Prosody (Latin)

Latin prosody (from Middle French prosodie, from Latin prosōdia, from Ancient Greek προσῳδία (prosōidía, “song sung to music; pronunciation of syllable”)) is the study of Latin poetry and its laws of meter. The following article provides an overview of those laws as practiced by Latin poets in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, with verses by Catullus, Horace and Virgil as models. Poets composing in Latin borrowed their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences in the two languages.

Latin verse: a Greek gift

A brief history

The start of Latin literature is usually dated to the first performance of a play by Livius Andronicus in Rome in 240 BC. Livius, a Greek slave, translated Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences. He not only established the genre fabula palliata, but also adapted meters from Greek drama to meet the needs of Latin. He set a precedent followed by all later writers of the genre, notably Plautus and Terence. The principles of scansion observed by Plautus and Terence (i.e. the rules for identifying short and long syllables, the basis of Greek and Latin meter) are mostly the same as for classical Latin verses. Livius, a versatile author, also translated Homer's Odyssey into a rugged native meter known as Saturnian, but it was his near contemporary, Ennius (239–169 BC), who introduced the traditional meter of Greek epic, the dactylic hexameter, into Latin literature. Ennius employed a poetic diction and style well suited to the Greek model, thus providing a foundation for later poets such as Lucretius and Virgil to build on.

The late republic saw the emergence of Neoteric poets. They were rich young men from the Italian provinces, conscious of metropolitan sophistication. They looked to the scholarly Alexandrian poet Callimachus for inspiration—notably Catullus. The Alexandrians' 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, though he calls himself the first to bring Aeolic verse to Rome. 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.

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." Classical Latin meter obeyed rules of syllable length, like the Greek, even though Latin has a strong word accent like English. Modern scholars have had differing opinions about how these different influences impact the way Latin verse was sounded out. Accentual rhythm in Latin has been observed in pre-classical verse (in Saturnian meter) and in some medieval verse, but otherwise the rhythm of Latin verse appears ambivalent and complex.

Latin, like English, was characterized by a stress accent, whereas ancient Greek was characterized by a pitch accent. In English poetry, accent governs the stress timed rhythm. In ancient Greek poetry, on the other hand, pitch accent rose and fell independently of the mora timed rhythm, just as musical pitch is not 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, more likely, they gave words their natural stress, so that the quantitative metrical pattern acted like an orderly undercurrent to natural speech. 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 the metrical pattern is allowed to determine the stress:

quíd faciát laetás segetés, quo sídere térram.

Possibly the rhythm was 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 5th-century AD 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. In the hands of a master poet such as Vergil, however, the natural stress accent may be thought to function as a second rhythm, whose interplay with the quantitative rhythm can even be regarded as a source of unique aesthetic effects.

Prosody

Quantity

Generally a syllable in Latin verse is long "by nature" when

• it has a long vowel or diphthong (scrī-bae) or
• it ends in two consonants or a compound consonant (dant, dux)

and long "by position" when

• it ends in a consonant and is followed by a syllable that begins with a consonant (mul-tos; dat sonitum) or
• it is the final syllable in a line of verse i.e. brevis in longo.

Otherwise syllables are counted as short durations, though a few exceptions to this rule may be found.

Alternatively, we may say that an open syllable with a short vowel is (metrically) short, and all others are long; a closed syllable is called long by position, and a syllable with a long vowel is called long by nature. Note that only the nucleus and coda of the syllable are relevant for metrical purposes: it does not matter how many consonants there are at the start of the syllable. Long syllables are sometimes called heavy and light ones short, using terminology borrowed from Sanskrit.

For the above rules to apply

• the digraphs ch, th, ph, qu and gu in sanguis, etc., count as one consonant;
• the double consonants x and z always count as two consonants;
• the intervocalic i (for example, in eius and huius) counts as a consonant;
• A plosive (p, b, t, d, c, g) plus a liquid (r, l) can be divided between two syllables so that the first syllable may become long by position (e.g. ag-rum, pat-ris) or it may remain short (a-grum, pa-tris), at the poet's discretion. This license is not permitted at the beginning of words, though (thus in triplex, tr never makes position, and pl can be treated either way), nor, as a rule, in compound words (e.g. ab-rumpo begins with a long syllable and will not be resyllabified a-brumpo).

The entire line of verse is treated as a single unit for division into syllables.

Feet

Verses have been divided into "feet" by ancient grammarians and by traditionalists among modern scholars. In foot-based analysis, 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 Greeks) 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 called the ictus.

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: each of them comprises 3 morae. Similarly a Dactyl, an Anapaest and a Spondee are quantitatively 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. In certain circumstances, however, unequal substitutions are also permitted.

It is often more convenient to consider iambics, trochaics and anapests in terms of metra rather than feet; for each of these families, a metron is two feet. Thus the iambic metron is u-u-, the trochaic -u-u and the anapestic uu-uu-.

Cola: a different way to look at it

The division into "feet" is a tradition that produces arbitrary metrical rules, because it does not follow the actual metrical structure of the verse (see for example the listed variations in the tables below). In particular, though a long syllable and two short ones have the same number of morae, they are not always interchangeable: some metrical families permit substitutions in some positions, while others do not. Thus a more straightforward analysis, favoured by recent scholarship, is by cola, considered to be the actual building blocks of the verse. A colon (from the Greek for "limb") is a unit of (typically) 5 to 10 syllables that can be re-used in various metrical forms.

Standard cola include the hemiepes, the glyconic, and the lekythion.

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 (rare) discretion of the poet, however, the vowel can be retained. An unelided vowel in that situation is said to be in Hiatus. As an example: fémineó ululátú would usually be scanned as if it were fémineululátú, in seven syllables, 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).

Elision also takes place when the following word begins with h + vowel, since the h does not count as a consonant (it merely aspirates the subsequent vowel).

A word ending in vowel + m is also elided if the following syllable begins with a vowel (sometimes this is called Ecthlipsis): thus O quantum est in rebus inane reads as O quant' est in rebus inane.

Syllables ending in a vowel are called open syllables, while syllables ending in a consonant are called closed syllables.

Caesura

A line of verse normally contains more than one colon. The point at which two cola come together is called the principal caesura of the line. It is a natural boundary of the verse and a target for distraction of phrases. The term "caesura," which means "cutting," comes from analysis into "feet"—actually, the caesura is not a cut, but a juncture.

In the "foot" analysis, 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 diaeresis and able poets avoided its overuse. The place where a word ends anywhere else in a foot is called a caesura ('cutting'), here marked ||. For convenience, the foot endings are marked -|- when they occur within words and | between words.

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).

In this analysis, there will be as many caesurae or diaereses in a verse as there are (phonological) words, most of them insignificant.

The principal caesura (which might in fact be, on the foot-based scheme, a diaeresis) will usually occur near the middle of the line. Often, though not always, there is a sense break here, such as a punctuation mark. When phrases are distracted (pulled apart), each word goes to a natural verse boundary; the caesura position counts as one of these boundaries. For example,

At regina, gravi|| iamdudum saucia cura

volnus alit venis

In these lines (Aeneid 4.1-2), the adjective gravi modifies cura. It appears at the end of the first colon of the line (just before the principal caesura), while the noun appears at the end of the line. This technique of word-arrangement is an Indo-European inheritance, raised to a fine art by Latin poets.

Meters

The dividing of verse into long and short syllables and analysis of the metrical family or pattern is called 'scanning' or 'scansion.' The names of the metrical families come from the names of the cola or "feet" in use, such as iambic, trochaic, dactylic and anapaestic 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).

Guide to symbols used

• — for long syllable or long element
• u for short syllable or short element
• ῡ for brevis in longo
• | for end of foot
• ‖ main caesura

Notes:

• words are hyphenated wherever they include the end of a foot e.g Trō-iae below;
• long and short vowels are marked with - and u directly above them e.g. Ā, ă, ĭ, ī, ō, ŏ, ŭ, ū (these don't indicate syllable lengths)

There are four basic families of verse: dactylic, iambic (and trochaic), aeolic, and anapestic. In the dactylic family, short syllables come in pairs, and these pairs may be contracted (two short replaced by one long). In the iambic/trochaic family, short syllables come one at a time, and some long elements may be resolved (one long replaced by two short). In the anapestic family, short syllables come in pairs, and both contraction and resolution are allowed. In the aeolic family, there are both paired and single short syllables, and neither contraction nor resolution is allowed.

Dactylic meters

The "dactyl," as a foot, is — u u; the name comes from the Greek for "finger," because this looks like the three bones of a finger, going outward from the palm. The principal colon of dactylic verse is the "hemiepes" or "half-epic" colon, — u u — u u — (sometimes abbreviated D). The two short syllables (called a biceps element) may be contracted in almost all contexts, but the long syllables (the princeps elements) may never be resolved. Roman poets use two dactylic forms, the hexameter and the elegiac couplet.

Dactylic hexameter

Dactylic hexameter 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; yet it was also used in Juvenal's caustic satires and Horace's genial Talks and Letters.

A dactylic hexameter consists of a hemiepes, a biceps, a second hemiepes, and a final long element, so DuuD—. This is conventionally re-analyzed into six "feet," all dactyls with the last one either catalectic or necessarily contracted. Roman poets rarely contract the fifth foot. Since Latin was richer in long syllables than was Greek, contraction of biceps elements (producing the so-called spondee) was more common among Roman poets. Neoteric poets of the late republic, such as Catullus, sometimes employed a spondee 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
dactyls	— u u	— u u	— u u	— u u	— u u	— —
spondees	— —	— —	— —	— —

Since the line consists of two cola, the principal caesura comes after the first one: D||uuD—, though it may be deferred until after the first of the two short syllables that follow: Du||uD—. Various positions for caesura (in the foot-based analysis) have traditional names: the caesura "in the third foot" is called penthemimeral, that in the fourth hephthemimeral, and that in the second trihemimeral. These names refer to the number of half-feet before the position of the 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.

 -  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;

There are multiple elisions in line 3 and a bucolic diaeresis 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. Bucolic diaeresis has this name because it is common in bucolic or pastoral verse.

Dactylic pentameter

The so-called "dactylic pentameter" consists of two hemiepes cola, with no link elements. Nowadays the name is taken to mean that each hemiepes is two and a half feet, so their sum has five; in fact, the name originally comes from an ancient analysis into anapestic "feet." The first hemiepes may have contraction in the usual way, but the second may not. There is always word-break between the two cola.

Variations	1st	2nd	½	3rd	4th	½
	— u u	— u u	—	— u u	— u u	—
spondees	— —	— —

Elegiac couplet

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 very rarely he allowed an elision to span the central diaeresis (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 cĭnĕ-rĕm,

Note: the diaeresis in each hemiepes is marked here like a caesura (a conventional practice) Observe the elisions in line 2 (o) and line 4 (am). The latter elision spans the diaeresis in the last line. The plosive + liquid 'dl' in adloquerer is treated here as two consonants to make 'ad' a long syllable.

First Archilochian

If only one hemiepes is employed, the elegiac couplet takes the form known as the First Archilochian, named after the Greek poet Archilochus. An example is found in the fourth book of Horace's odes (Carmina 4.7), which A. E. Housman once described as "the most beautiful poem in ancient literature", introduced with these two lines:

 -  -| - u  u|  - || uu| -   - | - u u | - -
Dīffū-gērĕ nĭ-vēs, rĕdĕ-ŭnt iăm grāmĭnă cămpīs
   - u u| -   u  u | -
  ărbŏrĭ-bŭsquĕ cŏm-ae;

Dactylic tetrameter catalectic

Most extant examples of this meter are found in Lyric poetry, such as Horace's Carmina 1.7 and 1.28, but also in Iambi.

Variations	1st	2nd	3rd	4th
	— u u	— u u	— u u	— —
spondees		— —

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

Alcmanian strophe

Dactylic tetrameter catalectic is sometimes joined to the dactylic hexameter to form a couplet termed the Alcmanian Strophe, named after the lyric poet Alcman (some scholars however refer to the Alcmanian Strophe as the First Archilochian, as indeed there is a strong likeness between the two forms). Examples of the form are found in Horace's odes (carmina) and epodes, as here in his 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 (ca) metrically short.

Iambic meters

The iambic family has short syllables one at a time, not in pairs like the dactylic family, and it allows resolution of long elements. In this family there may also be anceps positions, that is, positions in which either a long or a short syllable is allowed.

Iambic trimeter and Senarius

Used for the theatre by poets such as Plautus and Terence, an iambic line of six feet allowed for numerous variations and it is known as an iambic senarius ('senarius' = 'grouped in sixes').

Poets such as Horace and Catullus however employed iambic feet in pairs, each called a metron, in which fewer variations 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 variations found in Horace, which are more numerous than those in Catullus. Some variations are due to resolution (replacing a long with two shorts) and some are due to anceps (when a syllable may be either long or short—see following Note and the article iambic trimeter). Others are the result of outright substitution (prosody), such as the anapaest in the first foot below.

Variations	1a	1b	2a	2b	3a	3b
	u —	u —	u —	u —	u —	u —
spondees	— —		— —		— —
tribrachs	uuu	uuu	uuu	uuu
dactyls	—uu		—uu
anapests	uu—

Note:

• The caesura usually follows the first syllable of the third foot (2a), and sometimes the first syllable of the fourth foot (2b).
• A short syllable can be replaced by a long syllable in certain positions, here marked bold: i.e. the first short syllable in feet 1a, 2a, 3a may be long. These short/long syllables are said to be in anceps.
• Some variations never appear; thus for example there is no resolution in foot 3a and therefore no tribrach or dactyl in that foot.

The following example of iambic trimeter 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 the first syllable Ca- in Canidia is long and it is thus in anceps, while -idi- is the equivalent of a long syllable and it is said to be resolved into two shorts—thus the first foot appears as if a dactyl has been substituted for an iamb. 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.

Iambic dimeter

Iambic verse of four feet, paired to make two metra, hence the name 'iambic dimeter'. It is constituted like the first and third metra of the iambic trimeter (1a, 1b, 3a, 3b), with which it is often joined to form couplets known as Iambic Distich.

Variations	1a	1b	2a	2b
	u —	u —	u —	u —
spondees	— —		— —
tribrachs	uuu	uuu
dactyls	—uu
anapests	uu—

Note:

• the short syllables in 1a and 2a (marked bold) are in anceps and can be replaced by long syllables

Iambic distich

The iambic distich—a couplet comprising an iambic trimeter and iambic dimeter—is the basis of many poems of a genre known as Iambus, in which the poet abuses and censures individuals or even communities, whether real or imaginary. Iambic rhythms were felt to be especially suited to this role. The Greek poet Archilochus was one of the main exponents of the iambic distich and he provided a model for Horace's Epodes 1-10. The following couplet forms the first two lines of Epode 7.

   -   - | u - | -   uu| u  || - | -   - | u - 
 Quo quo sceles-ti  rui-tis?  aut cur dex-teris
    -  - | u  - | -   - | u -  
    aptan-tur en-ses con-diti?

Note that the first syllables in both lines (Quo and ap) are in anceps and thus a spondee appears to have been substituted for an iamb in both the initial feet. Also ti in scelesti is long by nature and it too is in anceps; the third foot would otherwise be a tribrach (uuu) thanks to the resolution of a long syllable into the two shorts in rui. As a result of all these variations, the 3rd foot instead resembles a dactyl (-uu).

Second Archilochian

An iambic dimeter may be followed by a hemiepes to form the second line of a couplet, in which the first line is dactylic hexameter. This combination is called the second Archilochian. The iambic dimeter functions like an independent line, however, since it keeps the elements of a line-end i.e. it is marked off from the hemiepes by a pause through brevis in longo, or through a hiatus. An example of this system is found in Hoarace's epode 13, lines 9-10

  -  - | - - | -||u  u |-  u u | -  -| - - 
 pěrfŭn-dī nār-dō iuvǎt ět fĭdě Cyllē-naeā 
   -  - | u -| -  -  | u ῡ|| - u u | - uu | ῡ 
   lēvār-ĕ dī-rīs pĕc-tǒră  sǒllĭcĭ-tūdĭnĭ-bŭs

Note that the 5th foot in the hexameter line is a spondee—this is rare for Horace and it is meant to evoke the affectation of Neoteric poets like Catullus, thus complementing the sense of being suffused with perfume while listening to the lyre at a drinking party (the Greek word Cyllenaea, which creates the double spondee, adds to the exotic aura). Observe also that the iambic dimeter ends with brevis in longo, the short syllable a in pectora becoming long by the addition of a pause. The hemiepes also ends with brevis in longo with bus short by nature but long by position.

Third Archilochian

Here an iambic trimeter forms the first line of the couplet, and the positions of the iambic dimeter and hemiepes are reversed to form the second line, the hemiepes now coming before the iambic dimeter. The hemiepes still functions as if it were independent, retaining the pause of a line-end through brevis in longo or hiatus. An example has survived in Horace's Epode 11, as in lines 5-6 here:

  -   - | u- | -  -| u ||- | -  -  |u  -
 hīc těr-tĭŭs Dēcĕm-bĕr, ĕx quō dēs-tĭtī
    - u u |-  u u |ῡ || - -  | u -| -  - | u ῡ
   Iānăchĭ-ā fŭrĕr-ĕ,  sĭlvīs hŏnō-rĕm dē-cŭtĭt.

Pythiambics

Another couplet is formed when a line of dactylic hexameter is followed by a line of iambic dimeter, and this is called the First Pythiambic. The Greek poet Archilochus composed in this form but only fragments remain. Two of Horace's epodes (14 and 15) provide complete examples in Latin. The following couplet introduces his Epode 15:

  -  u u |-   - |- || - | -  - | - u u |- -
 Nŏx ĕrăt ĕt cae-lō  fŭl-gē-băt lūnă sĕ-rēnō
    - - | u -| u  - |u ῡ
   ĭntĕr mĭnō-ră sīd-ĕră 

The Second Pythiambic features an iambic trimeter instead of iambic dimeter in the second line. Horace's Epode 16 is an example.

Iambic tetrameter catalectic

Usually associated with the comic theatre, it consists of seven feet with an extra syllable at the end instead of a full iambic foot. In that case it is called iambic septenarius ('septenarius' means grouped in sevens). Used outside the theatre, the feet are paired and then it is called iambic tetrameter catalectic (catalectic means that the meter is incomplete). The stage allowed many variations but poets were quite strict in their use of it and Catullus allowed variations only in the first and fifth feet:

Variations	1a	1b	2a	2b	3a	3b	4a	4b
	u —	u —	u —	u —	u —	u —	u —	—
spondees	— —				— —

An example is found in Catullus' Carmina 25, beginning with these two lines:

 u - | u   - | u   - | u -| u -| u - |u - | -
Cĭnae-dĕ Thăl-lĕ, mŏl-lĭŏr cŭnī-cŭlī căpĭl-lō
 u  - | u - | u - | u -| u  -| u     - |u - | -
vĕl ăn-sĕrĭs mĕdŭl-lŭlā vĕl ī-mŭl(ā) ōr-ĭcĭl-lā 

Catullus uses no variations at all here and he employs diminutives (cuniculi, medullula, imula, oricila) contemptuously in a description of the 'soft' bugger Thallus. Note that doubling of the consonant l lengthens several syllables that are naturally short, thus enabling a strict iambic rhythm.

Choliambics

This meter was originated by the Greek iambic poet, Hipponax. The name choliambics means lame iambics and sometimes it is called scazons or limpers. ("Lame trochaics" exist as well, being a trochaic tetrameter catalectic with the same ending as the iambic.) It is intended to be graceless and awkward "...in order to mirror in symbolically appropriate fashion the vices and crippled perversions of mankind." It was taken up by the neoteric poets Catullus and his friend Calvus but with fewer variations than Hipponax had employed. It is basically an iambic trimeter but with a surprise ending in the last foot, featuring a trochee or spondee that cripples the iambic rhythm. As used by Catullus, the variations are as follows:

Variations	1a	1b	2a	2b	3a	3b
	u —	u —	u —	u —	u —	— —
spondees	— —		— —	— —
tribrachs		uuu
dactyls	—uu		—uu

Caesuras are found after the first syllable either in the third or fourth feet, sometimes in both. Lines 2 and 3 of Catullus' Carmina 59 about the grave-robbing, cock-sucking wife of Menenius offers a good example:

 - -| u -|- || - | u       -  | u - | - -
ŭxŏr Mĕnē-nī, sae-pĕ qu(ăm) ĭn sĕpŭl-crētīs
 - - | u  - | -||u u |u - | u -| - ῡ 
vīdĭs-tĭs ĭp-sō răpĕr-ĕ dē rŏgō cēnăm

The dactyl in the third foot of the second line reinforces the meaning, as she greedily reaches for food from the funeral pyre without regard for taboos.

Martial used more variations, such as an anapaest in the fourth foot and a tribrach in the third.

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, especially when used for a Christian sacred subject.

See also

• Golden line
• Latin spelling and pronunciation

References

• mk:Римска поезија