Alcmanian verse refers to the

dactylic tetrameter Dactylic tetrameter is a metre in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of four dactylic feet. "Tetrameter" simply means four poetic feet. Each foot has a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, the opposite of an anapest, some ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

and

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 conv ...

Dactylic tetrameter in Alcman

Ancient metricians called the

the Alcmanic because of its use by the

Archaic 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 Archai ...

poet

Alcman Alcman (; ''Alkmán''; fl. 7th century BC) was an Ancient Greek choral lyric poet from Sparta. He is the earliest representative of the Alexandrian canon of the Nine Lyric Poets. He wrote six books of choral poetry, most of which is now lost; h ...

, as in fragment 27 ''PMG'': : : : :, – uu – uu – uu – uu , :, – uu – uu – uu – uu , :, – – – uu – uu – uu , :'Come, Muse

Calliope In Greek mythology, Calliope ( ; ) is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice. Hesiod and Ovid called her the "Chief of all Muses". Mythology Calliope had two famous sons, OrpheusH ...

, daughter of Zeus, :Begin the lovely words, add beauty :And lovely dance to our hymn.' This length is scanned like the first four feet of the

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 o ...

(giving rise to the name dactylic tetrameter ''a priore''). Thus, a

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 Gree ...

substitutes for a dactyl in the third line, but the lines end with dactyls (not spondees). The final syllable of each line in the above fragment counts as short and is not observed.

The Alcmanian (or Alcmanic) strophe

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), Suetonius, Life of Horace commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). Th ...

composed some poems in the Alcmanian strophe or Alcmanian system. It is also called the Alcmanic strophe or the 1st Archilochian. It is a couplet consisting of a

followed by a dactylic tetrameter ''a posteriore'' (so called because it ends with a spondee, thus resembling the last four feet of the hexameter). Examples are ''

Odes Odes may refer to: *The plural of ode, a type of poem * ''Odes'' (Horace), a collection of poems by the Roman author Horace, circa 23 BCE *Odes of Solomon, a pseudepigraphic book of the Bible *Book of Odes (Bible), a Deuterocanonical book of the ...

'' I.7 and I.28, and ''

Epode According to one meaning of the word, an epode is the third part of an ancient Greek choral ode that follows the strophe and the antistrophe and completes the movement. The word epode is also used to refer to the second (shorter) line of a two-l ...

'' 12: : : :'What do you want for yourself, woman worthy of black elephants? : Why (do you send) me gifts and billets-doux?' It is the only metre in Horace's ''Epodes'' not to contain any iambic

metra Metra is the primary commuter rail system in the Chicago metropolitan area serving the city of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs via the Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway, and other railroads. The system operates 243 train station, stati ...

, and the only one to be found in both the ''Epodes'' and ''Odes''. Later Latin poets use the dactylic tetrameter ''a priore'' as the second verse of the Alcmanian strophe. For example,

Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known simply as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480–524 AD), was a Roman Roman Senate, senator, Roman consul, consul, ''magister officiorum'', polymath, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middl ...

' ''

Consolation of Philosophy ''On the Consolation of Philosophy'' (), often titled as ''The Consolation of Philosophy'' or simply the ''Consolation'', is a philosophical work by the Roman philosopher Boethius. Written in 523 while he was imprisoned and awaiting execution ...

'' I.m.3: : : : : : : : : : : :'Then as the night was shaken off, the darkness became clear : and the former strength returned to my eyes. :Just as when clouds gather with a strong north-west wind : and the sky threatens with cloudy rainshowers, :The Sun is hidden and, the stars not yet coming to the sky, : night is poured from above onto the earth. :But if the

North Wind A north wind originates in the north and blows in a southward direction. The wind has had historical and literary significance, since it often signals cold weather and seasonal change in the Northern hemisphere. Mythology *In Greek mythology, ...

, released from his

Thracian The Thracians (; ; ) were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Southeast Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied the area that today is shared between north-eastern Greece, ...

cave, : were to beat the earth and unlock the closed up day, :

Phoebus Apollo is one of the Olympian deities in ancient Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, ...

bursts out and gleaming with sudden light : strikes our amazed eyes with his rays.'

Ausonius Decimius Magnus Ausonius (; ) was a Latin literature, Roman poet and Education in ancient Rome, teacher of classical rhetoric, rhetoric from Burdigala, Gallia Aquitania, Aquitaine (now Bordeaux, France). For a time, he was tutor to the future E ...

uses couplets of a dactylic tetrameter ''a priore'' followed by a

hemiepes 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 fi ...

in ' 25: : : :'You also, Dryadia my aunt, : with mournful strains...'H. G. Evelyn-White (transl.), ''Ausonius'', vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library, p. 91.

In modern poetry

The term "Alcmanian" is sometimes applied to modern English dactylic tetrameters (e.g.

Robert Southey Robert Southey (; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic poetry, Romantic school, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth an ...

's "Soldier's Wife": "Wild-visaged Wanderer, ah, for thy heavy chance!"), or to poems (e.g. in German) that strictly imitate Horace's meters.

References

{{reflist Types of verses Ancient Greek poetry Latin poetry