Archilochian or archilochean is a term used in the metrical analysis of

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

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 conven ...

. The name is derived from

Archilochus Archilochus (; grc-gre, Ἀρχίλοχος ''Arkhilokhos''; c. 680 – c. 645 BC) was a Greek lyric poet of the Archaic period from the island of Paros. He is celebrated for his versatile and innovative use of poetic meters, and is the ea ...

, whose poetry first uses the rhythms.

In Greek verse

In the analysis of Archaic and

Classical Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

poetry, archilochian usually describes the length x – u u – u u – x – u – u – – (where "–" indicates a longum, "u" a

breve A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Slo ...

, and "x" an

anceps In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps (plural ''ancipitia'' or ''(syllabae) ancipites'') is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a lo ...

syllable). The alternative name erasmonideus comes from Archilochus' fr. 168

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...

: :Ἐρασμονίδη Χαρίλαε, , χρῆμά τοι γελοῖον :ἐρ έω, πολὺ φίλταθ᾽ ἑταίρων, , τέρψεαι δ᾽ ἀκούων. As indicated, a

caesura image:Music-caesura.svg, 300px, An example of a caesura in modern western music notation A caesura (, . caesuras or caesurae; Latin for "cutting"), also written cæsura and cesura, is a Metre (poetry), metrical pause or break in a Verse (poetry), ...

is observed before the ithyphallic (– u – u – –) ending of the verse. (Because of this, the name ''erasmonideus'' has sometimes been used to refer only to the colon x – u u – u u – x preceding the ithyphallic.) The verse is also used stichically in

Old Comedy Old Comedy (''archaia'') is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians.Mastromarco (1994) p.12 The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with thei ...

, for example in

Aristophanes Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme In Ancient Greece, a deme or ( grc, δῆμος, plural: demoi, δημοι) was a suburb or a subdivision of Athens and other city-states ...

, ''

Wasps A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. T ...

'' 1518-1537 (with irregular responsion) and in

Cratinus Cratinus ( grc-gre, Κρατῖνος; 519 BC – 422 BC) was an Athenian comic poet of the Old Comedy. Life Cratinus was victorious 27 known times, eight times at the City Dionysia, first probably in the mid-to-late 450s BCE (IG II2 2325. 50), ...

fr. 360 Kassel-Austin, where, as

Hephaestion Hephaestion ( grc, Ἡφαιστίων ''Hephaistíon''; c. 356 BC – October 324 BC), son of Amyntor, was an ancient Macedonian nobleman and a general in the army of Alexander the Great. He was "by far the dearest of all the ...

notes, no caesura is observed before the ithyphallic ending: :Χαῖρ᾽, ὦ μέγ᾽ ἀχρειόγελως ὅμιλε, ταῖς ἐπίβδαις, :τῆς ἡμετέρας σοφίας κριτὴς ἄριστε πάντων, :εὐδαίμον᾽ ἔτικτέ σε μήτηρ ἰκρίων ψόφησις. The verse also occurs in the

choral lyric Choral poetry is a type of lyric poetry that was created by the ancient Greeks and performed by choruses (see Greek chorus). Originally, it was accompanied by a lyre, a string instrument like a small U-shaped harp commonly used during Greek classic ...

of tragedy and comedy, with the same caesura as in the example from Archilochus, as a rule. Trichas used the name archilocheion for the trochaic trimeter catalectic, – u – x – u – x – u –, seen in Archilochus, fr. 197 West, and used stichically by

Callimachus Callimachus (; ) was an ancient Greek poet, scholar and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works in a wide variety ...

(fr. 202 Pfeiffer).

In Latin verse

In discussion of

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

's poetry, the Greater Archilochian verse (or Archilochian heptameter) consists of four dactyls (or alternatively

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 ...

s) followed after a caesura by three

trochee In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee () is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. But in Latin and Ancient Greek poetic metre, a trochee is a heavy syllable followed by a light one (al ...

s, producing the seven-

foot The foot ( : feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made ...

scheme – u u – u u – u u – u u , – u – u – –, as in the first line of Horace's ''Odes'' 1.4: :''Solvitur acris hiems grātā vice'' , ''vēris et Favōni.'' As in that ode, Archilochian verses were usually used in

distich A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the ...

s with the

iambic trimeter The Iambic trimeter is a meter of poetry consisting of three iambic units (each of two feet) per line. In ancient Greek poetry and Latin poetry, an iambic trimeter is a quantitative meter, in which a line consists of three iambic ''metra''. Eac ...

catalectic 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 line ...

, in which a caesura marked off the identical ending rhythm of the two verses (the trochaic tripody): :''Solvitur acris hiems grata vice'' , ''veris et Favoni'' ::''trahuntque siccas'' , ''machinae carinas,'' :''ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus'' , ''aut arator igni'' ::''nec prata canis'' , ''albicant pruinis.'' The distich's name reflects the precedent in Archilochus (for example, fr. 188 West). The name archilochian is also applied to similar combinations of dactylic and trochaic rhythms elsewhere in Horace ('' Epodes'' 15, 16, cf. Archilochus fr. 193 West; ''Epode'' 11, cf. Archilochus fr. 196 West).D.S. Raven, ''Greek Metre: An Introduction'', London, 1962, pp. 48-50 The minor archilochian is equivalent to the hemiepes.

Notes

{{reflist Types of verses Ancient Greek poetry