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Dactylic hexameter is a form ofmeter used in Ancient Greek epic and didactic poetry[1]: 19 as well as in epic, didactic, satirical, and pastoral Latin poetry[2]: 90 .Its name is derived from Greekδάκτυλος (dáktulos, "finger") andἕξ (héx, "six").
Dactylic hexameter consists of sixfeet. The first five feet contain either two long syllables, aspondee (– –), or a long syllable followed by two short syllables, adactyl (–ᴗᴗ). However, the last foot contains either a spondee or a long syllable followed by one short syllable, atrochee(– ᴗ)[3]: 120 [1]: 19 . 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 classicalepic poetry in bothGreek[4]: 17 [1]: 43 andLatin. Consequently, it has been considered to bethe grand style of Western classical poetry. Examples of epics in hexameter areHomer'sIliad andOdyssey[1]: 19 ,Apollonius of Rhodes'sArgonautica,Virgil'sAeneid,Ovid'sMetamorphoses,Lucan'sPharsalia,Valerius Flaccus'sArgonautica, andStatius'sThebaid.
However, this meter had a wide use outside of epic. Greek works in dactylic hexameter includeHesiod's didacticWorks and Days andTheogony[1]: 19 , some ofTheocritus'sIdylls, andCallimachus's hymns. In Latin famous works includeLucretius's philosophicalDe rerum natura, Virgil'sEclogues andGeorgics, book 10 ofColumella's manual on agriculture, as well as satirical works ofLucilius,Horace,Persius, andJuvenal. Later the hexameter continued to be used in Christian times, for example in theCarmen paschale of the 5th-century Irish poetSedulius andBernard of Cluny's 12th-century satireDe contemptu mundi among many others[citation needed].
Hexameters also form part ofelegiac poetry in both languages, theelegiac couplet being a dactylic hexameter line paired with adactylic pentameter line[4]: 45 [2]: 104 . This form of verse was used for love poetry byPropertius,Tibullus, andOvid, for Ovid's letters from exile, and for many of the epigrams ofMartial[citation needed].
Dactylic hexameter poetry consists of lines, which are divided into feet and further divided into syllables.[3]: 120 .
A hexameter verse contains sixfeet[4]: 43 [2]: 90 [1]: 19 . The first five feet can be either adactyl or aspondee[4]: 43 [2]: 91 [1]: 19 . However, because Latin is much richer in long syllables than Greek, spondaic feet are more common in Latin hexameter[2]: 91 . In both Greek and Latin hexameter the fifth foot is usually a dactyl, and a spondee is also rare in the third foot in Greek hexameter[2]: 43 [2]: 91-92 . The sixth foot can be filled by either atrochee or a spondee[4]: 43 [2]: 91 . Thus a dactylic hexameter line isscanned as follows:
Where "—" represents an accented (hard) syllable, "ᴗ" represents an unaccented (soft) syllable, "ᴗ ᴗ" represents either two soft syllables or one hard syllable (poet's option), and in this case "×" represents 'anything goes' (including a silent pause).[clarification needed]
An example of this in Latin is the first line of Virgil'sAeneid[5]: 1.1 :
The scansion is generally marked as follows, by placing long and short marks above the central vowel of each syllable:
| — ᴗ ᴗ | | | — ᴗ ᴗ | | | — — | | | — — | | | — ᴗ ᴗ | | | — — |
| 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 asmīlitēs"soldiers" orfacilius"more easily" cannot be used in a hexameter[citation needed], although the substitutes"warrior" and"easier" could be.
Unlike English verse, which is based on stress, ancient Greek and Latin poetry is based on the length, i.e. relative duration, of a syllable[3]: 119 [4]: 10 [2]: 22 . In scansion only the sounds are meaningful, and word boundaries do not matter[3]: 119 [1]: 12 .
In Greek, a long syllable is calledσυλλαβὴ μακρά (sullabḕ makrá) and a short syllable is calledσυλλαβὴ βραχεῖα (sullabḕ brakheîa).[6] In Latin the terms aresyllaba longa andsyllaba brevis.[7]
In Greek, a syllable is long if it contains a long vowel, adiphthong, or two consonants follow the vowel(s) of the syllable[8]: 97 [3]: 119 [4]: 22 . That is to say, a syllable with a short vowel is scanned as long as it contains a long vowel, a diphthong, or if it is closed; and a syllable is closed only if it ends with a consonant, otherwise it is open[1]: 12 .
For example, all syllables inμήτηρ,οἰκτείρω, andφλόξ are long[2]: 22-23 . However, there are exceptions to the rules mentioned above[4]: 23 .
In Latin, a syllable is long (by nature) if it contains a long vowel or a diphthong[9]: 89 [2]: 23 and long (by position) if it contains a short vowel followed by two consonants, even if these are in different words[2]: 24 . For example, all syllables inAe-nē-ās andau-rō are long by nature, whereaset,ter,tot, andvol inetterrīs,totvol-ve-re are long by position.
However, when aliquid — l or r — follows aplosive, a syllable containing a short vowel may remain short by position[2]: 25 . For example,pa-trem could be scanned either as having a short first syllablepa-trem or as having a long first syllablepat-rem[9]: 89 .
In scansion the letterh is ignored[2]: 24 , andqu counts as a single consonant[2]: 24 . So, for example in the phraseet horret the syllableet remains short, and in the wordaqua the first syllable remains short too.
The semiconsonantali andu are scanned as consonants[2]: 24 . For example, inIuppiter andiēcit,i is considered a consonant, pronounced like the Englishy. ThusIup-pi-ter has three syllables andiē-cit has two. But, inI-ū-lius the firstI is a vowel and forms a separate syllable[9]: 38 . Additionally, ani between two or more vowels stands almost without exception for a double consonant[9]: 39 ; so, for examplea-io, standing fora-iio has two syllables[9]: 39 .
In some editions of Latin texts the consonantv is written asu, in which caseu is also often consonantal. This can sometimes cause ambiguity; e.g., in the worduoluit (=vol-vit) "he rolls" the secondu is a consonant, but inuoluit (=vo-lu-it) "he wanted" the secondu is a vowel.
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 orelided[2]: 27 . For example,poss(e) Ītalia; Teucrōr(um) āvertere, monstr(um) horrendum[2]: 27 .
In Greek, short vowels elide freely[4]: 24 ; however, long vowels are not elided, though they may be shortened in some cases[4]: 24 : E.g.Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος (Pēlēïádeō Akhilêos).
In modern Greek writing the elision is shown by an apostrophe. For example:
ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε
hḕ murí᾽ Akhaioîs álge᾽ éthēke
which caused countless sufferings for the Achaeans
— Homer, Iliad, 1.2
The Greek style of not eliding a long vowel is sometimes imitated in Latin for special effect, for example,fēmineō ululātu "with womanly wailing" (Aen. 9.477)[citation needed].[10]
When a vowel is elided, it does not count in the scansion[4]: 24 . So, for the purposes of scansion,Iu-n(o) ae-ter-num has four syllables.
Acaesura is a word break in the middle of a foot or metron[4]: 25 . In Greek hexameter there is 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 foot[4]: 44 ; the first two being more common than the last[3]: 121 [4]: 44 [2]: 93 .In Latin hexameter the weak caesura is rarer than in Greek hexameter[2]: 94,96 . On the one hand, in Virgil the strong caesura is found in ca. 85% of the time[11]: 124 .
An example of a weak caesura can be found from the first line of Homer'sOdyssey[4]: 44 :
And an example of a strong caesura follows on the next line of Odyssey[4]: 44 :
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 feet[2]: 96 :
Sometimes caesuras in the 2nd and 4th feet of a line make do, and there is no caesura in the 3rd foot[2]: 96 . For example:
The hexameter was first used by early Greek poets of the oral tradition, and the most complete extant examples of their works are theIliad and theOdyssey, which influenced the authors of all later classical epics that survive today. Early epic poetry was also accompanied by music, andpitch changes associated with the accented Greek must have highlighted the melody, though the exact mechanism is still a topic of discussion.[12]
The first line of Homer'sIliad provides an example:
Dividing the line into metrical units or feet it can be scanned as follows:
This line also includes a masculine caesura afterθεά, a break that separates the line into two parts. Homer employs a feminine caesura more commonly than later writers.[13] An example occurs inIliad 1.5:
Homer's hexameters contain a higher proportion of dactyls than later hexameter poetry.[14] They are also characterized by a laxer following of verse principles than later epicists almost invariably adhered to[citation needed]. For example, Homer allows spondaic fifth feet (albeit not often), whereas many later authors do not.[14]
Homer also altered the forms of words to allow them to fit the hexameter, typically by using adialectal form:ptolis is an epic form used instead of the Atticpolis as necessary for the meter[citation needed]. Proper names sometimes take forms to fit the meter, for examplePouludamas instead of the metrically unviablePoludamas.
Some lines require a knowledge of the digamma for their scansion, e.g.Iliad 1.108:
Here the wordἔπος (epos) was originallyϝέπος (wepos) in Ionian; thedigamma, later lost, lengthened the last syllable of the precedingεἶπας (eipas) and removed the apparent defect in the meter. A digamma also saved the hiatus in the third foot. This example demonstrates theoral tradition of the Homeric epics that flourished before they were written down sometime in the 7th century BC[citation needed].
Most of the later rules of hexameter composition have their origins in the methods and practices of Homer[citation needed].
The dactylic hexameter was adapted from Greek to Latin[2]: 91 . 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 spondaic[2]: 91 . Additionally, the Roman poets did not avoid the weak caesura in the fourth foot as much as the Greeks did[2]: 98 .
The earliest example of hexameter in Latin poetry is the panegyric history of Rome,Annales, byEnnius[15]: 137 , establishing a standard for later Latin epics. Ennius experimented with different kinds of lines[citation needed], for example, lines with five dactyls:
or lines consisting entirely of spondees:
lines without a caesura[2]: 95 :
lines ending in a one-syllable word or in words of more than three syllables[2]: 99 :
or even lines starting with two short syllables[2]: 92 :
However, most of these features were abandoned by later writers or used only occasionally for special effect[citation needed].
Later Republican writers, such asLucretius,Catullus, and evenCicero, wrote hexameter compositions, and it was at this time that the principles of Latin hexameter were firmly established and followed by later writers such asVirgil,Horace,Ovid,Lucan, andJuvenal[citation needed].Virgil's opening line for theAeneid is a classic example:
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 inprímus ab/ óris 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.[22]
Most lines (about 85% in Virgil)[citation needed] have a caesura or word division after the first syllable of the 3rd foot, as aboveca/nō. 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 foot[2]: 98 :
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.
By the age ofAugustus, poets likeVirgil closely followed the rules of the meter and approached it in a highly rhetorical way, looking for effects that can be exploited in skilled recitation[citation needed]. For example, the following line from theAeneid (8.596) describes the movement and sound of galloping horses:
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:
A slightly different effect is found in the following line (3.658), describing the terrifying one-eyed giant Polyphemus, blinded byUlysses. Here again there are five spondees but there are also three elisions, which cause the word accent of all the words butingens to coincide with the beginning of each foot:
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:
The following example (Aeneid 2.9) describes how Aeneas is reluctant to begin his narrative, since it is already past midnight. The feminine caesura aftersuadentque without a following 4th-foot caesura ensures that all the last four feet have word accent at the beginning, which is unusual.[23] The monotonous effect is reinforced by the assonance ofdent ... dent and the alliteration of S ... S:
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:
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 Roman poetHorace uses a similar trick to highlight the comedic irony in this famous line from hisArs Poetica (line 139):
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,[25] as in this line describing the forestedVale of Tempe in northern Greece:
Virgil also occasionally imitates Greek practice, for example, in the first line of his 3rd Eclogue:
Here there is a break in sense after a 4th-foot dactyl, a feature known as a bucolic diaeresis,[26] because it is frequently used in Greekpastoral poetry. In fact it is common in Homer too (as in the first line of theOdyssey quoted above), but rare in Latin epic.[27]
Certain stylistic features are characteristic of epic hexameter poetry, especially as written by Virgil.
Hexameters are frequentlyenjambed—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.[28] 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.
Often in poetry ordinary words are replaced by poetic ones, for exampleunda orlympha for water,aequora for sea,puppis for ship,amnis for river, and so on. Some ordinary Latin words are avoided, e.g.audiunt, mīlitēs, hominibus, facilius, mulierēs, familiae, voluptātibus etc., simply because they do not fit into a hexameter verse.
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 ashyperbaton "stepping over". An example is the opening line of Lucan's epic on the Civil War:
Another example is the opening of Ovid's mythological poemMetamorphoses where the wordnova "new" is in a different line fromcorpora "bodies" which it describes:
One particular arrangement of words that seems to have been particularly admired is thegolden line,[29] a line which contains two adjectives, a verb, and two nouns, with the first adjective corresponding to the first noun such as:
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.[31]
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:
Also in Virgil:
Sometimes the same vowel is repeated:
Rhetorical devices such as anaphora, antithesis, and rhetorical questions are frequently used in epic poetry. Tricolon is also common:
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 theAeneid, the lament of the nymph Juturna when she is unable to save her brother Turnus in book 12 of theAeneid, and the quarrel between Ajax and Ulysses over the arms of Achilles in book 13 of Ovid'sMetamorphoses. 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 theAeneid. Other styles of writing include vivid descriptions, such as Virgil's description of the god Charon inAeneid 6, or Ovid's description of Daedalus's labyrinth in book 8 of theMetamorphoses; similes, such as Virgil's comparison of the souls of the dead to autumn leaves or clouds of migrating birds inAeneid 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 theMetamorphoses.
Raven[38] 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)[39] and also the very conversational, un-epic style. Horace in fact called hissatiressermones ("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:
The verse innovations of the Augustan writers were carefully imitated by their successors in the Silver Age ofLatin 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 wordaemulātiō.[40] 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. Therhopalic verse ofAusonius is a good example; besides following the standard hexameter pattern, each word in the line is one syllable longer than the previous, e.g.:
Also notable is the tendency among late grammarians to thoroughly dissect the hexameters of Virgil and earlier poets. A treatise on poetry byDiomedes Grammaticus is a good example, as this work categorizes dactylic hexameter verses in ways that were later interpreted under thegolden 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.
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 hisDe Contemptu Mundi, but ignores classical conventions in favor of accentual effects and predictable rhyme both within and between verses, e.g.:
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 hisAfrica, a dactylic hexameter epic onScipio Africanus, completed in 1341, but this work was unappreciated in his time and remains little read today. It begins as follows:[42]
In contrast,Dante decided to write his epic, theDivine Comedy in Italian—a choice that defied the traditional epic choice of Latin dactylic hexameters—and produced a masterpiece beloved both then and now.[44]
With theNeo-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 ofRecent 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.
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 isLongfellow's "Evangeline", whose first lines are as follows:
Contemporary poetAnnie Finch wrote her epic librettoAmong the Goddesses in dactylic tetrameter, which she claims is the most accurate English accentual equivalent of dactylic hexameter.[45] Poets who have written quantitative hexameters in English includeRobert Bridges and Rodney Merrill, whose translation of part of theIliad begins as follows (see External links below):
Although the rules seem simple, it is hard to use classical hexameter in English because English is astress-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.
Dactylic hexameter has proved more successful in German than in most modern languages.Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's epicDer Messias popularized accentual dactylic hexameter inGerman. Subsequent German poets to employ the form includeGoethe (notably in hisReineke Fuchs) andSchiller.
The opening lines of Goethe'sReineke Fuchs ("Reynard the Fox"), written in 1793–1794, are:
Jean-Antoine de Baïf (1532–1589) wrote poems regulated byquantity on the Greco–Roman model, a system which came to be known asvers mesurés, orvers mesurés à l'antique, which the French language of the Renaissance permitted. To do this, he invented a special phonetic alphabet. In works like hisÉtrénes de poézie Franzoęze an vęrs mezurés (1574)[46] orChansonnettes 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 ofvienne,autre, andregarde is sounded, and the wordil is pronounced /i/:
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 ofpères,perfide, anddésertes are sounded:
Hungarian is extremely suitable to hexameter (and other forms of poetry based onquantitative meter).[49] It has been applied to Hungarian since 1541, introduced by the grammarianJános Sylvester.[50]
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:
Sándor Weöres included an ordinary nameplate text in one of his poems (this time, apentameter):[51]
Similar present-day, spontaneous hexameters have been spotted by contemporary poets such asDániel Varró [Wikidata][52] andJános Lackfi:[53][54]
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. byMiklós Radnóti).[55]
The Seasons (Metai) byKristijonas Donelaitis is a famousLithuanian 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.
