# Transcript

CHRISTINE PLASTOW
Meter can be quite a complicated idea to get your head around, especially if you’re not used to reading a lot of poetry. For English speakers, the most familiar meter is probably iambic pentameter. ‘Pentameter’ refers to the number of metrons, more commonly called feet, which are the individual units of the meter; in this case, there are five feet (as the ‘pent’ part of ‘pentameter’ indicates.) ‘Iambic’ refers to the type of foot – in the case of English, an iamb is constructed of one unstressed and one stressed syllable, ‘da-DUM’ as in ‘above’ or ‘delay’. The meter can be noticed particularly clearly in Shakespeare’s sonnets, for example: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? or My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. As I recite those lines, you can hopefully hear that every other syllable is stressed, in a pattern of five feet. This stressed and unstressed form of meter is called accentual meter.
Meter in ancient Greek is slightly different, because it uses long and short syllables, rather than stressed and unstressed syllables. So in Greek poetry, an iamb would be one short and one long syllable. This is called quantitative meter. The metrical system of the Iliad, and indeed of all heroic epic poetry, is called dactylic hexameter. You may be able to deduce that the word ‘hexameter’ indicates that there are six feet to a line. ‘Dactylic’ refers to the type of foot, which is constructed of one long and two short syllables, ‘dum-diddle’. The name comes from the Greek word ‘daktylos’, meaning finger, because the finger from the knuckle to the tip is composed of one long and two short bones. Dactylic hexameter is often considered to be the most grandiose and formal type of meter, though its success as a meter for epic is because of the way it seems to drive the narrative along and create a flowing style.
In dactylic hexameter, the first five feet are usually dactyls, while the sixth foot has only two syllables, often one long and one short, called a trochee, or two long, called a spondee. Classical dactylic hexameter is quite a flexible meter, though, and any of the first four dactyls can be freely replaced with a spondee. The fifth dactyl can occasionally be replaced with a spondee, though in Homer, the fifth foot remains a dactyl 95% of the time.
In Homeric poetry, word breaks often occur in the middle of feet. So the first two words of the Iliad, menin aeide, take up one and a half feet. If I recite the first line of the Iliad slowly, hopefully you can hear the distinction between the feet: ME nin a / EI de the / A PE / LE i a / DEO akh i / LE OS. You might have been able to hear that there was a change in the middle of the line. The third foot has been replaced with a spondee. So in the first line of the Iliad, we have two dactyls: Menin aeide the-. One spondee: -A pe-. Two more dactyls: -leia deo akhi-. And a final spondee: -leos. If you go back and listen to the Greek recording again now, you may be able to begin to hear the meter in the opening of the Iliad.