Spondee

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Metrical feet and accents
Disyllables
◡ ◡ pyrrhic, dibrach
◡ – iamb
– ◡ trochee, choree
– – spondee
Trisyllables
◡ ◡ ◡ tribrach
– ◡ ◡ dactyl
◡ – ◡ amphibrach
◡ ◡ – anapaest, antidactylus
◡ – – bacchius
– ◡ – cretic, amphimacer
– – ◡ antibacchius
– – – molossus
See main article for tetrasyllables.

A spondee (Latin: spondeus) is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables in modern meters. [1] The word comes from the Greek σπονδή, spondḗ, 'libation'.

Contents

Spondees in Ancient Greek and Latin

Libations

Sometimes libations were accompanied by hymns in spondaic rhythm, as in the following hymn by the Greek poet Terpander (7th century BC), which consists of 20 long syllables:

Ζεῦ πάντων ἀρχά,
πάντων ἀγήτωρ,
Ζεῦ, σοὶ σπένδω
ταύτᾱν ὕμνων ἀρχάν.

Zeû pántōn arkhá,
pántōn āgḗtōr,
Zeû, soì spéndō
taútān húmnōn arkhán.

"Zeus, Beginning of all things,
Leader of all things,
Zeus, I make a libation to Thee
this beginning of (my) hymns."

In hexameter poetry

However, in most Greek and Latin poetry, the spondee typically does not provide the basis for a metrical line in poetry. Instead, spondees are found as irregular feet in meter based on another type of foot. [2]

For example, the epics of Homer and Virgil are written in dactylic hexameter. This term suggests a line of six dactyls, but a spondee can be substituted in most positions. The first line of Virgil's Aeneid has the pattern dactyl-dactyl-spondee-spondee-dactyl-spondee:

– ᴗ ᴗ | – ᴗ ᴗ | – – | – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – –
arma virumque canō, Trōiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs
'I sing of arms and of the man, who first from the shores of Troy...'

Most of Virgil's lines, like the above, are a mixture of dactyls and spondees. However, sometimes he will begin a line with three or four spondees for special effect, such as the following, which describes how Aeneas and his companion made their way slowly down a dark passage into the Underworld. In this line all the feet are spondaic except the fifth:

– – | – – | – – | – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – –
ībant obscūrī sōlā sub nocte per umbram [3]
'They began moving in the darkness beneath the lonely night through the shadow'

Spondees can also add solemnity, as in the following lines where Dido, Queen of Carthage, curses Aeneas after he has abandoned her. The first line begins with three spondees, the second with four:

– – | – – | – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – ᴗ ᴗ | – –
– – | – – | – – | – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – –
Sōl, quī terrārum flammīs oper(a) omnia lūstrās,
tūqu(e) hār(um) interpres cūrār(um) et cōnscia Iūnō,... [4]
'O Sun, who surveyest all the works of the world with thy flames,
and Thou, interpreter and witness of these sorrows, Juno...'

Only two hexameter lines in Latin poetry use spondees throughout the verse. One is by Ennius:

– – | – – | – – | – – | – – | – –
ollī respondit rēx Albāī Longāī
'to him replied the King of Alba Longa'

The other is in an elegiac couplet in the last poem of Catullus (116), perhaps mocking the poetic style of his addressee: [5]

– – | – – | – – | – – | – – | – –
    – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – || – ᴗ ᴗ | – ᴗ ᴗ | –
quī tē lēnīrem nōbīs, neu cōnārēre
   tēl(a) īnfesta meum mitter(e) in usque caput
'with which I could soften your attitude towards me, and so that you would not try
   to keep hurling hostile missiles at my head'

Spondees in English verse

In Latin and Greek meter spondees are easily identified because the distinction between long and short syllables is unambiguous. In English meter indisputable examples are harder to find because metrical feet are identified by stress, and stress is a matter of interpretation. [6]

For example, the first part of this line from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (in iambic pentameter) would normally be interpreted as two spondees:

Crý, crý! Tróy búrns, or élse let Hélen gó.

The effect of spondees in verse is often to slow the line down and to represent slow movement. Thus Alexander Pope writes, in a poem illustrating how the sound of the words should imitate their meaning:

When Ajax strives, some Rock's vast Weight to throw,
The Line too labours, and the Words move slow; [7]

In the first line above, most of the syllables, even those in weak positions, are long and heavy: "A-jax strives some Rock's vast weight"; only the last foot, "to throw", is a true iamb. The final foot of the second line "move slow" is another spondee replacing an iamb.

John Masefield also uses spondees effectively in the line:

Dirty British / coaster with a / salt-caked / smoke-stack [8]

Here the last four syllables make two spondees, contrasting with the eight short syllables in the first two feet. The length and weight of the last four syllables derives partly from the fact that all of them are closed by one or more consonants, and partly from the fact that all of them are stressed. [9]

Another Masefield poem, Sea Fever (1902), which includes spondees contains these lines:

And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

See also

Further reading

Related Research Articles

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Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the Hymns of Orpheus. According to Greek mythology, hexameter was invented by Phemonoe, daughter of Apollo and the first Pythia of Delphi.

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

This is a glossary of poetry terms.

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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.

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".

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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.

References

  1. ↑ "Spondee | prosody". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-06-03.
  2. ↑ "Spondee". Poetry Foundation. 2021-06-02. Retrieved 2021-06-03.
  3. ↑ Virgil, Aeneid 6.268.
  4. ↑ Virgil, Aeneid, 4.607–8.
  5. ↑ Butterfield, D. (2021). "Catullus and Metre". Chapter 7 in Du Quesnay, I. & Woodman, T. The Cambridge Companion to Catullus. Cambridge, pp. 160 & 165.
  6. ↑ "Spondee - Examples and Definition of Spondee". Literary Devices. 2015-03-13. Retrieved 2021-06-03.
  7. ↑ Pope, Essay on Criticism 370–71.
  8. ↑ Masefield, Cargoes.
  9. ↑ Both stress and the number of consonants affect the length of syllables in English: see Greenberg, Steven, et al. (2003). "Temporal properties of spontaneous speech—a syllable-centric perspective". Journal of Phonetics 31 (2003) 465–485, especially p. 473.
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