This can sometimes cause ambiguity e.g., in the word uoluit (= vol-vit) "he rolls" the second u is a consonant, but in uoluit (= vo-lu-it) "he wanted" the second u is a vowel.Ī hexameter line can be divided into six feet (Greek ἕξ hex = "six"). In some editions of Latin texts the consonant v is written as u, in which case u is also often consonantal. Tro-i-us "Trojan" has three syllables, but Tro-iae "of Troy" has two. But in I-ū-lus, the name of Aeneas's son, I is a vowel and forms a separate syllable.
In certain words like Iuppiter, Iovem, iam, iussit, and iēcit, i is a consonant, pronounced like the English y, so Iup-pi-ter has three syllables and iē-cit "he threw" has two. qu counts as a single consonant, so that in the word aqua "water" the first syllable is short, not like the Italian acqua. Also the letter h is ignored in scansion, so that in the phrase et horret the syllable et remains short. For example, tr, cr, pr, gr, and pl (and other combinations of a consonant with r or l) can count as a single consonant, so that the word patrem could be pronounced either pa-trem with the first syllable short or pat-rem with the first syllable long. There are some exceptions to the above rules, however. In this case a syllable like et is said to be long by position. It is also long (with certain exceptions) if it has a short vowel followed by two consonants, even if these are in different words: con- dunt, et terrīs, tot vol-ve-re. The process of deciding which syllables are long and which are short is known as scansion.Ī syllable is long if it contains a long vowel or a diphthong: Ae-nē-ās, au-rō. In Latin the terms are syllaba longa and syllaba brevis. In Greek, a long syllable is συλλαβἠ μακρά ( sullabē makrá) and a short syllable is συλλαβἠ βραχεῖα ( sullabē brakheîa).
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.Īncient Greek and Latin poetry is made up of long and short syllables arranged in various patterns. Hexameters also form part of elegiac poetry in both languages, the elegiac couplet being a dactylic hexameter line paired with a dactylic pentameter line. The hexameter continued to be used in Christian times, for example in the Carmen paschale of the 5th-century Irish poet Sedulius and Bernard of Cluny's 12th-century satire De contemptu mundi among many others.
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In Latin famous works include Lucretius's philosophical De rerum natura, Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics, book 10 of Columella's manual on agriculture, as well as Latin satirical poems by the poets Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. Greek works in hexameters include Hesiod's Works and Days and Theogony, Theocritus's Idylls, and Callimachus's hymns. However, hexameters had a wide use outside of epic. Some well known examples of its use are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica, Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lucan's Pharsalia (an epic on the Civil War), Valerius Flaccus's Argonautica, and Statius's Thebaid. The hexameter is traditionally associated with classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin and was consequently considered to be the grand style of Western classical poetry. The fifth foot can also sometimes be a spondee, but this is rare, as it most often is a dactyl. The first four feet can either be dactyls, spondees, or a mix. Thus there are six feet, each of which is either a dactyl (– u u) or a spondee (– –). | – u u | – u u | – u u | – u u | – u u | – – The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows (writing – for a long syllable, u for a short, and u u for a position that may be a long or two shorts): Further information: Prosody (Latin) and Prosody (Greek)ĭactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry.
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