Year 4C · Grade 8: Hexameter on Real Lines
Name the feet, the pause, and a repeated pattern in two lines of Ovid.
What to notice
- dactyl
- spondee
- caesura
Explanation
A dactylic hexameter has six feet. A dactyl is long-short-short. A spondee is long-long. The fifth foot is usually a dactyl, and the sixth foot is a spondee or a trochee. Students can mark the longs and shorts before they try to recite.
Elision happens when a vowel, or a vowel plus m, at the end of a word is slurred into a vowel at the start of the next word. A caesura is a word-pause inside a foot, often in the third foot. The lines below are the opening of Ovid's golden age. Nondum, "not yet," is repeated at the start of later lines in the same passage. That repetition is anaphora.
Examples
- Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo, — The first age sown was golden, with no avenger, Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.89.
- sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat. — of its own accord, without law, it kept faith and right. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.90. Sponte sua is an ablative of manner.
- long-short-short — a dactyl The name dactyl comes from the finger: one long joint and two short ones.
- nondum ... nondum — anaphora The same word begins successive lines later in this passage.
Latin in this lesson
- hexameter — six feet
- dactyl — long-short-short
- spondee — long-long
- elision — a final vowel is slurred
- caesura — a pause inside a foot
- nondum — anaphora