OTP: Lesson - The Scansion of Poetry - Dactylic Hexameter

The Scansion of Poetry - Dactylic Hexameter

Common patterns emerged, often based on earlier Greek formulae for poetic meters. These patterns became recognizable as belonging to a specific type of poem, which is why Ovid was able to "play around" with the notion that Amores was an epic poem, because it would be written in dactylic hexameter only to have Cupid steal a foot, making it a series of elegiac couplets.

Image note: In this 16th-century CE illustration by Antonio Tempesta, a young woman named Dryope is turned into a tree after plucking a Lotus flower. The Latin text reads: Driope in arboris formam transmigrat. Notice that this line is prose since it is captioning the illustration, and thus is not in any particular meter.

Let's explore some poetry to learn more about different meters.

Dactylic Hexameter

This formula calls for six feet in each line, with each foot concluding by using a dactyl in foot five and a spondee in foot six. The style arose in Greece and was most famously used in Homer's epic poems: Iliad and Odyssey. Roman poets, wishing to imitate the Greek style, took the use of dactylic hexameter to be the way to formulate epic poems. The most famous Latin example of dactylic hexameter is Vergil's epic poem Aeneid, about a Trojan warrior tasked with founding a new civilization in Italy (in other words, it is Rome's origin story). The poem's famous first seven lines strongly demonstrate the epic meter:

Arma vi | rumque ca | nō, Trō | iae quī | prīmus ab | ōrīs
Ītali | am fā | tō profu | gus Lā | vīniaque | vēnit
lītora, | multum~il | le~et ter | rīs iac | tātus et | altō
vī supe | rum, sae | vae memo | rem Iū | nōnis ob | īram,
multa quo | que~et bel | lō pas | sus, dum | conderet | urbem
īnfer | retque de | ōs Lati | ō; genus | unde La | tīnum
Albā | nīque pat | rēs at | que~altae | moenia | Rōmae.

Notes: Laviniaque = Lavin(i)a, so that the ia makes a single sound = ya.

It is harder to find examples in English since we focus less on length and more on accent. This example from the opening line of Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gives you some idea of what dactylic hexameter is like in English:

This is the | forest pri | meval. The | murmuring | pines and the | hemlocks

Video Lesson

Now that we've learned some basics, let's watch a video that goes into more detail about Dactylic Hexameter. Take notes!

Video source: Brian Thomas Reise (YouTube), shared via a CC license.

[CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Links to an external site.] UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED | IMAGES: LICENSED AND USED ACCORDING TO TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION - INTENDED ONLY FOR USE WITHIN LESSON.