Scansion

Scansion is a technoique for determining and marking the meter of poetry. Most latin poetry you will encounter (including the Aeneid), is written in a meter called "dactyllic hexameter", a form that has 6 feet (a unit of meter) in each line and each foot can either be a dactyl (a long syllable followed by two short ones) or a spondee (two long syllables). Below you will find examples of scansion as well as techniques for doing it yourself. Look at KET's Latin Scansion page for some more information on latin scansion.

The first and most basic tule of dactyllic hexameter scansion (everything here refers to dactyllic hexameter) is that there are always 6 feet in a line of poetry. A foot is comprised of either a spondee or a datyll, but either way the line must contain 6 feet. For example, a line that consisted of dactyl-spondee-spondee-dactyl-dactyl-spondee is a legitimate line of poetry. When scanning a line, the goal is to determine where the 6 feet begin and end, and whether they are a spondee or a dactyl.

There are a few basic rules of scansion that will help you out tremendously when scanning. First, most lines of poetry begin with a dactyl. Also, realizing that each foot begins with a long syllable is important. Ok, so once the first foot has been determined, move to the end of a sentence. Again, most lines of poetry end with a dactyl-spondee pattern. This creates a patern that sounds a lot like the most commonly given english example, shave-and-a-hair-cut, creating a long-short-short ("shave-and-a", the dactyll) followed by a long-long ("hair-cut", the spondee). The two tricks given thus far should yield three of the feet in the line already. Half way there!

Now comes the tricky part. So far, syllables have been talked about as long and short, but no real meaning has been given to the length. The first syllable of a sentence is simply long, but how to determine the length of a syllable in the middle of a sentence? There are a few rules. First, all vowels that are marked with a long mark are, of course, long. Next, all diphthongs in words are long. Watch out for adjacent vowels that are not diphthongs. Syllables are also long when they are followed by 2 consonants, however there are exceptions to this that will be discussed later, but for the most part it is true. These three rules, long marks, diphthongs, and followed by two consonants, will generally allow you to get another foot or two, and sometimes to finish the line entirely! But don't think you can scan yet, there are some complications that often arise.

Now, you can scan any given word individually, but when words are strung together, defferent rules apply then when a eord is taken on its own. Take the word atque for example. Using the rules you have just learned, you would scan it as long long (at que - followed by two consonants, diphthong). Now look at atque amemus. This is a different scenario that just atque on its own. When a word ends in a vowel or an "m" and the next word starts with a vowel or an "h", the words ellide, which means that they join together. This means that atque amemus would be scanned as at qa / me mus; two spondees. When words ellide, the first word's last vowel sound picks up the first vowel sound of the next word, so quem in would be scanned as quin. The syllable that ellides is always long. When reading latin poetry aloud, pronouce the ellisions as they appear above, but bear in mind that no one is sure how ellisions were actually pronounced by the Romans. There, you should now be able to scan latin poetry in dactyllic hexameter!