Scansion rules!!

Introduction

Now that we're getting back into the swing of things (with online school unfortunately), I thought we'd take a quick look at scansion rules to refresh our memory. Scansion is a way of 'scanning' (analysing) a line to find out its rhythm, and this is helpful for many Latin (and Greek) poems and even huge works like the epics (which are written in the 'epic' meter- dactylic hexameter). Each meter is made up of feet (the equivalent of like a beat in music). These can either There are two main types of meter; dactylic hexameter and pentameter. Dactylic (meaning instructional) hexameter has 6 feet per line, whereas pentameter has 5 feet per lines.

Feet

There are two types of feet;

Spondees; - - (or long long)

Dactyls; - u u (long short short)

*and now for a topical foot joke*

What do you call a three-foot psychic that has escaped prison?

A small medium at large.

Dactylic hexameter

This meter is also known as the 'epic' meter and therefore the Aeneid, the Iliad and the Odyssey all use it. There are also other works which use this meter, for example, Ovid's metamorphoses. As mentioned above, there are 6 feet and two of these never change; the last two.

Foot 1 Foot 2 Foot 3 Foot 4 Foot 5 is ALWAYS Foot 6 is ALWAYS

? ? ? ? - u u (ie dactyl) - x (sometimes called trochee)

The rest of the feet (4 of them) are a specific combination of spondees and dactyls. The easiest way to work out what goes where is to use the scansion rules! The other way is also to count the syllables (since only vowels can technically be scanned) and then use maths to work out how many spondees and dactyls there are, then to use the scansion rules to work it out.

Pentameter

In my opinion, pentameter is easier since there is less variation; there are *technically* 5 feet since there are 2 'half' feet, but in reality, it still looks like 6.

Foot 1 Foot 2 Foot 2.5 Foot 3 Foot 4 Foot 5.5 is

? ? - - u u - u u -

Scansion rules

These are the rules for a long foot:

1. a dipthong is considered long (usually two vowels together, but specifically: -ae, -au, -ei, -eu, -oe, and sometimes -ui)

2. When there is a vowel before two consonants, or a compound consonant

   1. Eg. dant would be long, as would dux

3. Most monosyllables (eg. da, or me or si) are usually long

4. A vowel before a final 'c' is long (except donec)

5. A final 'u' is long (eg manu)

6. Final 'os' is long, except for in a Greek name

7. Final 'as' is long (except for in Greek words)

These are the rules for a short foot:

1. A vowel before a final 'l', 'd', 't', 'n' and 'r' is short (with the exception of some Greek words)

2. Final 'us' is short (except for Nom 3rd declension nounds like 'virtus')

3. Enclitics (the part of the word you don't pronounce, so in English that would be like couldn't) like '-ne', -'ve', -'que' are always short

4. A vowel or dipthong before another vowel or 'h' is short

Elision

Before you scan a line, you must always look for elisions. This when there is a vowel at the end of a word and the start of the next, and the sounds become combined for easier pronounciation. If you find this, you must bracket off the vowel in the first word

eg. Phyllida amo ante alias

becomes

Phyllid(a) am(o) ant(e) alias

Reading scansion

If you want to test your skills and read a scanned line aloud, the emphasis must go on the first long beat of a foot eg. if a word the word ferunt was scanned, it would be long long and you would say it ferunt.

Conclusion

Now that you know all the rules, you can go crazy and scan whatever you want! (within a limited range that actually has a meter) Have fun!

Until next time,

Viola