Alcmanian verse

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Alcmanian verse refers to the dactylic tetrameter in Greek and Latin poetry. [1]

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Dactylic tetrameter in Alcman

Ancient metricians called the dactylic tetrameter the Alcmanic because of its use by the Archaic Greek poet Alcman, as in fragment 27 PMG:

Μῶσ᾽ ἄγε Καλλιόπα θύγατερ Διὸς
ἄρχ᾽ ἐρατῶν ϝεπέων, ἐπὶ δ᾽ ἵμερον
ὕμνωι καὶ χαρίεντα τίθη χορόν.
| – uu – uu – uu – uu |
| – uu – uu – uu – uu |
| – – – uu – uu – uu |
'Come, Muse Calliope, daughter of Zeus,
Begin the lovely words, add beauty
And lovely dance to our hymn.'

This length is scanned like the first four feet of the dactylic hexameter (giving rise to the name dactylic tetrameter a priore). Thus, a spondee substitutes for a dactyl in the third line, but the lines end with dactyls (not spondees).

The final syllable of each line in the above fragment counts as short and brevis in longo is not observed.

The Alcmanian (or Alcmanic) strophe

Horace composed some poems in the Alcmanian strophe [2] or Alcmanian system. It is also called the Alcmanic strophe [3] or the 1st Archilochian. [4] It is a couplet consisting of a dactylic hexameter followed by a dactylic tetrameter a posteriore (so called because it ends with a spondee, thus resembling the last four feet of the hexameter). Examples are Odes I.7 and I.28, and Epode 12:

Quid tibi vis, mulier nigris dignissima barris?
     Munera quid mihi quidve tabellas
'What do you want for yourself, woman worthy of black elephants? [5]
     Why (do you send) me gifts and billets-doux?'

It is the only metre in Horace's Epodes not to contain any iambic metra, and the only one to be found in both the Epodes and Odes.

Later Latin poets use the dactylic tetrameter a priore as the second verse of the Alcmanian strophe. For example, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy I.m.3:

Tunc me discussa liquerunt nocte tenebrae
     Luminibusque prior rediit vigor.
Ut, cum praecipiti glomerantur nubila Coro
     Nimbosisque polus stetit imbribus,
Sol latet ac nondum caelo venientibus astris,
     Desuper in terram nox funditur;
Hanc si Threicio Boreas emissus ab antro
     Verberet et clausum reseret diem,
Emicat et subito vibratus lumine Phoebus
     Mirantes oculos radiis ferit.
'Then as the night was shaken off, the darkness became clear
     and the former strength returned to my eyes.
Just as when clouds gather with a strong north-west wind
     and the sky threatens with cloudy rainshowers,
The Sun is hidden and, the stars not yet coming to the sky,
     night is poured from above onto the earth.
But if the North Wind, released from his Thracian cave,
     were to beat the earth and unlock the closed up day,
Phoebus bursts out and gleaming with sudden light
     strikes our amazed eyes with his rays.'

Ausonius uses couplets of a dactylic tetrameter a priore followed by a hemiepes in Parentalia 25:

Te quoque Dryadiam materteram
     flebilibus modulis.
'You also, Dryadia my aunt,
     with mournful strains...' [6]

In modern poetry

The term "Alcmanian" is sometimes applied to modern English dactylic tetrameters (e.g. Robert Southey's "Soldier's Wife": "Wild-visaged Wanderer, ah, for thy heavy chance!"), or to poems (e.g. in German) that strictly imitate Horace's meters.

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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Poetry, also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle.

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An epode is the third part of an ode that follows the strophe and the antistrophe and completes the movement.

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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.

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

Archilochian or archilochean is a term used in the metrical analysis of Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The name is derived from Archilochus, whose poetry first uses the rhythms.

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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".

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

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iambus (genre)</span> Genre of ancient Greek poetry

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<i>Epodes</i> (Horace) Collection of poems by Horace

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.

References

  1. Cuddon, John Anthony (1998). A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory . Wiley. p.  18. ISBN   9780631202714.
  2. "Alcmanian strophe": J. B. Greenough et al (1903): Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges, §617a.
  3. N. Rudd (2004) Horace: Odes and Epodes (Google books), p. 14; P. A. Miller (2018). Horace (Google books).
  4. Nisbet, R. G. M. & Hubbard, M. (1970).'A Commentary on Horaces Odes Book 1. (Oxford), p. xiv.
  5. i.e. with an insatiable sexual appetite: Lowrie, M. (2005). "Review: The Epodes: A Commentary on Horace's "Epodes" by L. C. Watson. The Classical Review., New Series, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Oct., 2005), pp. 525–528; p. 525.
  6. H. G. Evelyn-White (transl.), Ausonius, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library, p. 91.