Dactylic hexameter

Template:Short description Template:Further Template:More citations needed Template:Greek and Latin metre

Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter used in Ancient Greek epic and didactic poetryTemplate:R as well as in epic, didactic, satirical, and pastoral Latin poetryTemplate:R. Its name is derived from Greek {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Grc-transl, "finger") and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Grc-transl, "six").

Dactylic hexameter consists of six feet. The first five feet contain either two long syllables, a spondee (– –), or a long syllable followed by two short syllables, a dactyl (–ᴗᴗ). However, the last foot contains either a spondee or a long syllable followed by one short syllable, a trochee(– ᴗ)Template:R Template:R. The six feet and their variation is symbolically represented below:

1	\|	2	\|	3	\|	4	\|	5	\|	6
– ᴗ ᴗ	\|	– ᴗ ᴗ	\|	– ᴗ ᴗ	\|	– ᴗ ᴗ	\|	– ᴗ ᴗ	\|	– x

The hexameter is traditionally associated with classical epic poetry in both Greek Template:R Template:R and Latin. Consequently, it has been considered to be the grand style of Western classical poetry. Examples of epics in hexameter are Homer's Iliad and OdysseyTemplate:R, Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica, Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lucan's Pharsalia, Valerius Flaccus's Argonautica, and Statius's Thebaid.

However, this meter had a wide use outside of epic. Greek works in dactylic hexameter include Hesiod's didactic Works and Days and TheogonyTemplate:R, some of Theocritus's Idylls, and Callimachus's hymns. In Latin famous works include Lucretius's philosophical {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics, book 10 of Columella's manual on agriculture, as well as satirical works of Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. Later the hexameter continued to be used in Christian times, for example in the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} of the 5th-century Irish poet Sedulius and Bernard of Cluny's 12th-century satire {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} among many othersTemplate:Cn.

Hexameters also form part of elegiac poetry in both languages, the elegiac couplet being a dactylic hexameter line paired with a dactylic pentameter lineTemplate:R Template:R. This form of verse was used for love poetry by Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, for Ovid's letters from exile, and for many of the epigrams of Martial Template:Cn.

StructureEdit

The most fundamental structure of dactylic hexameter poetry is a lineTemplate:R. Lines are further divided into feet, and feet are divided into syllablesTemplate:R.

FeetEdit

A hexameter verse contains six feet Template:R Template:R Template:R. The first five feet can be either a dactyl or a spondee Template:R Template:R Template:R. However, because Latin is much richer in long syllables than Greek, spondaic feet are more common in Latin hexameterTemplate:R. In both Greek and Latin hexameter the fifth feet is usually a dactyl, and a spondee is also rare in the third feet in Greek hexameterTemplate:R Template:R. The sixth foot can be filled by either a trochee or a spondeeTemplate:R Template:R. Thus a dactylic hexameter line is scanned as follows:

– ᴗ ᴗ | – ᴗ ᴗ | – ᴗ ᴗ | – ᴗ ᴗ | – ᴗ ᴗ | – x

An example of this in Latin is the first line of Virgil's AeneidTemplate:R:

"I sing of arms, and of the man who first from the shores of Troy ..."

The scansion is generally marked as follows, by placing long and short marks above the central vowel of each syllable:

–  u  u  |  –   u  u  |  –   –  |  –    – |   – u  u  | – –
ar ma vi | rum que ca | nō Troj | jae quī | prī mu sa | bō rīs
 dactyl  |   dactyl   | spondee | spondee |  dactyl   | spondee

In dactylic verse, short syllables always come in pairs, so words such as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} "soldiers" or {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} "more easily" cannot be used in a hexameterTemplate:Cn.

SyllablesEdit

Unlike English verse, which is based on stress, ancient Greek and Latin poetry is based on the length, i.e. relative duration, of a syllableTemplate:R Template:R Template:R. In scansion only the sounds are meaningful, and word boundaries do not matterTemplate:R Template:R.

In Greek, a long syllable is {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Grc-transl) and a short syllable is {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Grc-transl).<ref>Liddell, Scott, Jones, Greek Lexicon s.v. συλλαβή Template:Webarchive.</ref> In Latin the terms are {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, s.v. syllaba Template:Webarchive.</ref>

GreekEdit

In Greek a syllable is long if it contains a long vowel or a dipthong or two consonants follow the vowel(s) of the syllableTemplate:R Template:R Template:R. That is to say, a syllable with a short vowel is scanned as long if contains a long vowel or a dipthong or if it is closed; and a syllable is closed only if it ends with a consonant, otherwise it is openTemplate:R.

For example, all syllables in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} are longTemplate:R. However, there are many exceptions to simple rules mentioned aboveTemplate:R, as a matter of fact too many to be listed here.

LatinEdit

In Latin a syllable is long (by nature) if it contains a long vowel or a dipthongTemplate:R Template:R and long (by position) if it contains a short vowel followed by two consonants, even if these are in different wordsTemplate:R. For example, all syllables in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} are long by nature, whereas {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} are long by position.

However, when a liquid -- l or r -- follows a plosive, a syllable containing a short vowel may remain short by positionTemplate:R. For example, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} could be scanned either as having a short first syllable {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} or as having a long first syllable {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}Template:R.

In scansion the letter h is ignoredTemplate:R, and qu counts as a single consonantTemplate:R. So, for example in the phrase {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} the syllable et remains short, and in the word {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} the first syllable remains short too.

The semiconsonantal i and u are scanned as consonantsTemplate:R. For example, in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, i is considered a consonant, pronounced like the English y. Thus {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} has three syllables and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} has two. But, in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} the first I is a vowel and forms a separate syllableTemplate:R. Additionally, an i between two or more vowels stands almost without exception for a double consonantTemplate:R; so, for example {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, standing for {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} has two syllablesTemplate:R.

In some editions of Latin texts the consonant v is written as u, in which case u is also often consonantal. This can sometimes cause ambiguity; e.g., in the word {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (= {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) "he rolls" the second u is a consonant, but in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (= {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) "he wanted" the second u is a vowel.

ElisionEdit

In Latin, when a word ends in a vowel or -m and is followed by a word starting with a vowel or h, the last vowel is usually suppressed or elided Template:R. For example, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}Template:R.

In Greek, short vowels elide freelyTemplate:R; however, long vowels are not elided, though they may be shortened in some casesTemplate:R: E.g. {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Grc-transl).

In modern Greek writing the elision is shown by an apostrophe. For example:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}

Template:Grc-transl
which caused countless sufferings for the Achaeans{{#if:HomerIliad, 1.2|{{#if:|}}

— {{#if:|, in }}Template:Comma separated entries
}}

{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:Blockquote with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|ignoreblank=y| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | author | by | char | character | cite | class | content | multiline | personquoted | publication | quote | quotesource | quotetext | sign | source | style | text | title | ts }}

The Greek style of not eliding a long vowel is sometimes imitated in Latin for special effect, for example, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} "with womanly wailing" (Aen. 9.477)Template:Cn.<ref>Raven (1965), p. 101.</ref>

When a vowel is elided, it does not count in the scansionTemplate:R. So, for the purposes of scansion, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} has four syllables.

CaesuraEdit

Caesura is a word break in the middle of a foot or metronTemplate:R. In Greek hexameter there must be a caesura after i) the first syllable of the 3rd foot, a strong or masculine caesura, ii) the second syllable of a dactyl in the 3rd foot, a weak or feminine caesura, or iii) the first syllable of the 4th footTemplate:R; the first two being much more common than the lastTemplate:R Template:R Template:R. In Latin hexameter the weak caesura is rarer than in Greek hexameterTemplate:R. On the one hand, in Virgil the strong caesura is found in ca. 85% of the timeTemplate:R.

An example of a weak caesura can be found from the first line of Homer's OdysseyTemplate:R:

Template:Grc-transl

"Tell me, Muse, of the man of many wiles, who very much"

And an example of a strong caesura follows on the next line of OdysseyTemplate:R:

Template:Grc-transl

"wandered, after having sacked the sacred citadel of Troy."

In Latin (but not in Greek, as the above example shows), a feminine caesura in the 3rd foot is usually accompanied with masculine caesuras in the 2nd and especially in the 4th feetTemplate:R:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}Template:R

"You are bidding me, o queen, to renew an unspeakable sorrow"

Sometimes caesuras in the 2nd and 4th feet of a line make do, and there is no caesura in the 3rd footTemplate:R. For example:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}Template:R

"then from his high couch Father Aeneas began as follows"

In GreekEdit

The hexameter was first used by early Greek poets of the oral tradition, and the most complete extant examples of their works are the Iliad and the Odyssey, which influenced the authors of all later classical epics that survive today. Early epic poetry was also accompanied by music, and pitch changes associated with the accented Greek must have highlighted the melody, though the exact mechanism is still a topic of discussion.<ref>Cf. Alan Shaw's 1997 essay Some Questions on Greek Poetry and Music. Electronic Book Review. 1 March 1997. Retrieved 19 May 2017. Archived page (January 25, 2022)</ref>

The first line of Homer's Iliad provides an example:

Template:Grc-transl

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles"

Dividing the line into metrical units or feet it can be scanned as follows:

Template:Grc-tr (-deō is one syllable)

— ∪ ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — — | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — —

This line also includes a masculine caesura after {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, a break that separates the line into two parts. Homer employs a feminine caesura more commonly than later writers<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>. An example occurs in Iliad 1.5:

"... and every bird; and the plan of Zeus was fulfilled"

Template:Grc-tr

— — | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪, ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — —

Homer's hexameters contain a higher proportion of dactyls than later hexameter poetryTemplate:Cn. They are also characterised by a laxer following of verse principles than later epicists almost invariably adhered toTemplate:Cn. For example, Homer allows spondaic fifth feet (albeit not often), whereas many later authors do notTemplate:Cn.

Homer also altered the forms of words to allow them to fit the hexameter, typically by using a dialectal form: ptolis is an epic form used instead of the Attic polis as necessary for the meterTemplate:Cn. Proper names sometimes take forms to fit the meter, for example Pouludamas instead of the metrically unviable Poludamas.

Some lines require a knowledge of the digamma for their scansion, e.g. Iliad 1.108:

Template:Grc-tr

"you have not yet spoken a good word nor brought one to pass"

Template:Grc-tr

— — | — ∪ ∪ | — — | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — —

Here the word {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (epos) was originally {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (wepos) in Ionian; the digamma, later lost, lengthened the last syllable of the preceding {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (eipas) and removed the apparent defect in the meter. A digamma also saved the hiatus in the third foot. This example demonstrates the oral tradition of the Homeric epics that flourished before they were written down sometime in the 7th century BCTemplate:Cn.

Most of the later rules of hexameter composition have their origins in the methods and practices of HomerTemplate:Cn.

In LatinEdit

File:AENEIS.png

Diagramming of the opening lines of the Aeneid

The dactylic hexameter was adapted from Greek to LatinTemplate:R. Though the metre was taken from Greek unaltered, the Latin language has a higher proportion of long syllables than Greek, and so it is by nature more spondaicTemplate:R. Additionally, the Roman poets did not avoid the weak caesura in the fourth foot as much as the Greeks didTemplate:R.

EnniusEdit

The earliest example of hexameter in Latin poetry is the panegyric history of Rome, Annales, by Ennius Template:R, establishing a standard for later Latin epics. Ennius experimented with different kinds of linesTemplate:Cn, for example, lines with five dactyls:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Ennius ap. Prisc. p. 842 P. (Ann. v. 452 Vahl.)</ref>

"Then the trumpet with terrifying sound went 'taratantara!'"

or lines consisting entirely of spondees:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Ennius, Annales 1.31.</ref>

"To him replied the king of Alba Longa"

lines without a caesuraTemplate:R:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Ennius, Varia 14V.</ref>

"With scattered long spears the plain gleams and bristles"

lines ending in a one-syllable word or in words of more than three syllablesTemplate:R:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Ennius Annales 370.</ref>

"A single man, by delaying, restored the situation for us."

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Ennius, Annales 194–5.</ref>

"I do not demand gold for myself nor should you give me a price:

not buying and selling war, but waging it"

or even lines starting with two short syllablesTemplate:R:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Ennius, Varia 42V.</ref>

| u u – | – – | –, u u | – – | – u u | – –

"the blacktail, the rainbow wrasse, the bird wrasse, and the maigre" (kinds of fish)

However, most of these features were abandoned by later writers or used only occasionally for special effectTemplate:Cn.

Later writersEdit

Later Republican writers, such as Lucretius, Catullus, and even Cicero, wrote hexameter compositions, and it was at this time that the principles of Latin hexameter were firmly established and followed by later writers such as Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and Juvenal Template:Cn. Virgil's opening line for the Aeneid is a classic example:

"I sing of arms and of the man who first from the shores of Troy ..."

In Latin, lines were arranged so that the metrically long syllables —- those occurring at the beginning of a foot -— often avoided the natural stress of a word. In the earlier feet of a line, meter and stress were expected to clash, while in the last two feet they were expected to coincide, as in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} above. The coincidence of word accent and meter in the last two feet could be achieved by restricting the last word to one of two or three syllables.<ref>Raven (1965), pp. 98–101.</ref>

Most lines (about 85% in Virgil)Template:Cn have a caesura or word division after the first syllable of the 3rd foot, as above {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. Because of the penultimate accent in Latin, this ensures that the word accent and meter will not coincide in the 3rd foot. But in those lines with a feminine or weak caesura, such as the following, there is inevitably a coincidence of meter and accent in the 3rd footTemplate:R:

"there follows shouting of men and rattling of ropes"

To offset this, whenever there was a feminine caesura in the 3rd foot, there was usually also a masculine caesura in the 2nd and 4th feet, to ensure that in those feet at least, the word accent and meter did not coincide.

Metrical effectsEdit

By the age of Augustus, poets like Virgil closely followed the rules of the meter and approached it in a highly rhetorical way, looking for effects that can be exploited in skilled recitationTemplate:Cn. For example, the following line from the Aeneid (8.596) describes the movement and sound of galloping horses:

"with four-footed sound the hoof shakes the crumbling plain"

This line is made up of five dactyls and a closing spondee, an unusual rhythmic arrangement that imitates the described action. A different effect is found in 8.452, where Virgil describes how the blacksmith sons of Vulcan forged Aeneas' shield. The five spondees and the word accents cutting across the verse rhythm give an impression of huge effort:

"They with much force raise their arms one after another"

A slightly different effect is found in the following line (3.658), describing the terrifying one-eyed giant Polyphemus, blinded by Ulysses. Here again there are five spondees but there are also three elisions, which cause the word accent of all the words but {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} to coincide with the beginning of each foot:

"A horrendous huge shapeless monster, whose eye (lit. light) had been removed"

A succession of long syllables in some lines indicates slow movement, as in the following example where Aeneas and his companion the Sibyl (a priestess of Apollo) were entering the darkness of the world of the dead:

"they were going in the darkness beneath the lonely night through the shadow"

The following example (Aeneid 2.9) describes how Aeneas is reluctant to begin his narrative, since it is already past midnight. The feminine caesura after {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} without a following 4th-foot caesura ensures that all the last four feet have word accent at the beginning, which is unusual.<ref name=Raven98>Raven (1965), p. 98.</ref> The monotonous effect is reinforced by the assonance of dent ... dent and the alliteration of S ... S:

"And already the moist night is falling from the sky

and the setting constellations are inviting sleep"

Dactyls are associated with sleep again in the following unusual line, which describes the activity of a priestess who is feeding a magic serpent (Aen. 4.486). In this line, there are five dactyls, and every one is accented on the first syllable:

"sprinkling moist honey and sleep-inducing poppy"

A different technique, at 1.105, is used when describing a ship at sea during a storm. Here Virgil places a single-syllable word at the end of the line. This produces a jarring rhythm that echoes the crash of a large wave against the side of the ship:

"(The boat) gives its side to the waves; there immediately follows in a heap a steep mountain of water."

The Roman poet Horace uses a similar trick to highlight the comedic irony in this famous line from his Ars Poetica (line 139):

"The mountains will be in labor, but all that will be born is a ridiculous ... mouse"<ref>Based on a traditional proverb. Cf. Jacobson, Howard (2007). "Horace "AP" 139: parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus" Template:Webarchive. Museum Helveticum, Vol. 64, No. 1 (März 2007), pp. 59–61. (JSTOR)</ref>

Usually in Latin the 5th foot of a hexameter is a dactyl. However, in his poem 64, Catullus several times uses a 5th foot spondee, which gives a Greek flavour to his verse,<ref name="Raven 1965, p. 92">Raven (1965), p. 92.</ref> as in this line describing the forested Vale of Tempe in northern Greece:

"Tempe, which woods surround, hanging over it"

Virgil also occasionally imitates Greek practice, for example, in the first line of his 3rd Eclogue:

"Tell me, Damoetas, whose cattle are these? Are they Meliboeus's?"

Here there is a break in sense after a 4th-foot dactyl, a feature known as a bucolic diaeresis,<ref>From the Greek {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Grc-transl) "looking after cattle".</ref> because it is frequently used in Greek pastoral poetry. In fact it is common in Homer too (as in the first line of the Odyssey quoted above), but rare in Latin epic.<ref>Bassett (1905).</ref>

Stylistic features of epicEdit

Certain stylistic features are characteristic of epic hexameter poetry, especially as written by Virgil.

EnjambmentEdit

Hexameters are frequently enjambed—the meaning runs over from one line to the next, without terminal punctuation—which helps to create the long, flowing narrative of epic. Sentences can also end in different places in the line, for example, after the first foot.<ref>Raven (1965), pp. 102–103.</ref> In this, classical epic differs from medieval Latin, where the lines are often composed individually, with a break in sense at the end of each one.

Poetic vocabularyEdit

Often in poetry ordinary words are replaced by poetic ones, for example {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} or {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} for water, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} for sea, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} for ship, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} for river, and so on. Some ordinary Latin words are avoided, e.g. {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} etc., simply because they cannot be fitted into a hexameter verse.

HyperbatonEdit

It is common in poetry for adjectives to be widely separated from their nouns, and quite often one adjective–noun pair is interleaved with another. This feature is known as hyperbaton "stepping over". An example is the opening line of Lucan's epic on the Civil War:

"Wars through the Emathian – more than civil – plains"

Another example is the opening of Ovid's mythological poem Metamorphoses where the word {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} "new" is in a different line from {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} "bodies" which it describes:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.1)

"My spirit leads me to tell of forms transformed into new bodies."

One particular arrangement of words that seems to have been particularly admired is the golden line,<ref>The term {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} was first used in print in 1612: John Owen, epigram 5.51.</ref> a line which contains two adjectives, a verb, and two nouns, with the first adjective corresponding to the first noun such as:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Catullus, 64.265.</ref>

"and the barbarian pipe was strident with horrible music"

Catullus was the first to use this kind of line, as in the above example. Later authors used it rarely (1% of lines in Ovid), but in silver Latin it became increasingly popular.<ref>Heikkinen (2015), p. 61.</ref>

Alliteration and assonanceEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Virgil in particular used alliteration and assonance frequently, although it is much less common in Ovid. Often more than one consonant was alliterated and not necessarily at the beginning of words, for example:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Virgil, Aen. 4.1–2.</ref>

"But the queen, now long wounded by grave anxiety,

feeds the wound in her veins and is tormented by an unseen fire"

Also in Virgil:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Virgil, Aen. 6.265.</ref> "places silent with night everywhere"

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Virgil, Aen. 6.320.</ref> "those ones with oars sweep the dark shallows"

Sometimes the same vowel is repeated:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Virgil, Aen. 9.427.</ref>

"on me, me, I who did it am here, turn your swords on me!"

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Ovid, Met. 2.192.</ref>

"he does not let go of the reins, but he is not strong enough to hold them back, and he does not know the names of the horses"

Rhetorical techniquesEdit

Rhetorical devices such as anaphora, antithesis, and rhetorical questions are frequently used in epic poetry. Tricolon is also common:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Virgil, Aen. 6.325–6.</ref>

"All this crowd that you see, are the poor and unburied;

that ferryman is Charon; these, that the wave is carrying, are the buried."

Genre of subject matterEdit

The poems of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid often vary their narrative with speeches. Well known examples are the speech of Queen Dido cursing Aeneas in book 4 of the Aeneid, the lament of the nymph Juturna when she is unable to save her brother Turnus in book 12 of the Aeneid, and the quarrel between Ajax and Ulysses over the arms of Achilles in book 13 of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Some speeches are themselves narratives, as when Aeneas tells Queen Dido about the fall of Troy and his voyage to Africa in books 2 and 3 of the Aeneid. Other styles of writing include vivid descriptions, such as Virgil's description of the god Charon in Aeneid 6, or Ovid's description of Daedalus's labyrinth in book 8 of the Metamorphoses; similes, such as Virgil's comparison of the souls of the dead to autumn leaves or clouds of migrating birds in Aeneid 6; and lists of names, such as when Ovid names 36 of the dogs who tore their master Actaeon to pieces in book 3 of the Metamorphoses.

Conversational styleEdit

Raven<ref>Raven (1965), pp. 94–5.</ref> divides the various styles of the hexameter in classical Latin into three types: the early stage (Ennius), the fully developed type (Cicero, Catullus, Virgil, and Ovid, with Lucretius about midway between Ennius and Cicero), and the conversational type, especially Horace, but also to an extent Persius and Juvenal. One feature which marks these off is their often irregular line endings (for example, words of one syllable)<ref>Raven (1965), p. 102.</ref> and also the very conversational, un-epic style. Horace in fact called his satires {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("conversations"). The word order and vocabulary is much as might be expected in prose. An example is the opening of the 9th satire of book 1:

"I was walking by chance along the Sacred Way, as is my custom,

meditating on some trifle or other, completely absorbed in it,

when suddenly up ran a certain person known to me by name only.

He grabbed my hand and said 'How are you, sweetest of things?'"

Silver Age and Late EmpireEdit

The verse innovations of the Augustan writers were carefully imitated by their successors in the Silver Age of Latin literature. The verse form itself then was little changed as the quality of a poet's hexameter was judged against the standard set by Virgil and the other Augustan poets, a respect for literary precedent encompassed by the Latin word {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>E.g., the younger Pliny, in referring to an orator who prided himself on not attempting to rival Cicero, replied, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("I do attempt to emulate Cicero, as I am not content with the eloquence of our age; I think it's idiotic not to imitate the best examples.") – Letters I.5.12–3</ref> Deviations were generally regarded as idiosyncrasies or hallmarks of personal style and were not imitated by later poets. Juvenal, for example, was fond of occasionally creating verses that placed a sense break between the fourth and fifth foot (instead of in the usual caesura positions), but this technique—known as the bucolic diaeresis—did not catch on with other poets.

In the late empire, writers experimented again by adding unusual restrictions to the standard hexameter. The rhopalic<ref>from the Greek {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} Template:Grc-transl "a club", which is narrow at one end and gets wider.</ref> verse of Ausonius is a good example; besides following the standard hexameter pattern, each word in the line is one syllable longer than the previous, e.g.:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Ausonius, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.</ref>

"O God, Hope of Eternal Life, Conciliator,

if, with chaste entreaties, hoping for pardon, we keep vigil,

look kindly on us and grant these prayers."

Also notable is the tendency among late grammarians to thoroughly dissect the hexameters of Virgil and earlier poets. A treatise on poetry by Diomedes Grammaticus is a good example, as this work categorizes dactylic hexameter verses in ways that were later interpreted under the golden line rubric. Independently, these two trends show the form becoming highly artificial—more like a puzzle to solve than a medium for personal poetic expression.

Middle AgesEdit

Template:Further

By the Middle Ages, some writers adopted more relaxed versions of the meter. Bernard of Cluny, in the 12th century, for example, employs it in his De Contemptu Mundi, but ignores classical conventions in favor of accentual effects and predictable rhyme both within and between verses, e.g.:

"These are the last days, the worst of times: let us keep watch.

Behold the menacing arrival of the supreme Judge.

He is coming, he is coming to end evil, to crown just actions,

Reward what is right, free us from anxieties, and give the heavens."

Not all medieval writers are so at odds with the Virgilian standard, and with the rediscovery of classical literature, later Medieval and Renaissance writers are far more orthodox, but by then the form had become an academic exercise. Petrarch, for example, devoted much time to his Africa, a dactylic hexameter epic on Scipio Africanus, completed in 1341, but this work was unappreciated in his time and remains little read today. It begins as follows:<ref>On this poem see: Mustard, W. P. (1921). "Petrarch's Africa" Template:Webarchive. The American Journal of Philology, 1921, Vol. 42, No. 2 (1921), pp. 97–121.</ref>

"To me also,<ref>Imitating Odyssey line 10: "Tell of these things, goddess, to us also".</ref> o Muse, tell of the man,

conspicuous for his merits and fearsome in war,

to whom noble Africa, broken beneath Italian arms,

first gave its eternal name."

In contrast, Dante decided to write his epic, the Divine Comedy in Italian—a choice that defied the traditional epic choice of Latin dactylic hexameters—and produced a masterpiece beloved both then and now.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

With the Neo-Latin period, the language itself came to be regarded as a medium only for serious and learned expression, a view that left little room for Latin poetry. The emergence of Recent Latin in the 20th century restored classical orthodoxy among Latinists and sparked a general (if still academic) interest in the beauty of Latin poetry. Today, the modern Latin poets who use the dactylic hexameter are generally as faithful to Virgil as Rome's Silver Age poets.

In modern languagesEdit

In EnglishEdit

Many poets have attempted to write dactylic hexameters in English, though few works composed in the meter have stood the test of time. Most such works are accentual rather than quantitative. Perhaps the most famous is Longfellow's "Evangeline", whose first lines are as follows:

"This is the / forest pri/meval. The / murmuring / pines and the / hemlocks

Bearded with / moss, and in / garments / green, indis/tinct in the / twilight,

Stand like / Druids of / eld, with / voices / sad and pro/phetic..."

Contemporary poet Annie Finch wrote her epic libretto Among the Goddesses in dactylic tetrameter, which she claims is the most accurate English accentual equivalent of dactylic hexameter.<ref>"Preface," Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams (Red Hen Press, 2010), p. iii-iv.</ref> Poets who have written quantitative hexameters in English include Robert Bridges and Rodney Merrill, whose translation of part of the Iliad begins as follows (see External links below):

"Sing now, / goddess, the / wrath of A/chilles the / scion of / Peleus,

Ruinous / rage, which / brought the A/chaeans un/counted af/flictions;

Many the / powerful / souls it / sent to the / dwelling of / Hades..."

Although the rules seem simple, it is hard to use classical hexameter in English because English is a stress-timed language that condenses vowels and consonants between stressed syllables, while hexameter relies on the regular timing of the phonetic sounds. Languages having the latter properties (i.e., languages that are not stress-timed) include Ancient Greek, Latin, Lithuanian and Hungarian.

In GermanEdit

Dactylic hexameter has proved more successful in German than in most modern languages. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's epic Der Messias popularized accentual dactylic hexameter in German. Subsequent German poets to employ the form include Goethe (notably in his Reineke Fuchs) and Schiller.

The opening lines of Goethe's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("Reynard the Fox"), written in 1793–1794, are:

"Pentecost, the lovely festival, had come; field and forest

grew green and bloomed; on hills and ridges, in bushes and hedges

The newly encouraged birds practised a merry song;

Every meadow sprouted with flowers in fragrant grounds,

The sky shone festively cheerfully and the earth was colourful."

In FrenchEdit

Jean-Antoine de Baïf (1532–1589) wrote poems regulated by quantity on the Greco–Roman model, a system which came to be known as vers mesurés, or vers mesurés à l'antique, which the French language of the Renaissance permitted. To do this, he invented a special phonetic alphabet. In works like his Étrénes de poézie Franzoęze an vęrs mezurés (1574)<ref>See, for example, Au Roi Template:Webarchive.</ref> or Chansonnettes he used the dactylic hexameter, and other meters, in a quantitative way.

An example of one of his elegiac couplets is as follows. The final -e of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} is sounded, and the word {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} is pronounced /i/:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>Jean-Antoine de Baïf, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} XV.</ref>

| – u u | – – | – u u | – – | – u u | – –

| – u u | – u u | – || – u u | – u u | –

"Let the handsome Narcissus come, who never loved another except himself,

and let him look at your eyes, and let him try not to love you."

A modern attempt at reproducing the dactylic hexameter in French is this one, by André Markowicz (1985), translating Catullus's poem 63. Again the final -e and -es of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} are sounded:

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}<ref>André Markowicz, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, éd. L'Âge d'Homme, 1985.</ref>

| – – | – u u | – u u | – u u | – u u | – – |

| – u u | – – | – u u | – u u | – u u | – – |

"Is it for this that you have snatched me from the altars of my ancestors,

to abandon me, traitorous Theseus, on these deserted shores?"

In HungarianEdit

Hungarian is extremely suitable to hexameter (and other forms of poetry based on quantitative meter).<ref>A magyar nyelv szelleme; Művelt magyar nyelvtan I., 1843 Template:Webarchive, by the linguist János Fogarasi, pp. 40–41 [pp. 59–60 in the PDF] Ha jelesb magyar költőink hexametereit olvassuk vagy halljuk, oly szabályszerűeknek találjuk a kifejezéseket, a szórendet oly erőltetésnélkülinek, s — a formától s válogatottabb szóktul elvontan — az egészet oly természetes folyamatúnak, mintha csak gondos kötetlen beszédet hallanánk. "When we read or hear hexameters by our Hungarian poets of note, we find the expressions so regular, the word order so uncontrived, and – detached from the form and the refined terms – the whole so naturally flowing, that it is as if we were hearing careful colloquial speech." The author then goes on to illustrate his point by quoting Cserhalom Template:Webarchive by Mihály Vörösmarty.</ref> It has been applied to Hungarian since 1541, introduced by the grammarian János Sylvester.<ref>Hexameter Template:Webarchive in Pallas’ Great Lexicon.</ref>

A hexameter can even occur spontaneously. For example, a student may extricate themselves from failing to remember a poem by saying the following, which is a hexameter in Hungarian:

Itt ela/kadtam, / sajnos / nem jut e/szembe a / többi.

"I'm stuck here, unfortunately the rest won't come into my mind."

Sándor Weöres included an ordinary nameplate text in one of his poems (this time, a pentameter):<ref>Weöres Sándor: Az éjszaka csodái Template:Webarchive ("The Miracles of Night")</ref>

Tóth Gyula / bádogos / és // vízveze/ték-szere/lő.

"Gyula Tóth tinsmith and plumber"

A label on a bar of chocolate went as follows, another hexameter, noticed by the poet Dániel Varró:<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Tejcsoko/ládé / sárgaba/rack- és / kekszdara/bokkal

"Milk chocolate with apricot and biscuit bits"

Due to this feature, the hexameter has been widely used both in translated (Greek and Roman) and in original Hungarian poetry up to the twentieth century (e.g. by Miklós Radnóti).<ref>Radnóti's poems with English translations Template:Webarchive, see the Fifth, Seventh or Eighth Eclogue, the seventh being the most famous, while the eighth is translated into English in hexameters.</ref>

In LithuanianEdit

The Seasons (Metai) by Kristijonas Donelaitis is a famous Lithuanian poem in quantitative dactylic hexameters. Because of the nature of Lithuanian, more than half of the lines of the poem are entirely spondaic save for the mandatory dactyl in the fifth foot.

NotesEdit

Template:Reflist

ReferencesEdit

Bassett, S. E. (1905). "Notes on the Bucolic Diaeresis". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association Vol. 36 (1905), pp. 111–124.
Heikkinen, S. (2015). From Persius to Wilkinson: The Golden Line Revisited. Arctos 49, pp. 57–77.

External linksEdit

Introduction to dactylic hexameter for Latin verse.
Reading dactylic hexameter, specifically Homer.
Recitation of Homer Iliad 23.62-107 (in Greek), by Stanley Lombardo.
Oral reading of Virgil's Aeneid, by Robert Sonkowsky, University of Minnesota.
Greek hexameter analysis online tool, University of Vilnius.
Audio/Visual Tutorials for Vergil's Hexameter, by Dale Grote, UNC Charlotte.
Hexameter.co, practice scanning lines of dactylic hexameter from a variety of Latin authors.
Rodney Merrill reading his translation of Homer's Iliad, in English dactylic hexameter verse.

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Dactylic hexameter

Contents

StructureEdit

FeetEdit

SyllablesEdit

GreekEdit

LatinEdit

ElisionEdit

CaesuraEdit

In GreekEdit

In LatinEdit

EnniusEdit

Later writersEdit

Metrical effectsEdit

Stylistic features of epicEdit

EnjambmentEdit

Poetic vocabularyEdit

HyperbatonEdit

Alliteration and assonanceEdit

Rhetorical techniquesEdit

Genre of subject matterEdit

Conversational styleEdit

Silver Age and Late EmpireEdit

Middle AgesEdit

In modern languagesEdit

In EnglishEdit

In GermanEdit

In FrenchEdit

In HungarianEdit

In LithuanianEdit

See alsoEdit

NotesEdit

ReferencesEdit

External linksEdit