A spondee (

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 ...

: ) is a

metrical foot The foot is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. Th ...

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 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 ...

, , '

libation A libation is a ritual pouring of a liquid, or grains such as rice, as an offering to a deity or spirit, or in memory of the dead. It was common in many religions of antiquity and continues to be offered in cultures today. Various substa ...

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 Terpander ( grc-gre, Τέρπανδρος ''Terpandros''), of Antissa in Lesbos, was a Greek poet and citharede who lived about the first half of the 7th century BC. He was the father of Greek music and through it, of lyric poetry, although his o ...

(7th century BC), which consists of 20 long syllables:

"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 Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), 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 i ...

. Instead, spondees are found as irregular feet in meter based on another type of foot. For example, the epics of

Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...

and

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

are written in

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 ...

. This term suggests a line of six

dactyl Dactyl may refer to: * Dactyl (mythology), a legendary being * Dactyl (poetry), a metrical unit of verse * Dactyl Foundation, an arts organization * Finger, a part of the hand * Dactylus, part of a decapod crustacean * "-dactyl", a suffix used ...

s, but a spondee can be substituted in most positions. The first line of Virgil's ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to ...

'' has the pattern dactyl-dactyl-spondee-spondee-dactyl-spondee:

"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 In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas (, ; from ) was a Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite (equivalent to the Roman Venus). His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy (both being grandsons ...

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:

"They began moving in the darkness beneath the lonely night through the shadow"

Spondees can also add solemnity to a curse, as in the following lines where

Dido Dido ( ; , ), also known as Elissa ( , ), was the legendary founder and first queen of the Phoenician city-state of Carthage (located in modern Tunisia), in 814 BC. In most accounts, she was the queen of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre (t ...

, Queen of Carthage, curses Aeneas after he has abandoned her. The first line begins with three spondees, the second with four:

"O Sun, who surveyest all the works of the world with thy flames,
and Thou, interpreter and witness of these sorrows,
Juno Juno commonly refers to: *Juno (mythology), the Roman goddess of marriage and queen of the gods *Juno (film), ''Juno'' (film), 2007 Juno may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Fictional characters *Juno, in the film ''Jenny, Juno'' *Ju ...
..."

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. For example, the first part of this line from Shakespeare's ''

Troilus and Cressida ''Troilus and Cressida'' ( or ) is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1602. At Troy during the Trojan War, Troilus and Cressida begin a love affair. Cressida is forced to leave Troy to join her father in the Greek camp. Meanwh ...

'' (in

iambic pentameter Iambic pentameter () is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in that line; rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called " feet". "Iam ...

) 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 Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...

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;''

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 John Edward Masefield (; 1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967) was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate from 1930 until 1967. Among his best known works are the children's novels ''The Midnight Folk'' and ...

also uses spondees effectively in the line:

''Dirty British / coaster with a / salt-caked / smoke-stack''

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.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. 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.''

References

{{reflist Metrical feet

Spondees in Ancient Greek and Latin

Libations

In hexameter poetry

Spondees in English verse

See also

Further reading

References