An Asclepiad (Latin: Asclepiadeus) is a line of poetry following a particular metrical pattern. The form is attributed to Asclepiades of Samos and is one of the Aeolic metres.
As with other Aeolic metrical lines, the asclepiad is built around a choriamb. The Asclepiad may be described as a glyconic that has been expanded with one (Lesser Asclepiad) or two (Greater Asclepiad) further choriambs. The pattern (using "–" for a long syllable, "u" for a short and "x" for an "anceps" or free syllable, which can be either – or u) is:
x x - u u - | - u u - u - (Lesser Asclepiad / Asclepiadeus minor) x x - u u - | - u u - | - u u - u - (Greater Asclepiad / Asclepiadeus maior)
In Horace's Odes, there is almost always a caesura after the 6th syllable. [1]
Asclepiads are often found mixed with the pherecratean and glyconic, which have a similar rhythm:
x x - u u - - (Pherecratean) x x - u u - u - (Glyconic)
West (1982) designates the Asclepiad as a "choriambically expanded glyconic" with the notation glc (lesser) or gl2c (greater).
In theory the first two syllables are anceps (either long or short) but in practice Horace always starts the line with two long syllables (except possibly at 1.15.36). [2] The last syllable can have brevis in longo .
Asclepiads were used in Latin by Horace in thirty-four of his odes, as well as by Catullus in Poem 30, and Seneca in six tragedies. [3]
Asclepiads are found either in stichic form (i.e. used continuously unmixed with other metres) or in 4-line stanzas mixed with glyconics and pherecrateans. The various forms are known as the "1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th asclepiad". The numbering of these, however, differs in different authors. The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 used by Klingner (1939), Nisbet & Hubbard (1970), D. West (1995), Shackleton Bailey (2008), Mayer (2012), and Becker (2016), (followed here) are called 1, 4, 5, 3, 2 by Wickham (1896) and Raven (1965), and 1, 3, 4, 2, 5 by Page (1895), Bennett (1914) and Rudd (2004). [4] The metre is named after the 3rd century BC poet Asclepiades of Samos, although in fact none of the surviving fragments of that poet are in asclepiads. [5]
In Latin, 34 of Horace's 103 Odes are written in various forms of asclepiads. Asclepiads are also found in Seneca the Younger and in Ausonius. [6] Catullus has one poem (30) using the greater asclepiad, and a number of others combining pherecrateans and glyconics without the asclepiad line. [7]
This consists of a series of (lesser) asclepiad lines used stichically, as in Horace, Odes 1.1, addressed to Horace's patron Maecenas:
And also famously in Ode 3.30, the last ode of the collection (Odes 1–3):
This form of the asclepiad is also used in several poems by Alcaeus, e.g. 349A–353. [4]
(= Raven and Wickham's 4th, Page and Rudd's 3rd asclepiad)
Three asclepiads are followed by a glyconic, as in Horace, Odes 1.6, addressed to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa:
This form is also found in Alcaeus (5 and 7).
(= Raven and Wickham's 5th, Page and Rudd's 4th asclepiad)
This consists of two asclepiads followed by a pherecratean and a glyconic, as in Horace, Odes 1.5:
(= Raven and Wickham's 3rd, Page and Rudd's 2nd asclepiad)
A glyconic followed by an asclepiad, as in Horace, Odes 1.3, addressed to a ship carrying Horace's friend Virgil to Greece:
(= Raven and Wickham's 2nd, Page and Rudd's 5th asclepiad)
A series of greater asclepiads, used stichically, as in Catullus (30), which begins: [4]
It is also used in three odes by Horace (1.11, 1.18, and 4.10). 1.18 opens as follows:
In surviving Greek poetry this form is found in Alcaeus (e.g. 340–9), Callimachus (frag. 400), and Theocritus (28, 30).
The asclepiad has sometimes been imitated in English verse, for example in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia :
Here wrongs name is unheard: slander a monster is
Keep thy sprite from abuse, here no abuse doth haunte.
What man grafts in a tree dissimulatiön? [15]— Sidney: "O sweet woods the delight of solitariness!", lines 26–28
It is also found in W. H. Auden's "In Due Season", which begins:
Springtime, Summer and Fall: days to behold a world
Antecedent to our knowing, where flowers think
Theirs concretely in scent-colors and beasts, the same
Age all over, pursue dumb horizontal lives.
On one level of conduct and so cannot be
Secretary to man's plot to become divine.— Auden: "In Due Season", lines 1–6
Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows :
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."
In poetry, a hendecasyllable is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical poetry, and the newer of which are syllabic or accentual-syllabic and used in medieval and modern poetry.
In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a long or a short syllable.
The Sapphic stanza, named after Sappho, is an Aeolic verse form of four lines. Originally composed in quantitative verse and unrhymed, since the Middle Ages imitations of the form typically feature rhyme and accentual prosody. It is "the longest lived of the Classical lyric strophes in the West".
The Odes are a collection in four books of Latin lyric poems by Horace. The Horatian ode format and style has been emulated since by other poets. Books 1 to 3 were published in 23 BC. A fourth book, consisting of 15 poems, was published in 13 BC.
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.
The Alcaic stanza is a Greek lyrical meter, an Aeolic verse form traditionally believed to have been invented by Alcaeus, a lyric poet from Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, about 600 BC. The Alcaic stanza and the Sapphic stanza named for Alcaeus' contemporary, Sappho, are two important forms of Classical poetry. The Alcaic stanza consists of two Alcaic hendecasyllables, followed by an Alcaic enneasyllable and an Alcaic decasyllable.
Glyconic is a form of meter in classical Greek and Latin poetry. The glyconic line is the most basic and most commonly used form of Aeolic verse, and it is often combined with others.
Archilochian or archilochean is a term used to describe several metres of Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The name is derived from Archilochus, whose poetry first uses the rhythms.
Greek and Latin metre is an overall term used for the various rhythms in which Greek and Latin poems were composed. The individual rhythmical patterns used in Greek and Latin poetry are also known as "metres".
Versus Galliambicus (Latin), or the Galliambic Verse (English), is a verse built from two anacreontic cola, the second one catalectic. The metre typically has resolution in the last metron, and often elsewhere, leading to a run of short syllables at the end. An example is the first line of Catullus's poem 63:
u u - u | - u - - || u u - u u | u u u sŭpĕr āltă vēctŭs Āttĭs || cĕlĕrī rătĕ mărĭă
Aeolic verse is a classification of Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed in their native Aeolic dialect. These verse forms were taken up and developed by later Greek and Roman poets and some modern European poets.
The ionic is a four-syllable metrical unit (metron) of light-light-heavy-heavy that occurs in ancient Greek and Latin poetry. According to Hephaestion it was known as the Ionicos because it was used by the Ionians of Asia Minor; and it was also known as the Persicos and was associated with Persian poetry. Like the choriamb, in Greek quantitative verse the ionic never appears in passages meant to be spoken rather than sung. "Ionics" may refer inclusively to poetry composed of the various metrical units of the same total quantitative length that may be used in combination with ionics proper: ionics, choriambs, and anaclasis. Equivalent forms exist in English poetry and in classical Persian poetry.
Latin prosody 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, which may have been accentual, Latin poets borrowed all their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences between the two languages.
Prosody is the theory and practice of versification.
The Epodes are a collection of iambic poems written by the Roman poet Horace. They were published in 30 BC and form part of his early work alongside the Satires. Following the model of the Greek poets Archilochus and Hipponax, the Epodes largely fall into the genre of blame poetry, which seeks to discredit and humiliate its targets.
Anaclasis is a feature of poetic metre, in which a long and a short syllable exchange places in a metrical pattern.
Odes 1.1, also known by its incipit, Maecenas atavis edite regibus, is the first of the Odes of Horace. This ode forms the prologue to the three books of lyrics published by Horace in 23 BC and is a dedication to the poet's friend and patron, Maecenas. The metre of the poem, like the final poem of book 3, is a stichic version of the Asclepiad, known as the "1st Asclepiad".
Odes 1.5, also known as Ad Pyrrham, or by its incipit, Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa, is one of the Odes of Horace. The poem is written in one of the Asclepiadic metres and is of uncertain date; not after 23 BC.