![]() Latin and Greek verse do something similar, in that sometimes a syllable will become long based on its position in the meter. ![]() Some lines, like can’t hold it back, are spoken quickly, while others are lengthened to fit the music. Notice how words at the ends of lines, like go or more, are longer than similarly short syllables that come earlier (like let). This clip from Frozen has the subtitles so you can follow along with the words. Here are a few examples of this in modern music (and I apologize in advance for how awful some of these songs are): Importantly, these do not always align - sometimes singers hold a syllable for more than one beat, you swallow or change the stress on a syllable, or you contract a syllable (from don’t know or do not know to dunno, for example) for the purpose of keeping the beat (meter) of the music. One hexameter-pentameter pair makes a couplet.īefore going any further, we should pause to think musically for a moment (in English) about syllables, pronunciation, and meter. In these couplets, the hexameter is always first, and the pentameter is graphically noted by indenting it: ![]() We most typically see pentameter lines combined with hexameter lines as an elegiac couplet. But the first two dactyls can also be replaced by spondees, as in the hexameter. This pentameter line is largely fixed in the second half, after the caesura (marked by ||). One of the feet is split in two around a central caesura, or pause (more on this below): Technically, the sixth foot is always long-X (the X standing in for either a long or a short) in practice, it is always scanned as a spondee.Ī dactylic pentameter is made up of five feet. As a general rule, the fifth and sixth foot are frequently dactyl-spondee, while the first four feet are more flexible. ∪ ∪ | - ∪ ∪ | - ∪ ∪ | - ∪ ∪ | - ∪ ∪ | - -īut you can replace any of those dactyls with a spondee. We represent the end of the foot by drawing a vertical line (or a slanted line): The ideal dactylic hexameter verse is five dactyls and a spondee. There are many other metra options, but dactylic meter only uses dactyls and spondees. So in dactylic verses, you have two options for each individual foot: long-short-short (a dactyl) or long-long (called a spondee). These individual units are called feet (or metra if you want to be fancy the singular is metron).Ī basic rule of ancient poetry is that any two short syllables can be replaced by a single long syllable. Hexameter has six dactyls (from Greek hex, six) and pentameter has five dactyls (from Greek penta, five). Both hexameter and pentameter are dactylic verses. Lines of poetry that are built on the dactyl are called dactylic. These are your long short short syllables, or dactyl. Dactyls are represented graphically as follows: The next two (between the two knuckles and from the knuckle to the tip) are roughly the same length, but shorter than the first. ![]() The first, from your palm to the first knuckle, is the longest. If you remember that dactylos means finger in Greek, it is easy to remember the unit: just turn your finger sideways and look at the relative size of the three segments: In this first post, I’ll introduce the two major Latin meters: dactylic hexameter and pentameter.īoth major Latin meters are based on the dactyl, a unit of verse that is comprised of three parts: long, short, and short. The nice thing about scansion is that it’s in many ways easier than other tasks beginning language students have to perform. Although the untrained viewer can’t see this meter in an ancient text (unlike, for example, the musical notation on modern sheet music), once you know how to scan well, you can quickly begin to recite texts as they were meant to be heard. Nowhere is this performance context more clear than in the use of meter in ancient poetry. Poetry in particular was probably chanted or sung, as we know from the use of words relating to music in the opening lines of poems and poetic collections. Although we now approach ancient texts primarily through the written word, they were originally meant for performance.
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