latin are:
- Iamb: 1 short + 1 long syllable (cărō)
- Trochee: 1 long + 1 short (mēnsă)
- Dactyl: 1 long + 2 shorts (lītŏră)
- Anapaest: 2 shorts + 1 long (pătŭlaē)
- Spondee: 2 longs (fātō)
- Tribrach: 3 shorts (tĕmĕrĕ)
According to the laws of quantity, 1 long = 2 shorts (or 1 rise = 2 falls, or ¼ note = 2 x ⅛ notes). Thus a Tribrach, Iamb and Trochee all equate to the same durations or morae
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
: each of them comprises 3 morae. Similarly a Dactyl, an Anapaest and a Spondee are quantitavely equal, each being 4 morae. These equivalences allow for easy substitutions of one foot by another e.g. a spondee can be substituted for a dactyl. However, in certain circumstances, unequal substitutions are also permitted. Thus for example a 3 morae Trochee sometimes took the place of a 4 morae Spondee or Dactyl, as in the dactylic verse quoted from the Georgics above (sídere + térram = 4 morae + 3 morae).
Elision
A vowel at the end of a word did not count as a syllable if the following word began with a vowel, and this is called 'elision': thus Phyllida amo ante alias reads as Phyllid am ant alias. At the discretion of the poet, however, the vowel can be retained. An unelided vowel in that situation is said to be in HiatusHiatus
Hiatus may refer to:*Recess *Hiatus, a small difference in pitch between two musical tones *Hiatus , a phonological term referring to the lack of a consonant separating two vowels in separate syllables, as in co-operation*Hiatus , a break of several weeks or more in television scheduling*Hiatus...
. As an example: fémineó ululátú would usually be scanned as if it were fémineululátú, in seven sylables, but a poet can choose to pronounce fémineó ululátú with a pause between words, so that the phrase scans as eight syllables (this forced pause might also lengthen the final short vowel of the first word).
A word ending in vowel + m received the same treatment, but in this case it was called Ecthlipsis: thus O quantum est in rebus inane reads as O quant est in rebus inane.
Caesura
The last syllable of a foot might or might not coincide with the ending of a word. A too frequent repetition of this coincidence grated on the Roman ear, as in the following example of poorly composed dactylic meter, where each vertical line | indicates the end of a foot, and where spondees are repeatedly substituted for dactyls:- spārsīs| hāstīs | lōngīs| cāmpūs | splēndĕt ĕt | hōrrĕt.
The ending of a word and foot together is termed Diaresis and able poets avoided its overuse. The place where a word ends anywhere else in a foot is called a Caesura
Caesura
thumb|100px|An example of a caesura in modern western music notation.In meter, a caesura is a complete pause in a line of poetry or in a musical composition. The plural form of caesura is caesuras or caesurae...
('Cutting'), here marked (||):
- Tīty̆rĕ| tū || pătŭ|laē || rĕcŭ|bāns || sūb | tēgmĭnĕ | fāgī
There are two kinds of Caesuras:
- long Caesura (the most common kind), when the Caesura occurs after a long syllable;
- weak Caesura, when the Caesura occurs after a short syllable (none in the above line).
Typically the caesura is metrically significant when it occurs near the middle of the line and correlates with a break of sense in the line, such as a punctuation mark. The caesura divides the line and allows the poet to vary the basic metrical pattern he is working with.
Meters
The dividing of verse according to feet is termed 'scanning' or 'scansionScansion
Scansion is the act of determining and graphically representing the metrical character of a line of verse.-Overview:Systems of scansion, and the assumptions that underlie them, are so numerous and contradictory that it is often difficult to tell whether differences in scansion indicate opposed...
' and meter often takes the name of the scanned feet, such as Iambic, Trochaic, dactylic and Anaepestic meters. Sometimes meter is named after the subject matter (as in Epic or Heroic meter), sometimes after the musical instrument that accompanied the poetry (such as Lyric meter, accompanied by the lyre
Lyre
The lyre is a stringed musical instrument known for its use in Greek classical antiquity and later. The word comes from the Greek "λύρα" and the earliest reference to the word is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists", written in Linear B syllabic script...
), and sometimes according to the verse form (such as Sapphic
Sapphic stanza
The Sapphic stanza, named after Sappho, is an Aeolic verse form spanning four lines ....
, Alcaic and Elegiac
Elegy
In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...
meter).
Guide to symbols used
- — for long syllable
- u for short syllable
- ῡ for brevis in longo
- | for end of foot
- ‖ main caesura
- Note: words are hyphenated wherever they include the end of a foot.
Dactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameterDactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin, and was consequently considered to be the Grand Style of classical poetry...
was used for the most serious Latin verse. Influenced by Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
epics, dactylic hexameter was considered the best meter for weighty and important matters, and thus it was used in Virgil's Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
, Ennius's
Ennius
Quintus Ennius was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent...
Annals, and Lucretius's
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is an epic philosophical poem laying out the beliefs of Epicureanism, De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe".Virtually no details have come down concerning...
On The Nature of Things, and yet it was also used in Juvenal
Juvenal
The Satires are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD.Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a...
's caustic satires and Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
's genial Talks
Satires (Horace)
The Satires are a collection of satirical poems written by the Roman poet Horace. Composed in dactylic hexameters, the Satires explore the secrets of human happiness and literary perfection...
and Letters.
Dactylic hexameter is composed of six feet per line. The first four feet may be Dactyls or Spondees, the fifth must be a Dactyl (rarely a Spondee), and the last is always a Spondee.According to the stress-timed theory of Latin prosody, there is a strong tendency to harmonize word-stress and verse-ictus in the final two feet of a hexameter. The fifth foot, therefore, is almost always a dactyl whereas the sixth foot consists of a spondee; this line ending is perhaps the most notable feature of the meter. In classical times, it was the only readily audible metrical feature, and Romans unfamiliar with Greek literature and versification often heard no sound pattern at all save in the stress-pattern of the last two feet (William Sidney Allen, Vox Latina: a Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press (2003) ISBN 0-521-37936-9, pages 86, 127). The list of possible substitutions of dactyls by other feet allows for considerable variety in the vocabulary that can be used in this meter. Since Latin was richer in long syllables than was Greek, resolution of Dactylic meter into Spondees was more common among Roman poets. Neoteric poets of the late republic, such as Catullus, sometimes even employed Dactyls in the fifth foot, a practice Greek poets generally avoided and which became rare among later Roman poets.
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Note: In some schemes, the final syllable in the 6th foot is marked either long or short to reflect the natural syllable length but it is always long by position and it is therefore only marked long here.
By far the most common caesura in the dactylic hexameter occurs in the third foot (when it is called 'Penthemimeral'), next most often in the fourth foot ('Hephthemimeral'), and sometimes in the second ('Trihemimeral Caesura'). Dactylic hexameter often has a bucolic diaeresis (a diaeresis between the fourth and fifth feet of a line), as in one of the following lines from the introduction to Virgil's epic poem, Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
.
- u u| - u u| -|| -| - -| - u u |- -
Ārmă vĭ-rŭmquĕ că-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmŭs ăb ōrīs
- u u|- -| - || u u| - -| - u u| - ῡ
Ītălĭ-ǎm fā-tō prŏfŭ-gŭs Lā-vīniăquĕ vēnĭt
- u u | - - | - - | - || - | - u u |- -
lītŏră, mŭlt(um) ĭl-l(e) ĕt tĕr-rīs iăc-tātŭs ĕt ăltō
- u u| - || - | - u u| - -| - u u |- ῡ
vī sŭpĕ-rŭm, sae-vae mĕmŏ-rĕm Iū-nōnĭs ŏb īrăm;
Note the multiple elisions in line 3 and the bucolic diaresis in line 1 (quī | prīmus ). Venit and iram at the ends of lines 2 and 4 count as spondees by brevis in longo, despite their naturally short second syllables. The 'i' in 'Troiae' and 'iactatus', the first 'i' in 'Iunonis' and the second 'i' in 'Laviniaque' are all treated as consonants.
dactylic pentameter
The dactylic hexameter was often coupled with a pentameter to produce elegiac couplets. The term 'pentameter' however is in some ways a misnomer, since the pentameter line actually comprised two units, each made of two and a half feet. Each unit is named a hemiepes and an emphatic diaresis divides the two hemiepes. The 3rd and fourth foot are strictly dactylic and the first ½ foot is always a long syllable.-
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Note: The principal caesura comes after the first half foot, breaking the line into two equal parts. As with dactylic hexameter, the final syllable is recorded as long or short in some schemes but it is always long by position.
In a series of elegiac couplets, the sense of the hexameter frequently runs into the pentameter line, a flow-on effect known as enjambment
Enjambment
Enjambment or enjambement is the breaking of a syntactic unit by the end of a line or between two verses. It is to be contrasted with end-stopping, where each linguistic unit corresponds with a single line, and caesura, in which the linguistic unit ends mid-line...
, but the pentameter almost never runs into the longer line. The pentameter came into Latin usage later than did the hexameter and therefore it was not always handled with skill by Catullus, compared for example with the later poets Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
or Propertius. He often over-used elisions and sometimes he allowed an elision to span the central diaresis (e.g. Carmina 77.4). The following is one of his most famous elegies, mourning for a lost brother (Carmina 101).
- - | - - | - ||- | - u u | - u u| - ῡ
Mŭltās-pĕr gĕn-tēs ĕt mŭltă pĕr aequŏră vĕctŭs
- u u | - u u |- || - u u |- u u|-
ădvĕnĭ(o) hās mĭsĕr-ās, frātĕr, ăd ĭnfĕrī-ās
- -| - -| -||- |- - | - u u| - ῡ
ŭt tē pŏstrē-mō dōn-ārĕm mūnĕrĕ mŏrtĭs
- -| - -| - || - u u| - u u|ῡ
ĕt mū-tăm ne-quīqu-(am) adlŏquĕ-rĕr cĭnĕrĕm,
Note the bucolic diaeresis in line 1 and the elisions in line 2 (o) and line 4 (am). The latter elision spans the central diaeresis in the last line. The plosive + liquid 'dl' in adloquerer is treated here as two consonants to make 'ad' a long syllable.
Sometimes a single hemiepes constitutes a line of verse, as in Horace's Carmina 4.7, where it forms couplets with the dactylic hexameter.
Dactylic tetrameter catalectic
Most extant examples of this meter are found in Lyric poetryLyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
, such as Horace's Carmina 1.7 and 1.28, but also in Iambi
Iambus (genre)
Iambus was a genre of ancient Greek poetry that included but was not restricted to the iambic meter and whose origins modern scholars have traced to the cults of Demeter and Dionysus. The genre featured insulting and obscene language...
.
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Note: the final syllable in the 4th foot is marked long or short in some schemes to indicate natural syllable length but it is always long by position
This meter is sometimes joined to the dactylic hexameter to form a couplet termed the First Archilochian
Archilochian
Archilochian or archilochean is a term used in the metrical analysis of Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The name is derived from Archilochus, whose poetry first uses the rhythms.-In Greek verse:...
, named after the Iambic poet Archilochus
Archilochus
Archilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...
, as in the odes (carmina) mentioned above and here in Horace's Epode 12.
- u u | - - |- || - | - u u |- u u | - -
Ō ĕgŏ | nōn fēl-ĭx, quăm tū fŭgĭs ŭt păvĕt ācrīs
- u u| - u u| - u u|- -
ăgnă lŭ-pōs căprĕ-aēquĕ lĕ-ōnēs
Note that the plosive + liquid combination pr in 'capreaeque', syllabified ca.pre.ae.que, leaves the first open syllable metrically short.
Iambic trimeter and Senarius
Used for the theatre by poets such as Plautus and Terence, an iambic line of six feet allowed for numerous substitutions (see Theatrical meters below). In that case, it is known as a Senarius.Poets such as Horace and Catuluus employed iambic feet in pairs, each called a metron, in which fewer substitutions were allowed. Such a line of verse has three metra and the meter in that case is called 'iambic trimeter'. Here is the list of substitutions found in Horace, which are more numerous than those in Catullus. (For the classification of the variations as anceps
Anceps
In Greek and Latin meter, an anceps syllable is a syllable in a metrical line which can be either short or long. An anceps syllable may be called "free" or "irrational" depending on the type of meter being discussed....
[B], resolution
Resolution (meter)
Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in classical poetry of replacing a longum with two brevia. It is generally found in Greek lyric poetry and in Greek and Roman drama, most frequently in comedy....
[C], and substitution, see iambic trimeter
Iambic trimeter
iambic trimeter is a meter of poetry consisting of three iambic units per line.In ancient Greek poetry, iambic trimeter is a quantitative meter, in which a line consisted of three iambic metra and each metron consisted of two iambi...
.)
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The caesura usually follows the first syllable of the third foot (2a), and sometimes the first syllable of the fourth foot (2b). The following example is from Horace's Epode 5:
- u u |u u u| u|| - | u - |u - |u - |
Cānĭdĭ-ă brĕvi-bus ĭmp-lĭcāt-ă vīp-ĕrīs
Note that long syllables are resolved into two shorts (uu) in the first metron (1a-1b), an effect that may have been intended to suggest the quick movement of tiny snakes that Canidia has tied to her hair. The second foot (1b) is read as a tribrach (uuu) since 'br' in 'brevibus' can be taken as one syllable, making the preceding 'a' short.
Post-classical poetry
The above versification, based in heavy and light syllables, was applied only to learned poetry, made by Latin poets of the classical period in imitation of Greek models. The metrics of popular songs, popular poetry, military marches and so on was based on accents.After the classical period, the pronunciation of Latin changed and the distinction between long and short vowels was lost in the popular language. Some authors continued writing verse in the classical meters, but this way of pronouncing long and short vowels was not natural to them; they used it only in poetry. Popular poetry, including the bulk of Christian Latin poetry, continued to be written in accentual meters (sometimes incorporating rhyme, which was never systematically used in classical verse) just like modern European languages. This accentual Latin verse was called sequentia
Sequence (poetry)
A sequence is a chant or hymn sung or recited during the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist for many Christian denominations, before the proclamation of the Gospel. By the time of the Council of Trent there were sequences for many feasts in the Church's year.The sequence has always been sung...
, especially when used for a Christian sacred subject.