Alcmanian verse refers to the

dactylic tetrameter Dactylic tetrameter is a metre in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of four dactylic feet. "Tetrameter" simply means four poetic feet. Each foot has a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, the opposite of an anapest, som ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Latin poetry 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. History Scholars conve ...

Dactylic tetrameter in Alcman

Ancient metricians called the

the Alcmanic because of its use by the Archaic Greek poet Alcman, as in fragment 27 ''PMG'': : : : :, – uu – uu – uu – uu , :, – uu – uu – uu – uu , :, – – – uu – uu – uu , This length is scanned like the first four feet of the

dactylic hexameter Dactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) 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 (writing – for a long syllable ...

(giving rise to the name dactylic tetrameter ''a priore''). Thus, a

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

substitutes for a dactyl in the third line, but the lines end with dactyls (not spondees).

The Alcmanian strophe

Horace composed some poems in the Alcmanian strophe or Alcmanian system, a couplet consisting of a

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 Odes may refer to: *The plural of ode, a type of poem * ''Odes'' (Horace), a collection of poems by the Roman author Horace, circa 23 BCE *Odes of Solomon, a pseudepigraphic book of the Bible *Book of Odes (Bible), a Deuterocanonical book of the ...

'' I.7 and I.28, and ''

Epode An epodeFrom el, ἐπῳδός, ''epodos'', "singing to/over, an enchanter." is the third part of an ode that follows the strophe and the antistrophe and completes the movement. Evolution At a certain point in time the choirs, which had previo ...

'' 12 ("Quid tibi vis, mulier nigris dignissima barris? / munera quid mihi quidve tabellas"). Later Latin poets use the dactylic tetrameter ''a priore'' as the second verse of the Alcmanian strophe. For example,

Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...

' ''

Consolation of Philosophy ''On the Consolation of Philosophy'' ('' la, De consolatione philosophiae'')'','' often titled as ''The Consolation of Philosophy'' or simply the ''Consolation,'' is a philosophical work by the Roman statesman Boethius. Written in 523 while he ...

'' I.m.3: : : : : : : : : : : (

Ausonius Decimius Magnus Ausonius (; – c. 395) was a Roman poet and teacher of rhetoric from Burdigala in Aquitaine, modern Bordeaux, France. For a time he was tutor to the future emperor Gratian, who afterwards bestowed the consulship on him ...

uses couplets of a dactylic tetrameter ''a priore'' followed by a hemiepes in
Parentalia
' 27, )

In modern poetry

The term "Alcmanian" is sometimes applied to modern English dactylic tetrameters (e.g.

Robert Southey Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a ra ...

'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.

References

{{reflist Types of verses Ancient Greek poetry Latin poetry