Syllabification and Meter

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The basic difference between prose and poetry is poetry is composed in meter. Meter refers to a fixed relationship of heavy and light syllables, where a heavy syllable is pronounced twice as long as a light syllable. The weight of a syllable (heavy or light) is different from the quantity of a vowel (long or short):

a light syllable ends in a short vowel

a heavy syllable ends in everything else

For instance, -το- is a light syllable, and -τοσ- is a heavy syllable, even though the vowel in both is short.

To read poetry, we must first identify the weight of syllables by a process called syllabification, which means “the division of words into syllables.” The first rule of syllabification is that we

treat the entire line as if it were a single word

Let’s look at the opening line of a prophecy given by the Pythia at Delphi to the Spartans ahead of the second Persian invasion of the Greek mainland in 480 BCE (Herodotus 7.220.4, see the bottom of this page for the whole thing):

          ὑμῖν δ’, ὦ Σπάρτης οἰκήτορες εὐρυχόροιο…
          And to you, O inhabitants of spacious Sparta

Every syllable has as its nucleus one (and only one) vowel or diphthong. Thus, the word οἰκήτορες (“inhabitants”) has four syllables. If a consonant precedes a vowel, it belongs to the beginning or onset of the syllable that vowel makes:

          οἰκήτορες                       οἰ / κή / το / ρες

Remember that we treat the entire line as a single word. Thus, the final sigma of Σπάρτης is the onset of the first syllable of οἰκήτορες:

          Σπάρτης οἰκήτορες                Σπάρ / τη / ς οἰ / κή / το / ρες

Consonant clusters are therefore divided between syllables (see below for one exception). In Σπάρτης, the last consonant is the onset of the following syllable, -τη-, and the first consonant is the offset of the preceding syllable. This makes Σπάρ- a heavy syllable, even though its nucleus contains a short vowel.

An ambiguity occurs when a stop consonant is followed by a Merlin consonant (μ, ρ, λ, ν), as in βλώσκω (“I go”) and ἄνθρωπος (“a person”). The cluster may be considered two consonants or a single consonant.

In a cluster of three consonants, it hardly matters where we put the middle consonant. For instance, the first syllable of ἄνθρωπος is heavy whether we syllabify it ἄν/θρω/πος or ἄνθ/ρω/πος.

The glide of a diphthong, although correctly a consonant, remains part of the nucleus. Thus εὐ/ρυ/χό/ροι/ο.

We may now syllabify the line:

Lastly, we assign syllabic weight to each syllable. This is called scansion. Again, a light syllable (L) ends in a short vowel. A heavy syllable (H) ends in anything else (a long vowel, a consonant, the glide of a diphthong). The exception is that word-final -αι and -οι are typically light. Thus:

The forward slashes / separate feet, or syllable units, discussed below. They do not affect the pronunciation.

When reading the line aloud, disregard accents and pronounce the heavy syllables longer than the short syllables. It will sound distinctly unlike the standard modern pronunciation of Ancient Greek, but it is a closer approximation of how it originally sounded.

Note that standard notation uses – for heavy syllables and ∪ for light syllables. Accordingly, this line’s scansion may also be written:

          – – / – – / – – / – ∪ ∪ / – ∪ ∪ / – ∪

This notation is fine to use so long as you do not confuse syllabic weight (heavy and light) with vowel quantity (long and short).

The meter of the Pythia’s response is called dactylic hexameter. It is notable as the meter of epic poetry and therefore Homer. “Dactylic” comes from the Greek δάκτυλος, “finger,” and “hexameter” means “six measures” or “units,” separated by / in the example above. Thus, dactylic hexameter essentially means, “six units of fingers.” The typical measure of dactylic hexameter is HLL (heavy, light, light), like finger bones: one long bone, two short bones. Hence the name of the meter.

Each measure begins with a heavy syllable. The two light syllables may instead be one heavy syllable (HH), and the sixth measure concludes either with a heavy syllable (HH) or with one light syllable (HL), not two.

Try syllabifying the remaining lines of the oracle and read them aloud:

          ὑμῖν δ’, ὦ Σπάρτης οἰκήτορες εὐρυχόροιο,
          ἢ μέγα ἄστυ ἐρικυδὲς ὑπ’ ἀνδράσι Περσεΐδηισι
          πέρθεται, ἢ τὸ μὲν οὐχί, ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους δὲ γενέθλης
          πενθήσει βασιλῆ φθίμενον Λακεδαίμονος οὖρος·
          οὐ γὰρ τὸν ταύρων σχήσει μένος οὐδὲ λεόντων
          ἀντιβίην· Ζηνὸς γὰρ ἔχει μένος, οὐδέ ἕ φημι
          σχήσεσθαι, πρὶν τῶνδ’ ἕτερον διὰ πάντα δάσηται.

For a student commentary on this passage, see here.