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There are two main divisions within the meters of ancient Greek poetry: lyric and non-lyric meters. "Lyric meters (literally, meters sung to a lyre) are usually less regular than non-lyric meters. The lines are made up of feet of different kinds, and can be of varying lengths.
The individual rhythmical patterns used in Greek and Latin poetry are also known as "metres" (US "meters"). Greek poetry developed first, starting as early as the 8th century BC with the epic poems of Homer and didactic poems of Hesiod, which were composed in the dactylic hexameter. A variety of other metres were used for lyric poetry and for ...
Dactylic 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. 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):
A dactylic hexameter, however, has six feet, not six metra, since according to Paul Maas's definition a dactylic metron (as used in lyric poetry) is – ᴗᴗ – ᴗᴗ. Normally in Greek and Latin, in those metres where a metron is defined as having two long elements, there are no more than four metra in any line of poetry.
The elegiac couplet is presumed to be the oldest Greek form of epodic poetry (a form where a later verse is sung in response or comment to a previous one). Scholars, who even in the past did not know who created it, [3] theorize the form was originally used in Ionian dirges, with the name "elegy" derived from the Greek ε, λεγε ε, λεγε—"Woe, cry woe, cry!"
Greek poetry is based on syllable length, not on syllable stress, as in English.The two syllable lengths in Greek poetry are long and short.It is probable that in the natural spoken language there were also syllables of intermediate length, as in the first syllable of words such as τέκνα /tékna/ 'children', where a short vowel is followed by a plosive + liquid combination; but for poetic ...
The Epic Cycle (Ancient Greek: Ἐπικὸς Κύκλος, romanized: Epikòs Kýklos) was a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems, composed in dactylic hexameter and related to the story of the Trojan War, including the Cypria, the Aethiopis, the so-called Little Iliad, the Iliupersis, the Nostoi, and the Telegony.
It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the Hymns of Orpheus. According to Greek mythology, hexameter was invented by Phemonoe, daughter of Apollo and the first Pythia of Delphi. [1 ...