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This line includes a masculine caesura after θεὰ, a natural break that separates the line into two logical parts. Homeric lines more commonly employ feminine caesurae; this preference is observed to an even higher degree among the Alexandrian poets. [3] An example of a feminine caesura is the opening line of the Odyssey:
In modern terms, a caesura is a natural break which occurs in the middle of a foot, at the end of a word. This is contrasted with diaeresis, which is a break between two feet. In dactylic hexameter, there must be a caesura in each line, and such caesuras almost always occur in the 3rd or 4th foot. There are two kinds of caesura:
Almost every hexameter has a word break, known as a caesura / s ɪ ˈ z j ʊ ə r ə /, in the middle of the 3rd foot, sometimes (but not always) coinciding with a break in sense. In most cases (85% [ 6 ] of lines in Virgil) this comes after the first syllable of the 3rd foot, as in ca/no in the above example.
If the line has only one foot, it is called a monometer; two feet, dimeter; three is trimeter; four is tetrameter; five is pentameter; six is hexameter, seven is heptameter and eight is octameter. For example, if the feet are iambs, and if there are five feet to a line, then it is called an iambic pentameter. [1]
A line may have more than one caesura, or none at all. If near the beginning of the line, it is called the initial caesura; near the middle, medial; near the end, terminal. An accented or masculine caesura follows an accented syllable, an unaccented or feminine caesura an unaccented syllable. The caesura is used in two essentially contrary ways ...
While the above classical hexameter has never enjoyed much popularity in English, where the standard metre is iambic pentameter, English poems have frequently been written in iambic hexameter. There are numerous examples from the 16th century and a few from the 17th; the most prominent of these is Michael Drayton 's Poly-Olbion (1612) in ...
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 ...
One result of this caesura is that the fourth element of the line usually coincides with the word-accent, while the third is unaccented. In lines where there is no caesura after the fifth element there is one after the seventh (often combined with one after the 3rd element). [135] An example is the fourth line of the Terence example below.