Verse forms

This section describes the metres of Greek poetry, one family at a time. Each page takes one family. It shows the family’s basic pattern, says who used it and for what, and ends with a worked example scanned syllable by syllable. This guide explains the words the menu uses, shows how the pages are arranged, and suggests an order for reading them.

What a family of metres is

A Greek line of verse is a pattern of long and short syllables. A long syllable is written —, and a short one ⏑. The pattern that a poet follows is the poem’s metre. Telling long syllables from short is explained under Metre › Introduction.

A family of metres is a group of patterns built from the same basic unit. Each family is named after its unit. The dactylic family, for instance, is built from the dactyl, a long syllable followed by two shorts: — ⏑ ⏑. Its name comes from δάκτυλος (daktylos), “finger”.^[1] Other names describe the effect of a rhythm, or the region and the poets it came from. “Trochaic” comes from τροχαῖος (trochaios), “running”, and “dochmiac” from δόχμιος (dochmios), “askew”. The Ionic metre is linked with Ionia, and the aeolic metres are found in poetry in the Aeolic dialect.^[2]

A unit such as the dactyl is called a foot. A dactyl groups a long syllable with two short ones.^[3] The bracket gathers its three positions into one foot:

The metron (μέτρον, metron, “measure”) is the unit of three to six syllables that repeats through a regular line. In dactylic verse, one foot makes one metron.^[3] Here the same unit appears twice:

In iambic, trochaic and anapaestic verse, two feet make one metron.^[3] Each pair of small brackets shows the two feet. The larger bracket joins them into one metron:

The sign × marks an anceps position: a place in the pattern that can take a long or a short syllable.^[3] In the iambic metron, × — ⏑ —, it is the first position. Either choice fills that position; the other three stay the same:

A longer phrase, of up to about twelve syllables, is called a colon (κῶλον, kōlon; plural cola). Greek poets drew on a common stock of cola. The same cola turn up in poem after poem, and that is how we recognise them.^[4]

Some cola cannot be cut into feet at all. The glyconic, ○ ○ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —, is the commonest of them. Its first two positions are free, so long as both are not short (○ ○). Such fixed, uneven shapes are typical of the Lesbian poets Sappho and Alcaeus. Wherever they are used, the verse is called aeolic.^[5]

The rule in one line: a family is named after its unit, and its pages show how the unit is repeated, varied and combined.

Stichic metres

The menu groups the pages under three headings. The first is Stichic metres.

A stichic metre repeats one verse-pattern line after line, with no stanzas. Such verse is also said to run κατὰ στίχον (kata stichon), “line by line”.^[6] Most Greek poetry is stichic, above all the dactylic hexameter of epic and the iambic trimeter of drama.^[7]

Here are the first two lines of the Iliad. Each line is a hexameter of six feet, and each repeats the same pattern:

The stichic pages are Dactylic (the hexameter), Elegiac, Iambic and Trochaic. The elegiac couplet is a hexameter followed by a shorter line, the so-called pentameter. It repeats in pairs of lines, not single lines. So, strictly, it is a stanza of two lines.^[8]

Lyric metres

The second heading is Lyric metres.

Lyric poetry was poetry for singing. The word means song to the lyre or an instrument like it.^[9] Some lyric was sung by one singer. That is called monody (μονῳδία, monōidia, “singing alone”). Some was sung by a dancing chorus. That is called choral lyric.^[10]

Sung verse is normally not stichic. It is mostly strophic.^[11] A strophe (στροφή, strophē), or stanza, is a group of lines that recurs in the same form. When it recurs only once, the second one is called the antistrophe (ἀντιστροφή, antistrophē). The metrical agreement between the two is called responsion.^[4]

Sappho’s Hymn to Aphrodite is strophic. Its first stanza has three lines of eleven syllables and a short closing line. Each of the six stanzas that follow repeats the pattern:

The lyric pages are Aeolic, Ionic, Anapaestic, Cretic and paeonic, Dochmiac and Dactylo-epitrite. The table below gives each family’s unit with a line or colon from its page.

Composite forms

The third heading, Composite forms, is this site’s own grouping. Its pages are not about one family. They show how the units were put together into larger wholes.

• Stanzas and epodes. The stanza-forms of the lyric poets. An epode (ἐπῳδός, epōidos) is, in Archilochus and the Ionian poets, a shorter line that follows a longer one.^[12] In choral lyric it is a third stanza of a different form. Strophe, antistrophe and epode together make a triad, and the poet repeats the triad as often as he wishes.^[13]
• Lyric in drama. The sung parts of tragedy and comedy. Their strophes usually come in pairs: A A, then B B, then C C, sometimes with an epode at the end.^[14]
• Later metres. Greek verse after the fifth century BC, from the Hellenistic poets to late antiquity.^[15]
• Greek metres in Latin. Compare a hexameter of Virgil, a glyconic stanza of Catullus and a Sapphic stanza of Horace, with scanned syllables and sound.
• Verse in the magical papyri. The hymns, in hexameters and iambics, that stand in the Greek magical papyri.

The diagram sets the four arrangements side by side:

The families at a glance

Each family has a basic unit, and each unit has a sign of its own in the scheme.^[16] Here is one line or colon for each family, as it is scanned on its page:

Two of the names need a word more. Dactylo-epitrite is a modern name. It joins the dactyl to the epitrite, from ἐπίτριτος (epitritos), “four thirds”.^[17] Its pieces are written D (— ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ —) and e (— ⏑ —). Cretic and paeonic verse uses the five-time unit — ⏑ —; when one of its longs is split into two shorts, the result is called a paeon.^[18]

The pages

A suggested path

1. If the signs — and ⏑ are new to you, begin with Metre › First steps, then Metre › Introduction. Hear the sounds first, under Phonology › First steps.
2. Read Dactylic. The hexameter is the commonest Greek metre and the easiest to hear.
3. Go on to the other stichic lines: Elegiac, Iambic and Trochaic.
4. Then Aeolic, the songs of Sappho and Alcaeus.
5. Then the shorter lyric units that drama uses most: Ionic, Anapaestic, Cretic and paeonic and Dochmiac.
6. Then Dactylo-epitrite, the metre of many of Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ odes.
7. Finish with the composite forms: Stanzas and epodes, Lyric in drama and Later metres.

Every page ends with a worked example. Read it with the poem’s own page open beside it, under Poets and playwrights.

Notes

1. ^ D’Angour 2022, p. 132.
2. ^ D’Angour 2022, p. 134.
3. ^ ^{a b c d} West 1987, p. 5.
4. ^ ^{a b} West 1987, p. 4.
5. ^ West 1987, pp. 32–33.
6. ^ Battezzato 2009, p. 132.
7. ^ West 1987, p. 19.
8. ^ West 1987, pp. 23–24, 31.
9. ^ Landels 1999, c. pp. 11–12.
10. ^ Landels 1999, c. pp. 11–13.
11. ^ West 1987, p. 48.
12. ^ West 1987, p. 31.
13. ^ West 1987, p. 36.
14. ^ West 1987, p. 50.
15. ^ West 1987, p. 68.
16. ^ West 1987, pp. ix–x.
17. ^ Battezzato 2009, p. 141.
18. ^ West 1987, pp. 39, 55.