It is unfortunately impossible to trace the plan of the poem, which presumably detailed the adventures of this unheroic character: the metre used was a curious mixture of hexametric and
iambic lines.
For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in
iambic, elegiac, or any similar metre.
and in the last line the
iambic pentameter gives place to an Alexandrine (an
iambic hexameter).
Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught In chorus or
iambic, teachers best Of moral prudence, with delight received In brief sententious precepts, while they treat Of fate, and chance, and change in human life, High actions and high passions best describing.
It should also be illegal for young persons to be present either at
iambics or comedies before they are arrived at that age when they are allowed to partake of the pleasures of the table: indeed a good education will preserve them from all the evils which attend on these things.
Phaedrus, a slave by birth or by subsequent misfortunes, and admitted by Augustus to the honors of a freedman, imitated many of these fables in Latin iambics about the commencement of the Christian era.
Plichard Bentley, at the close of the seventeenth century, to examine more minutely the existing versions of Aesop's Fables, and he maintained that many of them could, with a slight change of words, be resolved into the Scazonic l7 iambics, in which Babrias is known to have written: and, with a greater freedom than the evidence then justified, he put forth, in behalf of Babrias, a claim to the exclusive authorship of these fables.
Major emphasis is placed on accentual-syllabic metrics, giving priority to the
iambic pentameter as model unit and all possible variations are demonstrated.
The nearly two thousand
iambic pentameter lines of the Salve Deus proper at once retell the biblical story of Christ's Passion and continue the imaginative vision of women's community begun in the dedications.
In English versification, the alexandrine, also called
iambic hexameter, contains six primary accents rather than the two major and two secondary accents of the French.
The story of terraforming Mars is certainly movie material, but why should an accomplished essayist rely upon the traditions of epic poetry to write 10,000 lines of
iambic pentameter which explore the science and the implications of terraforming?
The word usually refers to the dactylic hexameter line which was the epic verse of classical poetry, whereas the French epic line of
iambic hexameter is usually called the Alexandrine.
