Homer’s Meter

Abstract

The Homeric poems are composed in a single meter throughout. The same metrical pattern governs every line, and the pattern recurs, line after line, for many thousands of verses. Before the scheme of the Homeric verse is considered, it is necessary to explain the principles of prosody. The meter of Homer, like that of all classical Greek verse, is 'quantitative', based on the opposition of long and short syllables, not (like English verse) on the opposition between accented and unaccented elements. In Greek the distinction between long and short was for the most part clear-cut. The meter of the Homeric epics is known as the hexameter, that is, the 'six-measure'; or, to give it its full title, the dactylic hexameter catalectic. It is an important feature of Homeric versification that for words of any given metrical shape there are certain preferred positions in the line.Keywords: Greek verse; hexameter; Homer; prosody