Glyconic

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Glyconic (from Glycon, a Greek lyric poet) 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.

Contents

The basic shape (often abbreviated as gl) is as follows:

x x – u u – u –

Here "x" indicates an anceps, "–" a longum, and "u" a brevis. "x x" is known as the Aeolic base, which can be a spondeus "– –", a trochee "– u", or an iamb "u –". The middle foot "– u u –" is a choriambus , as a so-called choriambic nucleus is a defining element of Aeolic verse. As in all classical verse forms, the phenomenon of brevis in longo is observed, so although the last syllable can actually be short or long, it always "counts" as long. [1]

Runs of glyconic lines are often ended by a pherecratean (a catalectic glyconic):

x x – u u – –

The acephalous ("headless") version (^gl), also known as the telesillean (Latin: telesilleus), is:

x – u u – u –

The glyconic can also be expanded into the lesser and greater asclepiad lines: [2]

x x – u u – – u u – u –
x x – u u – – u u – – u u – u –

By expanding the ending of the line, it becomes the phalaecian hendecasyllable, often used by Catullus and Martial: [3]

x x – u u – u – u – –

Origin of the glyconic

Some of the earliest poems in any Indo-European language, the Vedic hymns of India, are composed mainly in iambic metre, in lines of eight, eleven or twelve syllables, with occasional irregularities in the first part of the line. Noting this, the metrician Paul Kiparsky posits that the Greek glyconic and its related metres originated in the same way from an originally iambic metre. [4]

Thus, by substitution of a trochee for an iamb in the 3rd and 4th syllables, but keeping the iambic ending, an original iambic dimeter could change to a glyconic:

x – u – | u – u – (iambic dimeter)
x x – u | u – u – (glyconic)

(A similar change is often seen in Vedic verse). Longer metres are derived by Kiparsky from the iambic trimeter, for example, the hendecasyllable and lesser asclepiad:

x – u – | u – u – | u – u – (iambic trimeter)
x x – u | u – u – | u – – (Phalaecian hendecasyllable)
x x – u | u – – u | u – u – (lesser asclepiad)

This switch of an iamb for a trochee or vice versa is known as anaclasis. Anaclasis is sometimes found in the glyconic metre itself, as appears from the Euripides example below:

x x – u | u – u – (normal glyconic)
uu u – – | – u u – (anaclastic glyconic)

Greek examples

Anacreon

An example of a poem combining glyconics and a pherecratean is the following fragment of Anacreon, a hymn to the goddess Artemis: [5]

γουνοῦμαι σ᾽ ἐλαφηβόλε,
ξανθὴ παῖ Διός, ἀγρίων
δέσποιν᾽ Ἄρτεμι θηρῶν [6]
gounoûmai s᾽ elaphēbóle,
xanthḕ paî Diós, agríōn
déspoin᾽ Ártemi thērôn
– – – u u – u – (2x)
– – – u u – –
"I clasp your knees, shooter of deer,
blonde daughter of Zeus, Artemis,
mistress of wild animals."

Euripides

Choruses in aeolic metres are common in Euripides. In his glyconics he often splits or resolves a long syllable into two short ones. This can even happen at the end of the line, provided there is no pause between one line and the next. [7]

The following example is from Euripides' Phoenissae (202–213). Most of the lines are glyconic, but there are two pherecrateans, and one telesillean. Two of the lines display anaclasis, that is, the substitution of a choriamb (– u u –) for a double iamb (u – u –) in the last four syllables:

Τύριον οἶδμα λιποῦσʼ ἔβαν
ἀκροθίνια Λοξίᾳ
Φοινίσσας ἀπὸ νάσου
Φοίβῳ δούλα μελάθρων,
ἵνʼ ὑπὸ δειράσι νιφοβόλοις
Παρνασοῦ κατενάσθη,
Ἰόνιον κατὰ πόντον ἐλά-
τᾳ πλεύσασα περιρρύτων
ὑπὲρ ἀκαρπίστων πεδίων
Σικελίας Ζεφύρου πνοαῖς
ἱππεύσαντος, ἐν οὐρανῷ
κάλλιστον κελάδημα.
Túrion oîdma lipoûsʼ éban
akrothínia Loxíāi
Phoiníssas apò násou
Phoíbōi doúla meláthrōn,
hínʼ hupò deirási niphobólois
Parnasoû katenásthē,
Iónion katà pónton elá-
tāi pleúsasa perirrhútōn
hupèr akarpístōn pedíōn
Sikelías Zephúrou pnoaîs
hippeúsantos, en ouranôi
kálliston keládēma.
uu u – u u – u – (gl)
– u – u u – u – (gl)
– – – u u – – (ph)
– – – – u u – (te with anaclasis)
uu u – u u uu u – (gl)
– – – u u – – (ph)
uu – u u – u uu (gl)
u – – u u – u – (gl)
uu u – – – u u – (gl with anaclasis)
uu u – u u – u – (gl)
– – – u u – u – (gl)
– – – u u – – (ph)
"From the Tyrian swell of the sea I came, a choice offering for Loxias from the island of Phoenicia, to be a slave to Phoebus in his halls, where he dwells under the snow-swept peaks of Parnassus; through the Ionian sea I sailed in the waves, over the unharvested plains, in the gusts of Zephyrus that ride from Sicily, sweetest music in the sky." (translated by E. P. Coleridge)

Latin examples

Catullus

Catullus 61 is a wedding song consisting of 47 stanzas (with some lines missing) each with four glyconics followed by a pherecratean. It begins with an address to Hymen, god of wedding ceremonies: [8]

Collis ō Helicōniī
cultor, Ūraniae genus,
qui rapis tener(am) ad virum
virgin(em), ō Hymenae(e) Hymēn,
ō Hymēn Hymenaee.
– u – u u – u – (4x)
– u – u u – –
"Cultivator of Mount Helicon, [9]
son of Urania,
you who seize a tender virgin for a husband,
o Hymenaeus Hymen,
o Hymen Hymenaeus."

Catullus 34 is written in a similar metre, but with stanzas consisting of three glyconics + a pherecratean.

The combination of a single glyconic and pherecratean is sometimes given the name priapean (Latin: priapeus). It is used in the Appendix Vergiliana (Priapea 3), and in Catullus 17. Catullus 17, addressed to a certain village which held a festival on a dangerously shaky bridge across a marsh, begins as follows:

o Colōnia, quae cupis ponte lūdere longō
– u – u u – u – | – u – u u – –
"O Colonia, who desire to hold a festival on a long bridge"

Horace

The poet Horace does not use glyconics on their own, but in combination with asclepiad lines (a kind of expanded glyconic) and sometimes also with pherecratean lines. An example is the following, which alternates glyconics with the lesser asclepiad: [10]

    dōnec grātus eram tibī
nec quisquam potior bracchia candidae
    cervīcī iuvenis dabat,
Persārum viguī rēge beātior [11]
– – – u u – u – (glyconic)
– – – u u – – u u – u – (lesser asclepiad)
– – – u u – u –
– – – u u – – u u – u –
    "As long as I was pleasing to you,
and no better young man used to put
    his arms round your white neck,
I flourished more happy than the king of the Persians."

The various different combinations are referred to by modern scholars as "1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th asclepiad". However, different authors disagree as to which combination has which number.

Seneca

The first two syllables of the line (known as an "aeolic base") are often a trochee (– u) in Catullus, but are usually standardised to a spondee (– –) in Horace's version of the metre. Seneca in his tragedies has two different styles. In Hercules Furens 875–94 he writes a chorus of glyconics with every line beginning with a spondee (– –), but in Oedipus 882–914 every line begins with a trochee (– u). In one line in the latter play he contracts the two short syllables into a long one: [12]

tūta mē mediā vehat
vīta dēcurrēns viā [13]
– u – u u – u –
– u – – – u –
"May a safe life convey me as it runs along by a middle way."

Further reading

Related Research Articles

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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 poetry, metre or meter 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 metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody.

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.

Choliambic verse, also known as limping iambs or scazons or halting iambic, is a form of meter in poetry. It is found in both Greek and Latin poetry in the classical period. Choliambic verse is sometimes called scazon, or "lame iambic", because it brings the reader down on the wrong "foot" by reversing the stresses of the last few beats. It was originally pioneered by the Greek lyric poet Hipponax, who wrote "lame trochaics" as well as "lame iambics".

An Asclepiad 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.

A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line.

A tribrach is a metrical foot used in formal poetry and Greek and Latin verse. In quantitative meter, it consists of three short syllables occupying a foot, replacing either an iamb or a trochee. In accentual-syllabic verse, the tribrach consists of a run of three short syllables substituted for a trochee.

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Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of a rhythm, iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form | x – u – |, consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There usually is a break in the centre of the line, thus the whole line is:

| x – u – | x – u – || x – u – || x – u – |

Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in poetry of replacing a normally long syllable in the meter with two short syllables. It is often found in iambic and trochaic meters, and also in anapestic, dochmiac and sometimes in cretic, bacchiac, and ionic meters. In iambic and trochaic meters, either the first or the second half of the metrical foot can be resolved, or sometimes both.

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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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trochaic septenarius</span> A poetic metre used in Greek and Latin especially in Roman comedy

In ancient Greek and Latin literature, the trochaic septenarius is a form of ancient poetic metre first used in 7th century BC Greek literature. It was one of the two most common metres of Roman comedy of the early 1st century BC and was also used for the marching songs sung by soldiers at Caesar's victory parade. After a period when it was little used, it is found again in the Pervigilium Veneris, and taken up again as a metre for Christian hymns. The same metre, with stress-rhythm replacing quantitative metre, has continued to be used, especially for hymns and anthems, right up to the present day.

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.

A lekythion or lecythion, in classical Greek and Latin poetry, is a metric pattern (colon) defined by a sequence of seven alternating long and short syllables at the end of a verse. In classical grammatical terminology it can be described as a trochaic dimeter catalectic, i.e. a combination of two groups of two trochees each, with the second of these groups lacking its final syllable; or as a trochaic hepthemimer, i.e. a trochaic sequence of seven half-feet. A lekythion can appear in several different metric contexts in different types of poetry, either alone as a verse or as the second of two cola following a caesura. A frequent type of occurrence in Greek drama is in lines of iambic trimeter, the most frequent metre used in spoken dialogue, i.e. lines of the type x — u — | x — u — | x — u —. These lines may have a metric caesura after the first five syllables, with the remaining line thus resulting in a lekythion group.

Prosody is the theory and practice of versification.

Anaclasis is a feature of poetic metre, in which a long and a short syllable exchange places in a metrical pattern.

A metron, , plural metra, is a repeating section, 3 to 6 syllables long, of a poetic metre. The word is particularly used in reference to ancient Greek. According to a definition by Paul Maas, usually a metron consists of two long elements and up to two other elements which can be short, anceps or biceps.

The sotadean metre was a rhythmic pattern used by and named after the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Sotades. It is generally classified as a type of ionic metre, though in fact it is half ionic and half trochaic. It has several variations, but the usual pattern is this:

References

  1. ↑ M. L. West (1982). "Three topics in Greek metre". The Classical Quarterly, 32(2), 281–297; pp. 287–8.
  2. ↑ D. S. Raven (1965). Latin Metre: An Introduction, p. 142.
  3. ↑ D. S. Raven (1965). Latin Metre: An Introduction, p. 134.
  4. ↑ Kiparsky, P. (2018). "Indo-European origins of the Greek hexameter". In Hackstein, O., & Gunkel, D. (2018). Language and Meter (pp. 77–128). Brill; especially p. 99.
  5. ↑ D. S. Raven (1965). Latin Metre: An Introduction, p. 140.
  6. ↑ Anacreon, fragment 1 (Diehl 2nd ed.)
  7. ↑ West, M. L. (1987). Introduction to Greek Metre (Oxford); p. 58.
  8. ↑ D. S. Raven (1965). Latin Metre: An Introduction, p. 140–141.
  9. ↑ Sacred to the Muses.
  10. ↑ D. S. Raven (1965). Latin Metre: An Introduction, p. 143.
  11. ↑ Horace, Odes, 3.9.1–4.
  12. ↑ D. S. Raven (1965) Latin Metre: An Introduction, p. 141.
  13. ↑ Seneca, Oedipus 890–91.
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