Choliambic verse ( grc, χωλίαμβος), also known as limping iambs or scazons or halting iambic,
[.] is a form of
meter
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...
in poetry. It is found in both
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
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
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
Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person.
It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...
Hipponax, who wrote "lame trochaics" as well as "lame iambics".
The basic structure is much like
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''. Ea ...
, except that the last
cretic
A cretic (; also Cretic, amphimacer and sometimes paeon diagyios)Squire, pp. 142, 384. is a metrical foot containing three syllables: long, short, long ( ). In Greek poetry, the cretic was usually a form of paeonic or aeolic verse. ...
is made heavy by the insertion of a
longum instead of 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 S ...
. Also, the third
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 ...
of the iambic trimeter line must be short in limping iambs. In other words, the line scans as follows (where — is a long syllable, u is a short syllable, and x is 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 ...
):
:x — u — , x — u — , u — — —
As in all classical verse forms, the phenomenon of
brevis in longo
In Greek and Latin metre, ''brevis in longo'' (; ) is a short syllable at the end of a line that is counted as long. The term is short for , meaning "a short yllablein place of a long lement" Although the phenomenon itself has been known since ...
is observed, so the last
syllable can actually be short or long.
The Roman poet
Catullus' poems 8,
22 and
39 serve as examples of choliambic verse.
See also
*
Prosody (Latin)
Latin prosody (from Middle French ''prosodie'', from Latin ''prosōdia'', from Ancient Greek προσῳδία ''prosōidía'', "song sung to music, pronunciation of syllable") is the study of Latin poetry and its laws of meter. The following artic ...
Notes
References
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Types of verses
Latin poetry
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