Dactylic Hexameter
It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin, and was consequently considered to be the Grand Style of classical poetry. The premier examples of its use are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid.
The meter consists of lines made from six ("hexa") feet.
In strict dactylic hexameter, each of these feet would be dactyl, but classical meter allows for the substitution of a spondee in place of a dactyl in most positions. Specifically, the first four feet can either be dactyls or spondees more or less freely.
The fifth foot is frequently a dactyl (around 95% of the time in Homer). The sixth foot is always a spondee, though it may be anceps.
Thus the dactylic line most normally looks as follows:
–⏕ | –⏕ | –⏕ | –⏕ | –⏑⏑ | –⏓
As in all classical verse forms, the phenomenon of brevis in longo is observed, so the last syllable can actually be short or long.
Hexameters also have a primary caesura — a break in sense, much like the function of a comma in prose — at one of several normal positions: After the first syllable in the third foot (the "masculine" caesura); after the second syllable in the third foot if the third foot is a dactyl (the "feminine" caesura); after the first syllable of the fourth foot; or after the first syllable of the second foot (the latter two often occur together in a line, breaking it into three separate units). The first possible caesura that one encounters in a line is considered the main caesura.
In addition, hexameters have two bridges, places where there very rarely is a break in a word-unit.
The first, known as Meyer's Bridge, is in the second foot: if the second foot is a dactyl, the two short syllables must be part of the same word-unit. The second, known as Hermann's Bridge, is the same rule in the fourth foot: if the fourth foot is a dactyl, the two short syllables must also be part of the same word-unit.
Hexameters are frequently enjambed, which helps to create the long, flowing narrative of epic.
They are generally considered the most grandiose and formal meter.
An English language example of the dactylic hexameter, in quantitative meter:
Down in a | deep dark | hole sat an | old pig | munching a | bean stalk
As the absurd meaning of this example demonstrates, quantitative meter is extremely difficult to construct in English. Here is an example in normal stress meter (the first line of Longfellow's "Evangeline"):
This is the | forest pri | meval.
The | murmuring | pines and the | hemlocks
The "foot" is often compared to a musical measure and the long and short syllables to half notes (minims) and quarter notes (crotchets), respectively.
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.
Unlike later writers, Homeric lines more commonly employ the feminine caesura; an example occurs in Iliad I.5 “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. 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. 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 επος 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. 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.
Latin hexameter
The hexameter came into Latin as an adaptation from Greek long after the practice of singing the epics had faded.
Also, because the Latin language generally has a higher percentage of long syllables than Greek, it is by nature more spondaic than Greek. Virgil's opening line for the Aeneid is a classic example of Latin hexameter:
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris (dactyl, dactyl, spondee, spondee, dactyl, spondee)
As in Greek, lines were arranged such that the metrically long syllables--those occurring at the beginning of a foot--avoided the natural stress of a word.
Such an arrangement is a balance between an exaggerated emphasis on the metre--which would cause the verse to be sing-songy--and the need to provide some repeated rhythmic guide for skilled recitation.
In the following example of Ennius's early Latin hexameter composition, metrical weight ("ictus") falls on the first and last syllables of certabant; the ictus is therefore opposed to the natural stress on the second syllable when the word is pronouned. In the closing feet of the line, the natural stress that falls on the third syllable of Remoramne and the second syllable of vocarent coincide with the metrical ictus and produce the characteristic "shave and a haircut" ending:
certabant urbem Romam Remoramne vocarent.
(Annales 1.86)
Like their Greek predecessors, classical Latin poets avoided a large number of word breaks at the ends of foot divisions except between the fourth and fifth, where it was encouraged.
The repeated use of the heavily spondaic line came to be frowned upon, as well as the use of a high proportion of spondees in both of the first two feet. The following lines of Ennius would not have been felt admissible by later authors since they both contain repeated spondees at the beginning of consecutive lines:
his verbis: "o gnata, tibi sunt ante ferendae
Aerumnae, post ex fluvio fortuna resistet."
(Annales 1.42f)
Virgil and the Augustan poets
By the age of Augustus, poets like Virgil closely adhered to the rules of the meter and approached it in a highly rhetorical way, looking for effects that can be exploited in skilled recitation.
For example, the following line from the Aeneid (VIII.596) describes the movement of rushing horses and how "a hoof shakes the crumbling field with a galloping sound":
quadripedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum
This line is made up of five dactyls and a closing spondee, an unusual rhythmic arrangement that imitates the described action. A similar effect is found in VIII.452, where Virgil describes how the blacksmith sons of Vulcan "take up their arms with great strength one to another" in forging Aeneas' shield:
illi inter sese multa ui bracchia tollunt
The line consists of all spondees except for the usual dactyl in the fifth foot, and is meant to mimic the pounding sound of the work.
Juvenal, for example, was fond of occasionally creating verses that placed a sense break between the fourth and fifth foot (instead of in the usual caesura positions), but this technique--known as the bucolic diaresis--did not catch on with other poets.
In the late empire, writers experimented again by adding unusual restrictions to the standard hexameter. The rhopalic verse of Ausonius is a good example; besides following the standard hexameter pattern, each word in the line is one syllable longer than the previous, e.g.:
Spes, deus, aeternae stationis conciliator,
si castis precibus veniales invigilamus,
his, pater, oratis placabilis adstipulare.
Also notable is the tendency among late grammarians to thoroughly dissect the hexameters of Virgil and earlier poets.
A treatise on poetry by Diomedes Grammaticus is a good example, as this work (among other things) categorizes dactylic hexameter verses in ways that were later interpreted under the golden line rubric. Bernard of Cluny, for example, employs it in his De Contemptu Mundi, but ignores classical conventions in favor or accentual effects and predictable rhyme both within and between verses, e.g.:
Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt — vigilemus.
Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus.
Imminet imminet ut mala terminet, æqua coronet,
Recta remuneret, anxia liberet, æthera donet.
(I.1-4: These are the last days, the worst of times: let us keep watch.
He is coming, he is coming to end evil, crown the just, reward the right, set the worried free, and give the skies.)
Not all Medieval writers are so at odds with the Virgilian standard, and with the rediscovery of classical literaure later Medieval and Renaissance writers are far more orthodox, but by then the form had become an academic exercise. In contrast, Dante decided to write his epic The Divine Comedy in Italian--a choice that defied the traditional epic choice of Latin dactylic hexameters--and produced a masterpiece beloved both then and now.
With the New Latin period, the language itself came to be regarded as a medium only for "serious" and learned expression, a view that left little room for Latin poetry.