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Dactylic Pentameter
The dactylic pentameter is a verse-form which, in classical Greek and Latin poetry, follows a dactylic hexameter to make up an elegiac couplet. It features two halves, each consisting of two dactyls, for which spondees can be substituted in the first half only, followed by a longum. Thus the line most normally looks as follows (note that "—" marks a long syllable, "∪" a short syllable and " ∪ ∪ " either one long or two shorts): , — ∪ ∪ , — ∪ ∪ , — , , — ∪ ∪ , — ∪ ∪ , — As in all classical verse-forms, the phenomenon of brevis in longo is observed, so the last syllable can actually be short or long. Also, the line has a diaeresis, where a word boundary must occur, after the first half-line, here marked , , . "Pentameter" may seem a slightly strange term for this meter, as it seems to have six parts, but the reason is that each half of the line has two and a half feet, the two together thus making up five. Each half-line is call ...
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Classical Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic or Homeric period (), and the Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek, and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek, ...
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Latin Poetry
The history of Latin poetry can be understood as the adaptation of Greek models. The verse comedies of Plautus, the earliest surviving examples of Latin literature, are estimated to have been composed around 205–184 BC. History Scholars conventionally date the start of Latin literature to the first performance of a play in verse by a Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, at Rome in 240 BC. Livius translated Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, using meters that were basically those of Greek drama, modified to the needs of Latin. His successors Plautus ( 254 – 184 BC) and Terence ( 195/185 – 159? BC) further refined the borrowings from the Greek stage and the prosody of their verse is substantially the same as for classical Latin verse. Ennius (239 – 169 BC), virtually a contemporary of Livius, introduced the traditional meter of Greek epic, the dactylic hexameter, into Latin literature; he substituted it for the jerky Saturnian meter in which Livius had been composing ...
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Dactylic Hexameter
Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter used in Ancient Greek epic and didactic poetry as well as in epic, didactic, satirical, and pastoral Latin poetry. Its name is derived from Greek (, "finger") and (, "six"). Dactylic hexameter consists of six feet. The first five feet contain either two long syllables, a spondee (– –), or a long syllable followed by two short syllables, a dactyl (–ᴗᴗ). However, the last foot contains either a spondee or a long syllable followed by one short syllable, a trochee(– ᴗ). The six feet and their variation is symbolically represented below: The hexameter is traditionally associated with classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin. Consequently, it has been considered to be ''the'' grand style of Western classical poetry. Examples of epics in hexameter are Homer's ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'', Apollonius of Rhodes's ''Argonautica'', Virgil's ''Aeneid'', Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', Lucan's ''Pharsalia'', Valerius Flaccus's ''Argona ...
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Elegiac Couplet
The elegiac couplet or elegiac distich is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later. As with the English heroic couplet, each pair of lines usually makes sense on its own, while forming part of a larger work. Each couplet consists of a dactylic hexameter verse followed by a dactylic pentameter verse. The following is a graphic representation of its scansion: – uu , – uu , – uu , – uu , – uu , – x – uu , – uu , – , , – uu , – uu , – – is one long syllable, u one short syllable, uu is one long or two short syllables, and x is one long or one short syllable ( anceps). The form was felt by the ancients to contrast the rising action of the first verse with a falling quality in the second. The sentiment is summarized in a line from Ovid's ''Amores'' I.1.2 ...
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Spondee
A spondee (Latin: ) is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables in modern meters. The word comes from the Greek , , 'libation'. Spondees in Ancient Greek and Latin Libations Sometimes libations were accompanied by hymns in spondaic rhythm, as in the following hymn by the Greek poet Terpander (7th century BC), which consists of 20 long syllables: "Zeus, Beginning of all things, Leader of all things, Zeus, I make a libation to Thee this beginning of (my) hymns." In hexameter poetry However, in most Greek and Latin poetry, the spondee typically does not provide the basis for a metrical line in poetry. Instead, spondees are found as irregular feet in meter based on another type of foot. For example, the epics of Homer and Virgil are written in dactylic hexameter. This term suggests a line of six dactyls, but a spondee can be substituted in most positions. The first line of Virgil's ...
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Long Syllable
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical Indo-European verse, as developed in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line. Linguistics A heavy syllable is a syllable with a branching nucleus or a branching rime, although not all such syllables are heavy in every language. A branching nucleus generally means the syllable has a long vowel or a diphthong; this type of syllable is abbreviated as CVV. A syllable with a branching rime is a ''closed syllable'', that is, one with a coda (one or more consonants at the end of the syllable); this type of syllable is abbreviated CVC. In some languages, both CVV and CVC syllables are heavy, while a syllable with a short vowel as the nucleus and no coda (a CV syllable) is a light syllable. In other languages, only CVV syllables are heavy, while CVC and CV syllables are ...
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Brevis In Longo
In Greek and Latin metre, ''brevis in longo'' (; ) is a short syllable at the end of a line that is counted as long. The term is short for , meaning "a short yllablein a long lement. Although the phenomenon itself has been known since ancient times, the phrase is saidcf. West, M. L."Three Topics in Greek Metre" ''The Classical Quarterly'', Vol. 32, No. 2 (1982), pp. 281-297; p. 288. to have been invented by the classical scholar Paul Maas. ''Brevis in longo'' is possible in various classical metres that require a long syllable at the end of a line, including dactylic hexameters and iambic trimeters. It can also be found in the centre of a line in some metres, before a dieresis (e.g. in the iambic octonarius). However, it does not seem to be found in every metre. For example, in Greek, in ionic metres ending in u u – –, there do not seem to be any examples. A similar phenomenon is found in other languages whose poetic metres are quantitative, such as Arabic, Persian, ...
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Diaeresis (prosody)
In poetic meter, diaeresis ( ; also spelled diæresis or dieresis) has two meanings: the separate pronunciation of the two vowels in a diphthong for the sake of meter, and a division between feet that corresponds to the division between words. Synaeresis, the pronunciation of two vowels as a diphthong (or as a long vowel), is the opposite of the first definition. Etymology Diaeresis comes from the Ancient Greek noun ''diaíresis'' (διαίρεσις) "taking apart" or "division" (also "distinction"), from the verb ''diairéō'' (διαιρέω) "take apart", a compound of the verb ''airéō'' (αἱρέω) "take" and the preposition ''diá'' (διά) "through" (in compounds, "apart"). French In the phonology of Standard French, the letters ''ie'' are normally pronounced or except after ''Cr'' or ''Cl'', when they indicate two syllables, or . (That exception came into the language only around the 17th century, as can be seen in poems before then.) In some French dialect ...
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Word Boundary (linguistics)
A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition. Some specific definitions of the term "word" are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations. The concept of "word" is distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own. Words are made out of at least one morpheme. Morphemes can als ...
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Prosody (Latin)
Latin prosody (from Middle French ''prosodie'', from Latin ''prosōdia'', from Ancient Greek προσῳδία ''prosōidía'', 'song sung to music', 'pronunciation of syllable') is the study of Latin poetry and its laws of meter. The following article provides an overview of those laws as practised by Latin poets in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, with verses by Catullus, Horace, Virgil and Ovid as models. Except for the early Saturnian (poetry), Saturnian poetry, which may have been accentual, Latin poets borrowed all their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences between the two languages. Latin verse: a Greek gift A brief history The start of Latin literature is usually dated to the first performance of a play by Livius Andronicus in Rome in 240 BC. Livius, a Greek slave, translated Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences. He not only established the genre fabula palliata, but also adapted meters from Greek drama to meet the needs of Latin ...
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Types Of Verses
Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * Type (Unix), a command in POSIX shells that gives information about commands. * Type safety, the extent to which a programming language discourages or prevents type errors. * Type system, defines a programming language's response to data types. Mathematics * Type (model theory) * Type theory, basis for the study of type systems * Arity or type, the number of operands a function takes * Type, any proposition or set in the intuitionistic type theory * Type, of an entire function ** Exponential type Biology * Type (biology), which fixes a scientific name to a taxon * Dog type, categorization by use or function of domestic dogs Lettering * Type is a design concept for lettering used in typography which helped bring about modern textual pri ...
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