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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):
The hexameter follows the usual rhetorical trends of the dactylic hexameter in this age. If anything, the elegists are even more interested in verbal effects like alliteration and assonance. Overall there is a tendency to make the elegiac couplet increasingly dactylic.
The Latin rhythmic hexameter [1] or accentual hexameter [2] is a kind of Latin dactylic hexameter which arose in the Middle Ages alongside the metrical kind. The rhythmic hexameter did not scan correctly according to the rules of classical prosody; instead it imitated the approximate sound of a typical metrical hexameter by having roughly the same number of syllables and putting word accents ...
Mostly these consist of either a dactylic hexameter or an iambic trimeter, followed by an "epode", which is a shorter line either iambic or dactylic in character, or a mixture of these. The first or second line can also end with an ithyphallic colon (– ᴗ – ᴗ – x). [9] For examples of such epodic strophes see: Archilochian; Alcmanian
A 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).
The dactylic hexameter was imitated in English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem Evangeline: This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic,
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The oldest Greek verseform, [1] and the Greek line for heroic verse, is the dactylic hexameter, which was already well-established in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C.E. when the Iliad and Odyssey were composed in this meter. [2] The Saturnian was used in Latin epics of the 3rd century B.C.E., but few examples remain and the meter is little ...