Dactylic Hexameter - Homer’s Meter

Homer’s Meter

The hexameter was first used by early Greek poets of the oral tradition, and the most complete extant examples of their works are the Iliad and the Odyssey, which influenced the authors of all later classical epics that survive today. Early epic poetry was also accompanied by music, and pitch changes associated with the accented Greek must have highlighted the melody, though the exact mechanism is still a topic of discussion.

The Homeric poems arrange words in the line so that there is an interplay between the metrical ictus—the first long syllable of each foot—and the natural, spoken accent of words. If these two features of the language coincide too frequently, they overemphasize each other and the hexameter becomes sing-songy. Nevertheless, some reinforcement is desirable so that the poem has a natural rhythm. Balancing these two considerations is what eventually leads to rules regarding the correct placement of the caesura and breaks between words; in general, word breaks occur in the middle of metrical feet, while accent and ictus coincide only near the end of the line.

The first line of Homer’s Iliad—“Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles”—provides an example:

μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

Dividing the line into metrical units:

μῆνιν ἄ | ειδε, θε | ά, Πη | ληϊά | δεω Ἀχι | λῆος – dactyl, dactyl, spondee, dactyl, dactyl, trochee.

Note how the word endings do not coincide with the end of a metrical foot; for the early part of the line this forces the natural accent of each word to lie in the middle of a foot, playing against the natural rhythm of the ictus.

This line also includes a masculine caesura after θεά, a natural break that separates the line into two logical parts. Unlike later writers, Homeric lines more commonly employ the feminine caesura; an example occurs in Iliad I.5 “...and every bird; thus the plan of Zeus came to fulfillment”:

οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή,

οἰω | νοῖσί τε | πᾶσι, Δι | ὸς δ’ ἐτε | λείετο | βουλή,

Homer’s hexameters contain a far higher proportion of dactyls than later hexameter poetry. They are also characterised by a laxer following of verse principles that the authors of later epics almost invariably adhered to. For example, Homer allows spondaic fifth feet (albeit not often), whereas many later authors virtually never did. There are also exceptions to Meyer’s Bridge and Hermann’s Bridge in Homer (albeit rare), but such violations are exceedingly rare in a later author like Callimachus.

Homer also altered the forms of words to allow them to fit the hexameter, typically by using a dialectal form: ptolis is an epic form used instead of the Attic polis wherever it is necessary for the meter. On occasion, the names of characters themselves actually seem to have been altered: the spelling of the name of Homer’s character Polydamas, Pouludamas, appears to be an alternative rendering of the metrically unviable Poludamas (“subduer of many”).

Finally, even after accepting the various alterations admitted by Homer, some lines remain impossible to scan, e.g. Iliad I.108 “not a good word spoken nor brought to pass”:

ἐσθλὸν δ’ οὐτέ τί πω εἶπας ἔπος οὔτ’ ἐτέλεσσας

The first three feet of this line scan spondee-dactyl-spondee, but the fourth foot of -πας ἔπος has three consecutive short syllables. These metrical inconsistencies (along with a knowledge of comparative linguistics) have led scholars to infer the presence of a lost digamma in the original Ionic text of the poem. In this example, the word ἔπος was originally ϝέπος in Ionian; the presence of this glide consonant lengthens the last syllable of the preceding εἶπας and corrects the apparent defect in the meter. This example demonstrates the oral tradition of the Homeric epics that flourished long before they were written down sometime in the 7th century BC.

In spite of the occasional exceptions in early epic, most of the later rules of hexameter composition have their origins in the methods and practices of Homer.