Dactylic Hexameter

A hexameter line has six feet. Each foot is normally a dactyl, one long syllable followed by two short ones, but the two short syllables can be contracted into one long, producing a spondee. The last foot is usually a spondee or a trochee, and the line has a regular caesura.

The metre is quantitative: it is based on the length of syllables, not on stress. English translations cannot reproduce it exactly, and Murray’s prose translation gives the sense and line numbers rather than the rhythm.

The hexameter is the reason the formulaic system works. Phrases are shaped to fit specific positions in the line, and the poet can combine them to build a continuous narrative. The metre is not a constraint imposed on the poem from outside; it is the medium in which the poem thinks.

When we read Homer in translation, we lose the sound of the hexameter, but we can still see its effects in the line numbers, the repeated epithets, and the shaping of speeches. The metre is one of the clearest signs that the poems belong to an oral tradition.