In prosody a paeon (or paean) is a

metrical foot The foot is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. ...

used in both

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

and prose. It consists of four syllables, with one of the syllables being long and the other three short. Paeons were often used in the traditional Greek hymn to

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

called

paean A paean () is a song or lyric poem expressing triumph or thanksgiving. In classical antiquity, it is usually performed by a chorus, but some examples seem intended for an individual voice ( monody). It comes from the Greek (also or ), "song ...

s. Its use in English poetry is rare. Depending on the position of the long syllable, the four paeons are called a first, second, third, or fourth paeon. The

cretic A cretic ( ), also known as an amphimacer ( ) and sometimes paeon diagyios, is a metrical foot containing three syllables: long, short, long (– ᴗ –). In Greek poetry, lines made entirely of cretic feet are less common than other metres. An e ...

or amphimacer metrical foot, with three syllables, the first and last of which are long and the second short, is sometimes also called a paeon diagyios.

Use in prose

The paeon (particularly the first and fourth) was favored by ancient prose writers since, unlike the dactyl,

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 ...

trochee In poetic metre, a trochee ( ) is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, unstressed one, in qualitative meter, as found in English, and in modern linguistics; or in quantitative meter, as found in ...

, and iamb, it was not associated with a particular

poetic meter In poetry, metre ( Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of ...

, such as the

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek as well as in Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of s ...

tetrameter In poetry, a tetrameter is a line of four metrical feet. However, the particular foot can vary, as follows: * '' Anapestic tetrameter:'' ** "And the ''sheen'' of their ''spears'' was like ''stars'' on the ''sea''" (Lord Byron, " The Destruction ...

, or

trimeter In poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addi ...

, and so produced a sound not overly poetical or familiar. Regarding the use of the paeon in prose,

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

writes: :All the other meters then are to be disregarded for the reasons stated, and also because they are metrical; but the paean should be retained, because it is the only one of the rhythms mentioned which is not adapted to a metrical system, so that it is most likely to be undetected. This was of special importance to orators (and in particular forensic orators) for whom, while the use of rhythmic elements was thought to produce memorable and moving speech, the use of the less obvious paeonic rhythm was thought to help them seem less contrived and thus more sincere, rendering their speech more effective. According to the Roman

rhetorician Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or write ...

Quintilian Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (; 35 – 100 AD) was a Roman educator and rhetorician born in Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quin ...

: :Above all it is necessary to conceal the care expended upon it so that our rhythms may seem to possess a spontaneous flow, not to have been the result of elaborate search or compulsion. According to both Aristotle and Quintilian, the first paeon was considered particularly suitable at the beginning of a sentence, and the fourth at the end. Quintilian, ''Institutio Oratoria'
9.5.96

Notes

References

*Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 22, translated by J. H. Freese. Aristotle. Cambridge and London. Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd. 1926
Perseus
*Steele, Timothy, "'The Superior Art': Verse and Prose and Modern Poetry", in ''Writers and Their Craft: Short Stories and Essays on the Narrative'', Wayne State University Press (May 1991). . *Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott
Paean
in ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones, with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940. *Quintilian. With An English Translation.

Harold Edgeworth Butler Harold Edgeworth Butler (8 May 1878 – 5 June 1951) was a British classicist. He was Professor of Latin at University College, London in succession to A. E. Housman from 1911 until his retirement. Butler was the son of the Rev. Arthur Gray ...

. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922. *Strachan, John, R, Richard G, Terry, ''Poetry: an Introduction'', NYU Press (January 1, 2001). *Squire, Irving, ''Musical Dictionary'', Adamant Media Corporation; Replica edition (October 30, 2001). {{ISBN, 978-0-543-90764-6. Metrical feet