The foot is no longer a dactyl, but a spondee: for. Specifically, the poet, at his or her license, may replace (or contract) the pair of short syllables in the arsis with (or into) a long syllable. What to do, then, with words that have only long syllables? The answer is that the meter must become more flexible. One potential problem is that not every word has one short syllable, let alone two. Substitution The general idea, therefore, is that a poet composes a hexameter verse by placing words into the metrical scheme wherever they best fit. In fact, for purposes of recitation, the anceps is always treated as long to fill out the line. No hexameter verse ends in in its place one finds the anceps, which is either short or long-it does not matter. Its second syllable is called the anceps (Latin for "two-headed"), which is noted either as or. Observe that the final metron is technically not a dactyl. The word hexameter also derives from Greek and essentially means "six metrons (or, to be precise, metra) in a row." In other words, a single epic verse consists of six successive dactyls. Try these: a g r i c o l a d i f f i c i l l i m i s p e r e u n t t r a n s t u l e r a m u s #1 rule of syllabification: When in doubt, read ALOUD!įeet The dactyl serves as the basic rhythmic unit, or metron, of hexameter verse. Prepositional prefixes stand alone as syllables e.g. It’s a holdover of the Greek aspirant and merely implies rough breathing. A mute-liquid combination, as a matter of fact, will not "make position" for a vowel: the -a- in patres scans as short, not long. So patres divides as pa-tres, not pat-res.
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