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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 ...
Dochmiac (Ancient Greek: δοχμιακός, from δόχμιος 'across, aslant, oblique', [1] or 'pertaining to a δοχμή or hand's-breath' [2]) is a poetic meter that is characteristically used in Greek tragedy, expressing extreme agitation or distress.
It is found in both Greek and Latin poetry in the classical period. Choliambic verse is sometimes called scazon, or "lame iambic", because it brings the reader down on the wrong "foot" by reversing the stresses of the last few beats. It was originally pioneered by the Greek lyric poet Hipponax, who wrote "lame trochaics" as well as "lame iambics".
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 ...
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):
Greek poetry meters are based on patterns of long and short syllables (in contrast to English verse, which is determined by stress), and lyric poetry is characterized by a great variety of metrical forms. [4] Apart from the shift between long and short syllables, stress must be considered when reading Greek poetry.
In English poetry, feet are determined by emphasis rather than length, with stressed and unstressed syllables serving the same function as long and short syllables in classical metre. The basic unit in Greek and Latin prosody is a mora, which is defined as a single short syllable. A long syllable is equivalent to two morae.
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. There are rare exceptions such as Callimachus fragment 399 (trochaic pentameter catalectic) and fragment 229 (a choriambic pentameter).