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The phonology of Classical Greek meter

Article  in  Linguistics · January 2000

DOI: 10.1515/ling.38.1.191

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Chris Golston Tomas Riad

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 The phonology of Classical Greek meter*

CHRIS GOLSTON and TOMAS RIAD

Abstract

We propose an analysis of Greek meter based purely on phonology and the

idea that well-formedness in meter is largely gradient, rather than absolute.
Our analysis is surface-true, constraint-based and nonderivational, in line
with proposals like optimality theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993). The
discussion centers on two properties of meter, rhythm (dactylic, anapestic,
iambic ...) and line length (hexameter, pentameter, tetrameter ...).
Unmarked meters are expected to be binary (dimeter) and rhythmic (no
clash or lapse). We analyze individual meters in terms of how they deviate
from this unmarked state, where deviations (big and small) are encoded
directly as constraint violations following Golston (1996). Greek anapests
are shown to be unmarked in terms of rhythm, while dactyls distinctively
violate the constraint NOCLASH and iambs distinctively violate
NOLAPSE. Similarly, dimeter is unmarked in terms of binarity, while
trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter violate constraints on
binarity.

Introduction

‘‘Since all metric phenomena are language phenomena, it follows that

metrics is entirely within the competence of linguistics’’ (Lotz 1960: 137).
In this paper we take this charge quite seriously and try to describe the
major components of classical Greek meter purely in terms of phonology.
Since markedness plays a central role in phonology, we try to directly
incorporate markedness into the theory of metrics as well.
Specifically, we propose an analysis of Greek spoken meter based on
the idea that metrical well-formedness is gradient rather than absolute
(Halle and Keyser 1971; Youmans 1989; Golston and Riad 1997; Golston
1998; Hayes and McEachern 1998). In line with recent work in optimality

Linguistics 38–1 (2000), 99–167 0024–3949/00/0038–0099

© Walter de Gruyter
100 C. Golston and T. Riad

theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993; McCarthy and Prince 1993a, 1993b,
1993c), our account is constraint-based and nonderivational. From direct
OT (Golston 1996) we adopt the idea that violations of markedness can
be distinctive and show that Greek meters are most succinctly described
directly in terms of how phonologically marked they are.
We focus on two properties of meter, the rhythmic part (iambic,
trochaic, etc.) and the length part (tetrameter, pentameter, etc.). In the
unmarked case we expect a meter to be completely rhythmic and com-
pletely binary. But where a literary tradition employs more than one
meter, as is the case with Greek, there can only be one meter that is
unmarked. The rest must be marked in some way, and we propose that
the ways in which they are marked are the defining properties of those
meters.
We show that some Greek meters are rhythmic while others are not.
Specifically, Greek anapestic meter is rhythmic because it manifests a
perfect succession of trochaically grouped moras. This means that meters
that are not anapestic must be arrhythmic one way or another. We show
that dactylic meter is marked by constant stress clash and that iambic
meter is marked by constant stress lapse; these meters, then, are rhythmi-
cally marked, not rhythmically perfect like the anapest.1 We are not the
first to argue that meter need not be rhythmic. Similar claims have been
made for meters in Tohono O’odham (Fitzgerald 1998), Old English
(Getty 1998; Golston and Riad 1998), and Japanese ( Kozasa 1998). But
we may be the first to claim that arrhythmy can be the defining property
of a given meter. In any case, our analysis of Greek meters diverges
crucially from traditional and generative analyses in this respect. These
analyses treat every Greek meter as rhythmic. The idea that each of these
meters is just rhythmic in a different way is demonstrably wrong; we
provide the demonstration and reject such analyses.
We also show that some Greek meters are more binary than others.
We base our analysis of metrical structure directly on the prosodic hierar-
chy (Selkirk 1978, 1980, 1981, 1986, 1995; Nespor and Vogel 1982, 1986;
Hayes 1989) and assume that metrical structure bears a strict relation to
the prosodic structure of natural language (Jakobson 1933, 1952;
Kiparsky 1975, 1977; Nespor and Vogel 1986: chapter 10; Hayes 1989;
Helsloot 1995, 1997; Golston and Riad 1997; Golston 1998). Specifically,
we propose that Greek dimeter is unmarked in terms of binarity while
Greek trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter distinctively
violate one or more constraints on binarity.
Our overall approach, then, is twofold. First, we parse the text into the
feet that Greek made use of (the moraic trochee), assign prominence
accordingly, and see which meters are rhythmic, which are not, and to
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 101

what degree. This covers the traditional notions anapest, dactyl, iamb,
and spondee. Second, we group these moraic trochees by twos into
hierarchical structures until we arrive at a single tree for each line and
see which meters are binary, which are not, and to what degree. This
covers the traditional notions dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter,
and hexameter. We then analyze completely rhythmic and binary meters
as unmarked (anapestic dimeter) and analyze arrhythmic (dactylic,
iambic, spondaic) and nonbinary meters (trimeter, etc.) as prosodically
marked, describing them in terms of the constraints on rhythm and
binarity that they violate. Some of these constraints are operative in the
nonmetrical phonology of Greek, some are operative only in the non-
metrical phonologies or other languages; but we have tried to do without
purely metrical constraints that have no relation to phonology.
Burling’s discussion of English meter foreshadows our approach by
some 30 years. Burling uncovered a common four-beat metrical pattern
in children’s verse in a number of unrelated languages and proposed that
this pattern was part of our common humanity. He went on to note that
much adult poetry does not fit this scheme and attributed the difference
essentially to markedness.

More sophisticated English verse has been predominantly interpreted as iambic

pentameter — ten syllables to the line divided among five feet with a stress on
the second syllable of each foot. [...] To the extent that such verse cannot be
simultaneously interpreted as having four isochronic beats to the line, then it is
probably difficult and unnatural, and requires special study to be appreciated.
Its very difficulty makes iambic pentameter less tedious, and probably permits its
use on occasions when the more popular and, in the literal sense of the word,
‘‘vulgar’’ four-beat lines would be out of place. I would make a claim, then, that
goes precisely counter to the repeated assertion that iambic pentameter is some-
how the ‘‘natural’’ mode of expression in English poetry. I believe instead that
it is rather a mode that many English speakers never master and that probably
always has to be explicitly taught. All English speakers probably master the four-
beat line with no special instruction, and that would seem to make it the more
‘‘natural’’ verse form (Burling 1966: 1426).

Greek anapestic dimeter is unmarked in the same way as children’s verse,

and other Greek meters can profitably be described in terms of how
much they deviate from anapestic dimeter, just as pentameter can profit-
ably be described in terms of how much it deviates from a four-beat line.
The main parameters of variation are rhythm (anapests are unmarked,
dactyls, iambs, and spondees are marked ) and length (dimeter is
unmarked, trimeter, tetrameter, and so on are marked ). The units of
measurement for this variation are violations of prosodic constraints.
102 C. Golston and T. Riad

The paper proceeds as follows. We begin with some background on

meter in general and on Greek meter in particular (section 1). Sections
2–5 contain analyses of the basic anapestic, dactylic, iambic, and spondaic
meters. Section 6 looks in more depth at describing meters in terms of
constraints and constraint violations. Section 7 compares our model with
previous models of Greek meter, and section 8 offers a short conclusion.

1. Background

We intend this study to be part of a larger cross-linguistic study of poetic

meter. For this reason we will draw on a number of important generaliz-
ations about meters outside of the Greek tradition. We begin with what
we believe to be general properties of meter and then move on to things
that are characteristic of Greek meters.

1.1. Poetic meter

Poetic meter is generally identifiable from prosodic regularities involving

phrasing, quantity, and rhythm (Hayes 1988). Regular prosodic patterns
of this kind are not normally found in prose (or speech) and one of the
major tasks in metrics is to specify how it is that meter sets itself apart
from prose. We assume that both prose and poetry place most emphasis
on meaning, that is, on the semantics.2 Prose and poetry seem to part
ways in whether it is syntax or phonology that gets first crack at
interpreting the semantics.
Following Golston (1995) and Rice and Svenonius (1997) we model
the normal case in language (speech, prose) using a grammar in which
syntactic constraints outrank prosodic ones (see Prince and Smolensky
1993 for a formal account of constraint ranking).
(1) prose syntax&prosody
Take for example a sentence from a recent article in the Los Angeles
Times.

Infants who sleep in a room illuminated with night lights or full lighting are at
substantially greater risk of becoming nearsighted than those who sleep in the
dark, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania report in today’s Nature.

The syntax here is foremost and the text is structured in a way that puts
the message out clearly; how the text  is of secondary importance.
The syntax outranks the phonology in interpreting the semantics.
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 103

Poetic meter seems to reverse this natural order of things such that
 the text sounds becomes primary and what syntactic and morpholog-
ical structures are used becomes secondary. In metered texts the phonol-
ogy outranks the syntax in interpreting the semantics, and prosodic
concerns become even more important than syntactic concerns (Golston
and Riad 1995; Rice 1997a, 1997b, 1997c; Golston 1998; but see
Fitzgerald 1994). In more traditional terms, art ‘‘is the activity of caring
about the look or sound of what we bring into being’’ (Dover 1997:
22–23) and meter is an art form that cares about sound. We formalize
this commonsense understanding as constraint reranking.
(2) poetry prosody&syntax
The idea is that prosodic concerns are given unusually privileged status
in poetic meter, such that recurrent prosodic patterns emerge in the
speech stream. Syntactic patterns surface as best they can but are some-
times distorted to allow the prosodic patterns to emerge unscathed.
Although we will pursue this in a somewhat formalist fashion, we want
to stress that this is a common notion of what meter is. It is in fact a
common characterization of the very Greek meters we will be looking at.

A sung text was poetry. A spoken text was recognized as poetry if it was organized
rhythmically in one or other of a limited number of familiar rhythmical units,
i.e. metres. Except (some of the time) in comic dialogue, such a text also differed
significantly from everyday conversation, oratory, narrative, or instruction in its
vocabulary, morphology and syntax. These linguistic features, however, were not
the primary differentia of poetry (Dover 1997: 182).

( For discussion or morphosyntactic differences between poetry and prose

in Greek, cf. Dover [1997: chapter 6 ] and Bers [1984].)
There are at least two broad areas in which to see the primacy of
prosody over other parts of grammar: in the prosodic structure of a line
and in the violated syntax and morphology often found in metered text.
Looked at from a cross-linguistic perspective, the defining properties
of meter are clearly prosodic, not syntactic or morphological. Every
meter we have encountered is based on prosodic regularities, not morpho-
syntactic ones: lines have a set number of syllables; or alternate stresses
in a given way; or include words with like syllable onsets (alliteration);
and so on. But we do not find meters that are marked by syntactic or
morphological regularities. We have never found a meter than runs
ABABABABABCC, where A is an intransitive clause, B is transitive and
C is ditransitive; or a meter in which odd-numbered lines have masculine
gender and even-numbered lines have feminine gender; or anything of
104 C. Golston and T. Riad

this sort. Rather, all poetry, wherever we find it, regulates how speech
sounds and often does so at the expense of normal lexis and word order.
Recent work in metrics has uncovered a recurrent pattern of binarity
among most meters (Burling 1966; Hayes 1988, 1989; Prince 1989), and
this binarity seems to extend all the way up the prosodic hierarchy
(Helsloot 1995, 1997; Golston 1998; Getty 1998). The prosodic hierarchy
includes the phonological foot (w), the prosodic word ( Wd), the phono-
logical phrase (Ph), and the intonational phrase (Int).3 With these four
levels of structure we get a basic phonological structure with eight feet,
four words, two phrases and one intonational phrase.
(3) The prosodic hierarchy under binarity
Int

Ph Ph

Wd Wd Wd Wd

w w w w w w w w
Precisely this binary structure is posited as the basic metrical pattern for
a large number of meters in a wide array of languages. It has been
proposed for meters in Old English (Creed 1990; Stockwell and Minkova
1997), Middle English (Golston 1998), Modern English (Hayes 1988,
1989), and Early Germanic (Golston and Riad 1998); eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Russian poetry (Friedberg 1997); and nursery rhymes
in a number of unrelated languages (Burling 1966). In metrics these
prosodic constituents are known as the line, the metron, the verse foot
( VF ), and the metrical position (M ).
(4) Metrical equivalents of the prosodic hierarchy
Line

Metron Metron

VF VF VF VF

M M M M M M M M
We will use the prosodic and metrical terms interchangeably, but the
metrical units are to be understood as dependent on the phonological
ones.4
It is perhaps worth emphasizing that we equate the verse foot with the
prosodic word ( Wd), not with the phonological foot. The distinction
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 105

could not be more clear in Greek. The phonological foot is bimoraic for
all of Classical Greek, either a single heavy syllable or two lights, a fact
that can be established without reference to meter. The nature of the
Greek foot is evident from the location of the pitch accent (Allen 1973)
and the existence of a bimoraic minimal root and word requirement
(Golston 1990, 1991). The verse foot ( Wd ), on the other hand, varies
from meter to meter in Greek; it is one thing for dactylic meter, quite
another for iambic or anapestic meter. The fact that Greek had a number
of verse feet (anapest, dactyl, trochee, spondee) but only a single phono-
logical foot (moraic trochee) shows us that the feet used in meter and
the feet used in phonology and prosodic morphology   distinct.
Following Golston and Riad (1995, 1997) we assume that a verse foot
is universally a pair of phonological feet, thus that a Greek verse foot is
a pair of moraic trochees.
The trees in (3) and (4) are readily described with three constraints
on binarity.
(5) INTBIN
Intonational phrases ( lines) branch once.
(6) PHBIN
Phonological phrases (metra) branch once.
(7) WDBIN
Phonological words (verse feet) branch once.
If one speaks in accordance with (5)–(7) one will speak in phrases like
(3) and (4). We propose that ranking prosody above syntax brings these
latent binary structures to the fore in poetic meter. We will show below
that there is a Greek meter — anapestic dimeter — that corresponds to
this unmarked type and we will show that all other Greek meters can
profitably be described in terms of how much they deviate from this
normative structure.
Something has to guarantee, of course, that the structures in (3) and
(4) are filled with text and not left empty, just as something must
guarantee that extra text is not added in addition to what (3) and (4)
can accomodate. Following Prince and Smolensky (1993) we use the
faithfulness constraints FILL and PARSE for this purpose.
(8) FILL
Syllable positions must be filled with underlying segments.
(9) PARSE
Underlying segments must be parsed into syllable structure.
We are using these constraints in a slightly different way than Prince and
Smolensky intend, but we hope that the parallel is clear enough; Helsloot
106 C. Golston and T. Riad

(1995: 144ff.) and Hayes and McEachern (1998: 490) use these constraints
in the same way. If a given text has less material in it than the prosody
requires we register a violation of FILL; the unfilled metrical positions
are traditionally said to be catalectic. If a given text has more material
in it than the meter allows we register a violation of PARSE; the unparsed
text is traditionally said to be extrametrical.
The second place we see prosody at work in meter is when syntax and
morphology are distorted metri causa. A well-studied case involves pro-
sodically governed syntactic inversion in Shakespeare and Milton
( Youmans 1983, 1989; Rice 1997c). By comparing the syntax of Milton’s
prose and poetry, Youmans has shown that marked syntactic structures
in poetry are often done because of the meter. Consider the following.
The basic word order for nouns and adjectives in Milton’s prose is
[adjective+noun], for example bright guardians; but in his meter one
regularly finds [noun+adjective] as well when the prosody requires it:
guardians bright (Paradise Lost 3.512). Again, in Milton’s prose one finds
the standard order [verb+predicate adjective], for example seemed
worthy; but in his meter rhythmic constraints hold sway and we find the
reverse order as well, worthy seemed (Paradise Lost 4.291). In both cases
the inversion is prosodically driven — inversion keeps stressed syllables
out of stressless positions. Prosodically driven inversion makes it plain
that prosodic concerns in meter can force syntactic constraints to be
violated, thus that at least some prosody outranks at least some syntax
in poetic meter.
Similar data is less easy to come by in Greek because of the relatively
free word order in the language. But there is other compelling evidence
that makes the same point. The clearest case is the avoidance of hiatus
in meter, where a vowel-final word is followed by a vowel-initial word.
This is especially true of tragic (Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles) and
comic (Aristophanes) drama, which strictly avoids it (Maas 1962: 89ff.;
West 1982: 14ff.). It is generally true of epic (Homer) as well, but this is
somewhat obscured by diachronic considerations. Specifically, older
forms of Greek had a [w] that later Greek lost, and many examples of
hiatus in Homer arise from a lost intervocalic [w]. Thus older dio:núsou
wánaktos ‘of the god Dionysus’ occurs in later texts as dio:núsou ánaktos
with the [w] gone. Some cases of hiatus can be resolved phonologically
by deleting one of the two offending vowels, and this is done quite
commonly in all types of poetry (Maas 1962; West 1982: 10ff.). But not
all vowels are elidable, and when faced with impending hiatus, the poet
commonly reworks the line to avoid it.5 This is a clear example of ranking
prosody over syntax (and word choice) and it is much more common in
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 107

poetry than it is in prose. Thus, one makes a syntactic decision based on

phonological considerations, avoidance of onsetless syllables in this case.
Fitzgerald (1995, 1998) and Rice (1997a) argue for the dominance of
prosody over morphology as well, using metrical data from Tohono
O’odham and Middle English, respectively. Their proposal might be
sketched as follows.

(10) poetry prosody&morphology

Rice’s data come from prosodically governed allomorphy in Chaucer’s

ten-syllable verse. Specifically, Chaucer used two types of participle, an
archaic form with initial y- and a modern form without it. The distribu-
tion of such forms is governed by the phonology, such that y-initial forms
are used to keep stressed syllables out of stressless positions.

(11) Chaucerian participles with y-

And had y-tolde the cause of his cominge (Canterbury Tales 1592).

That is, one makes a morphological decision based on phonological

considerations, rather than the reverse. Assuming that in the unmarked
case morphology outranks phonology (McCarthy and Prince 1993a,
1993b), poetry again involves an artistic reranking of the natural order
of constraints.
Fitzgerald’s data is similar, involving semantically vacuous reduplica-
tion to keep stressed syllables apart or to provide the end of a line with
a stressless syllable. Consider the following example ( Fitzgerald 1998: 12).

(12) Vacuous reduplication in Tohono O’odham meter

wáwai gı́walige weco náhagio kc in mémelihime
rock cinched below mouse CONJ LOC run to repeatedly
‘The mouse runs around there below Cinched Rock’

The citation form for ‘rock’ in O’odham is wai — the wáwai form that
appears in the meter has been reduplicated to avoid stress class with the
first syllable of gı́walige ‘cinched’. Reduplication normally indicates plur-
ity with nouns, but here the reduplication is clearly meaningless and
occurs only to mollify the prosody. Again, this suggests that certain
prosodic considerations (avoidance of stress clash) outweigh morpho-
logical considerations (proper use of a plural marker) in poetic meter,
reversing the normal order of things one finds in prose or speech.
Similar prosodic effects on morphology can be found in Greek. A
number of words in epic, for instance, can be stretched or shrunk to fit
the needs of the meter. The hero Achilles sometimes occurs LLH and
108 C. Golston and T. Riad

sometimes LHH with a geminate [ l ] providing an extra bit of length

where the meter requires it. The following cases, which occur only 15
lines apart in the Iliad, illustrate this.

(13) a. Iliad A, 199

(H H )(H L L) (H L L) (H L L) (H L L)
thámbe:sen d’ akhileús, metà d’ etrápet’ autı́ka d’
astonish & Achilles around & turned at once &
(H H )
égno:
recognized
‘and Achilles was astonished; he turned around and immedi-
ately recognized [Athena]’

b. Iliad A, 215
(H L L) (H L L)(H L L)(H L L) (H L L)(H H )
tè:n d’ apameibómenos proséphe: pódas o:kùs akhilleús
her & answering spoke feet swift Achilles
‘and answering her, swift-footed Achilles spoke’

In the first line Achilles must fit into a LLH sequence, so the second
syllable surfaces as light; in the second line Achilles must fit into a LHH
sequence, so the second syllables surfaces as long, closed by the
geminated [ l ].
Other squeezable words include Odysseus ( long [s] or short) and
Olympus (initial monophthong or diphthong).

(14) [Link] [Link]

m mm mm m m mm
‘Odysseus’

[Link] [Link]
m mm mm mm mm mm
‘Olympus’

Some words can never be used in epic as is because they have three or
more adjacent light syllables; they must be stretched to be usable in the
meter at all. Thus a-thanatos ‘immortal’ (LLLH ) is useless in a meter
that requires HH or HLL verse feet, so it shows up as a:-thanatos with
a lengthened [a]. But only in meter. Again, phonological requirements (a
heavy syllable) can outrank morphological ones ( like respecting the
underlying form of a word).
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 109

1.2. Greek meter

Turning now to specific properties of Greek meter, it is important to see

the ways in which Greek meter differs from modern European meters
with which readers may be more familiar.
In many modern European meters a central issue is where lexical
stresses go. Children’s meter provides examples, as in the following cases
from Dr. Seuss, an American author of verse books for children. Trochees
line up stresses in stressed–stressless (dum di) pairs; iambs line them
up in stressless–stressed (di dum) pairs; and anapests line them up in
stressless–stressless–stressed (di di dum) triplets, as follows.
(15) English trochees (One Fish Two Fish)
(óne fish) (twó fish) (réd fish) (blúe fish)
(bláck fish) (blúe fish) (óld fish) (néw fish)
(16) English iambs (One Fish Two Fish)
(I dó) (not lı́ke) (this béd) (at áll )
(A lót) (of thı́ngs) (have cóme) (to cáll )
(A ców) (a dóg), (a cát), (a móuse)
(Oh! whát) (a béd!) (Oh! whát) (a hóuse)!
(17) English anapests (The Cat in the Hat Comes Back)
(But the cát) ( just stood stı́ll )
(He just lóoked ) (at the béd).
(This is nót) (the right kı́nd)
(of a béd) (the cat sáid).
To find patterns in this type of meter, one can learn a lot by looking at
where stressed syllables go, and this is common in modern European
meters. But this was not how classical Greek meter worked.
First, there is no discernible pattern to where lexical stresses go. The
point cannot be made strongly enough, so we quote here from a number
of sources.

In English rhythmic ‘‘arsis’’ and ‘‘thesis’’ signify the stressed and the unstressed
syllables respectively, a distinction which does not exist in Greek metrics (Maas
1962: section 8).

In English verse (and in that of other modern languages), rhythm is measured

by ‘‘stress’’ or ‘‘accent’’. ... In classical Greek (as in Latin) verse, there is a similar
division into long and short syllables, but the principle of this division is entirely
different, being based on the intrinsic quantity of different vowel-and-consonant
combinations. Word accent is of secondary importance, and seems to have played
no significant part in the structure of verse (Raven 1962: section 13).
110 C. Golston and T. Riad

[I ]n Greek there appears to be no attempt to achieve agreement between accent

and metre in any part of the line in any spoken form [of meter] (Allen 1973: 262).

In order to find a pattern in Greek meter one has to look past the
accented syllables to how syllable weight (quantity) is arranged. A canoni-
cal Greek iamb is LH and it does not matter if the L or the H (or both,
or neither) gets the primary word stress; anapestic LLH and dactylic
HLL can have a lexical stress on any or none of the three syllables.
Lexical stress is not what is regulated in Greek meter.
What matters is syllable weight. Not surprisingly, syllable weight in
Greek meter is determined just like syllable weight in Greek phonology.
Syllables that end in a single short vowel ( pe, la) are light; all other
syllables are heavy, including those that end in a long vowel ( pe:), a
diphthong (lai ), or a consonant ( pet, lak). For those not familiar with
Greek phonology it is worth emphasizing that although heavy syllables
are always stressed (Allen 1968, 1973), light syllables are not always
stressless. The situation is basically the same as the one we find in Latin
or any other language based on moraic trochees (see Hayes 1995). A
stress matrix is constituted by one heavy or two light syllables (Allen
1973: 333). Thus we find plenty of stressed light syllables in Greek and
a word has as many stresses (primary and secondary) as it has stress
matrices. What a word has only one of is pitch accent, a tonal pattern
associated with the primary stress (Sauzet 1989); but this pitch accent
plays no role in the meter whatsoever.
The second major difference between Greek meter and modern
European meters might be termed constancy. Greek iambic meter does
not simply run [Link], and Greek dactylic meter does not run
[Link]. Despite its name, dactylic meter has almost as many
spondaic verse feet (HH ) as dactylic ones (HLL). And iambic meter is
 a simple succession of LH verse feet but includes triads (LLL),
dactyls (HLL), and spondees (HH ) as well. Anapestic meter uses four
kinds of verse foot: canonical anapests (LLH ), spondees (HH ), dactyls
(HLL), and proceleusmatics (LLLL); and the most common of these is
 the anapest (LLH ) but the spondee (HH ), as we will see below.
There is only one Greek meter that consistently uses a single verse foot,
the spondaic invocation discussed below in section 5, and its status within
the tradition is entirely marginal. The common meters of epic, tragedy,
and comedy all alternate verse feet within a line. Thus, we will not be
able to read Homer and Sophocles the way we read Dr. Seuss, even if
we base our dums and dis on quantity (reading dum for H and di for L)
rather than on word stress.
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 111

For this reason it will be very important throughout the following

discussion not to read anapests as di di dum or iambs as di dum. As has
long been noted, such nativizing of the meter in English (or German or
Swedish or Russian) is not helpful in understanding purely quantitative
meters.

Scarcely any facet of the culture of the ancient world is so alien to us as its
quantitative metric. We lack here the most important prerequisite of all historical
study; for we can never attain that kind of ‘‘empathy’’ by which all other
manifestations of the art, literature, science, philosophy, religion, and social life
of the ancients are brought so near to us that they become an essential part of
our own culture. ... Our feeling for rhythm is altogether dominated by the
dynamic rhythm of our own language and metric. ... We have no means of
reading, reciting, or hearing Greek poetry as it actually sounded. It may be
possible for us to form a mental notion of it; but such a notion is too shadowy
to serve as a basis for the scientific investigation of the subject (Maas 1962: 3–4).

Although we agree that we ought not understand Greek meter in terms

of stress, we disagree with the claim that we have no means of reading,
reciting, or hearing Greek poetry as it actually sounded. We have a much
better understanding of the prosody of Greek now than Maas had earlier
in the century (due in great part to Allen 1973 and Devine and Stephens
1994), and we can make use of that understanding in reconstructing the
actual texture and rhythm of Greek meter. Our plan, then, is to parse
the meter into the feet that Greek used and see what patterns emerge.
We find patterns that are much more robust and surface-true than those
of previous analyses.
Before turning to individual meters, we need to sketch out a few
additional peculiarities of Greek meter. The first is that the final metrical
position of any line of Greek meter is a single syllable, H or L, but never
LL, regardless of the meter. Co-opting a term from classics, we shall
refer to the final metrical position in a line as anceps. The usual interpret-
ation of final anceps is that the last position must be H, and that L
syllables count as H in that position. Donca Steriade (personal communi-
cation) suggests a less abstract interpretation, where metrical anceps is
due to phrase-final lengthening in Greek: H is long, L becomes long,6
and LL is ruled out because it would be realized as LH. We follow her
in this and assume that the metrical fact is linguistically based.
Another important property of Greek meter is that word divisions are
completely irrelevant for purposes of syllable quantity. It is as if the
entire line were resyllabified without regard to word divisions prior
to metrical scansion (Steriade 1982). A phrase like en [Link]́[Link]: ‘on
Olympus’ might be expected to scan as HLHH since en is a closed syllable
112 C. Golston and T. Riad

and thus heavy. But the final [n] of en is syllabified as the onset to the
following syllable: [Link]:, and the phrase  scans LLHH.
This is very important because it shows that the prosody (beginning with
syllable boundaries) is independent of the morphosyntax in meter. This
is the most robust effect of the reranking of phonology over syntax:
syllabification freely overrides morpheme and word boundaries.
Two other metrical concerns, caesurae and bridges, are important in
analyzing Greek meter. A caesura is a point near the center of the line
at which one consistently finds a word boundary; as Prince (1989) has
shown, caesura tends to occur within one metrical position of the center
of the line but not at dead center. A bridge is the opposite, that is, a
point in a line at which one rarely finds a word boundary. Caesurae and
bridges are important for determining similarities among distinct meters,
which can be instrumental in deciding whether a given meter is a short-
ened (catalectic) version of one meter or another. There is an excellent
recent literature on the topic, to which we refer the interested reader
(Devine and Stephens 1978, 1981, 1983).
A final peculiarity of Greek line-based meters (on our analysis at least)
is that all verse feet end in a bimoraic sequence, H or LL. Every anapestic,
dactylic, iambic, and spondaic foot ends either LL or H. Verse feet that
end in a single L are found only in lyric (sung) meters, which form a
system of their own, and which fall beyond the scope of this paper. We
have no explanation for this fact and will not address it further here.
We are now in a position to delve into some of the details of the Greek
meters. We begin with the meter we think is least marked, the anapest.

2. Anapestic meter

The Greek anapest comes from the Dorian metrical tradition, where it
was originally a marching meter. In drama it is used as the meter for the
entrance of the Chorus (Raven 1962: 57) and is commonly used for
comic dialogue by Aristophanes; Maas notes that ‘‘characters of low
social standing [...] are never given lines in sung metres, but are given
instead anapests [...] or hexameters’’ (1962: section 76); it is at once the
loosest of the meters and one of the best adapted to the vernacular speech
of comedy. For these reasons we think it not unreasonable to treat it as
a fairly unmarked meter. But our main reasons for treating the anapest
as unmarked is that it comes out that way rhythmically when we read
off prominence in terms of moraic trochees, as we will soon see.
Following is a sample from the end of Euripides’ Medea. Parentheses
here indicate the anapestic verse feet, of which every line has four. Note
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 113

that the last line has only seven metrical positions (H or LL) rather than
the expected eight; the traditional term for this is catalexis. Tradition has
it that the final metrical position is catalectic (—), but a moment’s thought
reveals that this could be otherwise and we will have to seriously consider
the possibility that, for example, the initial position of the last line is
catalectic instead. We will return to this issue below; for now it will be
enough to see that some part of the last line is missing.
(18) Euripides, Medea 1415–1419
(H H ) (L LH ) (H L L) (H H )
[Link]́on ta.mı́.as dzeùs e [Link]́[Link]:
many dispenser Zeus in Olympus
g d
(H L L)(H H ) (H H ) (L L H)
[Link]̀ d’ a . é[Link]:s kraı́.[Link] the.oı́
many & unexpectedly accomplish gods
a
(H L L) (H H ) (H LL)(H H)
kaı̀ tà [Link]:.thént’ ouk [Link]́[Link]:
and the presumed not fulfilled
(H L L)(H H ) (L L H )(L LH )
tóon d’ adoké:to:n póron e:û:re theós.
the & unexpected way finds god
(H H ) (L L H ) (L L H ) (H —)
toi.ónd’ apébe: tóde prâgma
so ends this matter
‘Olympian Zeus is despenser of many things,
and many are the things the gods do unexpectedly,
and what one thinks will happen does not come to pass,
but a god finds a way to bring about the unexpected.
So ends this matter.’
Before we turn to the matters of length that distinguish the long tetrameter
from the short dimeter, we discuss the anapestic part of the meter, for it
bears little resemblance to the di di dum that one might expect from
reading modern calques. Note the frequent occurrence of HH and HLL
verse feet in the selection alongside the expected LLH, something one
never finds in modern European anapests.
This makes the anapest look somewhat chaotic, as if it had no rhythmic
properties at all, but this is a result of looking at syllable prominences.
As we will see now, the anapestic meter is perfectly rhythmic once we
look where the action is in Greek — at the level of the mora.
114 C. Golston and T. Riad

2.1. ‘‘Anapestic’’

At the syllable level there is no regular rhythmic pattern in anapestic

meter. As the sample above amply demonstrates, the feet are not uni-
formly LLH. The lack of a uniform pattern of syllable weight means
that any syllabic characterization of anapestic as rising, weak/strong, off-
beat/beat, or the like is bound to fail. LLH and HLL cannot  be
rising, weak/strong, etc., because their prominence values in terms of
syllable weight are mirror images of one another. The traditional notion
of headedness, used to great effect in generative metrics as well, is
completely irrelevant here.
To see the true regularity of anapestic meter we must look beyond the
superficial alternation of heavy and light syllables to the moraic level.
Here, anapestic meter displays a perfectly rhythmic pattern of prominent
and nonprominent moras: (x.x.) (x.x.) (x.x.) (x.x.), where ‘x’ denotes a
prominent mora and ‘.’ denotes a nonprominent mora. The rhythmic
alternation follows from the fact that the phonological foot of Greek is
the moraic trochee (w), the moras of which are always realized with
trochaic prominence — one heavy syllable (the first mora of which is
prominent, cf. Kager (1993) or two lights (the first of which is promi-
nent), as shown by Allen (1973). An anapestic verse foot thus has two
perfectly rhythmic constituents, H and LL, each a canonical realization
of the moraic trochee (which we henceforth refer to as w for ‘foot’).
Anapestic meters make use of four types of verse foot, each of them
consisting of a pair of w: LLH, HLL, HH and LLLL. All four types are
used in all styles of anapestic meter ( West 1982: 191), though to different
degrees, and each has its own name in classical scholarship: the anapest
proper (LLH ), the dactyl (HLL), the spondee ( HH ), and the proceleus-
matic (LLLL).
Looking strictly at the phonology of Greek, prominence falls on all
heavy syllables and on the first of two light syllables, as depicted below.
(19) Prominence in anapestic verse feet
(LL H ) ( H LL) (H H ) (LL LL)
x. x x x. xx x. x. syllable prominence
x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. moraic prominence
anapest dactyl spondee proceleusmatic
The second and third lines above show which syllables and moras are
prominent (x) and which are not (.). As we have seen, when we assign
moraic trochees to the strings in the first row no stable pattern of
prominence emerges among the syllables in the second row: LLH is (x.x),
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 115

HLL is (xx.), HH is (xx), and LLLL is (x.x.). But when we look at the
pattern of prominence among the moras of the third row, a clear excep-
tionless pattern emerges. The moraic prominence is utterly regular and
rhythmic, a perfect sequence of prominent and nonprominent moras
(x.x.), regardless of whether the verse foot is realized as a ‘‘true’’ anapest,
a dactyl, a spondee, or a proceleusmatic.
Formally, we can characterize this class of verse feet as the ones that
respect a constraint on foot binarity.
(20) FTBIN-m
Phonological feet (metrical positions) contain two moras.
FTBIN-m is related to the other prosodic constraints on binarity consid-
ered above in (5)–(7). We call FTBIN-m an essential constraint for this
type of meter because it serves to define the meter and is never violated.
FTBIN-m is a purely linguistic constraint co-opted by the meter.
Linguistic evidence for this constraint comes from two sources. The first
is the location of the main and secondary stresses in the language, which
require a stress matrix of two light syllables or one heavy (Allen 1973),
that is, a moraic trochee. The second piece of evidence comes from a
strict minimal-root requirement that makes content words in Greek mini-
mally bimoraic (Golston 1990, 1991; Devine and Stephens 1994).
Assuming that a metrical position corresponds in the unmarked case to
a phonological foot (Golston and Riad 1995, 1997, 1998; Hanson and
Kiparsky 1996; Golston 1998), this constraint will rule out those verse
feet that contain degenerate feet (a single L syllable) in either position.
We should expect this. Binarity is the unmarked case in phonology (Halle
and Vergnaud 1980; Kager 1989, 1993; Hayes 1995) as well as in meter
(Burling 1966; Hayes 1988; Prince 1989; Golston and Riad 1997; Helsloot
1995, 1997; Golston 1998).
FTBIN-m is what makes the four types of anapestic verse foot a natural
class. To set this class in relief, consider the range of verse feet allowed
in a language with moraic trochees. If a verse foot is a pair of metrical
positions (Prince 1989) and if a metrical position is a phonological foot
of the language in which the meter is written (Golston and Riad 1995;
Hanson and Kiparsky 1996), there are in principle nine distinct types of
verse foot available to Greek meter, listed below.7
(21) Possible verse feet in a language with moraic trochees
(H H ) (H L) (H LL)
(L H) (L L) (L LL)
(LL H ) (LL L) (LL LL)
116 C. Golston and T. Riad

Each of these verse feet contains a pair of moraic trochees. These are
either canonical two-mora feet (H, LL) or a degenerate one-mora foot
(L). Anapestic meter is governed by FTBIN-m, as we have seen, and thus
uses no verse feet with degenerate w, leaving us with well-formed HH,
LLH, HLL, LLLL.

(22) Verse feet used in anapestic meter

(H H ) (H L) (H LL)
(L H) (L L) (L LL)
(LL H ) (LL L) (LL LL)

The middle row above is excluded from anapestic meter because the first
member of each verse foot contains a degenerate foot (L); the middle
column is excluded because the second member of each verse foot
contains a degenerate foot.
There is a statistical tendency for verse feet in anapestic meter to be
realized as HH more often than as LLH, HLL, or LLLL, though the
figures are slightly different in tragedy (where LLLL is essentially prohib-
ited ) and comedy (where it occurs). Figures in (23) below for tragedy
are based on samples from Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound 1080–1094,
Seven Against Thebes 1059–1084), Euripides (Medea 1415–1419, Alkestis
1159–1163, Hippolytus 1462–1466, Andromache 1284–1288, Phoenissae
1764–1766, Rhesus 993–996), and Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus
1760–1779, Antigone 1348–1353); figures for comedy are based on a
sampling of Aristophanes (Knights 507–546), which happens to contain
no instances of LLLL.

(23) Verse feet in anapestic meters (%)

Aeschylus Euripides

60 60
46 47
40 35 40 35

19 18
20 20

0 0
HH LLH HLL HH LLH HLL
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 117

Sophocles Aristophanes

60 54 60 55
39
40 40
26
20
20 20
6
0 0
HH LLH HLL HH LLH HLL

Given a traditional analysis of this meter in which the basic verse foot is
a true anapest (LLH ), it should come as an unpleasant surprise that
only a third of all anapestic verse feet have this shape while fully half
run HH (spondee). We should not infer from this, however, that the
meter is  spondaic; rather, we should infer from this that the meter
has no inherent rhythm at the syllable level and that the various verse
feet are just different ways of having two bimoraic feet in a verse foot.
In order to explain the preference for HH over other realizations we
follow recent work in OT metrics and introduce a weaker set of con-
straints that accounts for preferences among the allowed verse feet
( Friedberg 1997; Golston and Riad 1997; Golston 1998; Hayes and
MacEachern 1998). We will refer to the former as essential constraints
and to the latter as violable constraints and separate them in tableaux
with a dark vertical line. To account for the preferences among different
types of verse foot in anapestic meter, we invoke the constraint we shall
call PROKOSCH (the stress-to-weight principle) and the well-known
constraint NOCLASH.
Eduard Prokosch noted the preferences for stressed syllables to be
heavy in Germanic (Prokosch 1939; Vennemann 1988; Riad 1992) and
this seems to be a universal tendency ( Vennemann 1988). NOCLASH is
well known from the literature on prosody (Liberman 1975; Liberman
and Prince 1977; Selkirk 1984; Nespor and Vogel 1986, 1989; Kager
1993).
(24) PROKOSCH
Stressed syllables are heavy.
(25) NOCLASH
Stressed syllables are not adjacent.
As the tableau below shows, all attested verse feet (y) in anapestic meter
respect FTBIN-m, the essential constraint for this type of meter, shown
to the left of the dark line. To the right of that line we have the violable
constraints, with PROKOSCH ranked above NOCLASH.
118 C. Golston and T. Riad

(26) Realizing the anapest

anapest FTBIN-m PROKOSCH NOCLASH

y (H H ) 1
x x
y (LL H ) 1
x. x
y (H LL) 1 1
x x.
y (LL LL) 11
x. x.

All four of these feet are possible anapests because they all respect
FTBIN-m, but some of them make better verse feet than others because
they are better formed in terms of NOCLASH and PROKOSCH. The
relative frequency with which each type of foot occurs is a function of
how well it respects PROKOSCH: HH respects it as the most common
verse foot; LLH and HLL violate it once each (for each stressed L) and
are therefore less common than HH; and LLLL violates it twice (once
for each stressed L) and is thus least common. This leaves a tie between
LLH and HLL, but this tie is resolved by NOCLASH, which HLL
violates (xx.) and LLH respects (x.x). The two incidental constraints
thus give us the ranking found in each of the authors in (23):
HH&LLH&HLL&LLLL (where & is to be read ‘is more common
than’).
We should note here that we do not yet have a fully adequate account
of the rarity of LLLL verse feet in comedy or their virtual absence in
tragedy. Our analysis only allows us to say that they should be less
common than the other types (which is true); they are actually pretty
marginal, but our framework doesn’t allow us to distinguish between
rare and really really rare, at least not in a precise way. We hope that
future work in this area will provide a fuller answer to this issue.
With the basic facts about anapests under our belts, let us now see
how they are strung together in actual meters. We consider two different
lengths here, the simple dimeter and the long tetrameter catalectic.

2.2. Dimeter

Most of the plays of Sophocles and Euripides end in an anapestic dimeter

system, consisting of a number of lines of plain anapestic dimeter followed
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 119

by a single line of the same type. The final chorus of the Medea, above,
is typical. Dimeter systems are also used in comedy, where they tend to
occur in much longer runs.
Each line of dimeter has four complete verse feet except for the last
line, which has three and a half, due to the catalexis. The meter tends to
have about four words per line (see below) with a constant trochaic
rhythm at the mora level, as we have just seen. The prosodic structure is
perfectly binary, with two moras per metrical position, two metrical
positions per verse foot, two verse feet per metron, and two metra per line.
(27) Anapestic dimeter
Int line

Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

w w w w w w w w metrical position

If we are correct in our analysis, the anapestic dimeter is unmarked with

respect both to its overall architecture and to its rhythm.
The last line in a dimeter system is one metrical position shorter than
the rest. This means that half of one verse foot goes unfilled with text,
that is, is catalectic (w —).
(28) Anapestic dimeter catalectic
Int line

Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

w w w w w w w — metrical position

We understand catalexis to be the metrical counterpart of rest in music

(Burling 1966). For this reason we treat catalexis as an empty metrical
position violating the constraint FILL, which requires prosodic structure
to be filled with sounds (Prince and Smolensky 1993: 85). Again, the
intuition behind catalexis is that an expected metrical position fails to be
realized. We represent this marked state of affairs as distinctive violation
of FILL, as we will see in greater detail below.
We have assumed that the verse foot is roughly equivalent to the
prosodic word, and we would now like to present evidence for this.
120 C. Golston and T. Riad

Although the number of prosodic words is much less consistent than the
number of moras in anapestic meter ( just as the number of syllables is
much less consistent than the number of moras), the average number of
words per line is roughly as predicted, 4.4 in our sample. The following
chart shows the number of prosodic words for a random selection of
dimeter systems in Euripides (Helen 1688–1692; Orestes 1682–1690;
Bacchae 1377–1392; Rhesus 1–10, 34–40, 993–996; Alcestis 29–37,
238–243, 273–279, 1159–1163; Medea 143–147, 1081–1115, 1415–1419)
and Aristophanes (Frogs 1500–1527).
(29) Number of prosodic words per line of dimeter
Euripides Aristophanes

80 15 14
62
60
10 9
40 33
5
20 13 10 2 2
1 1 0 0
0 0
3 4 5 6 7 8 3 4 5 6 7 8

Determining what a prosodic word is in a dead language is not completely

straightforward and there are a number of proposals in the literature for
Greek. The simplest is probably Golston’s (1995) claim that all and only
lexical heads form prosodic words in Greek. Devine and Stephens caution
against such a simplistic approach, however, arguing that

It is not the case that all nonlexicals have an equal tendency to become appositive;
a variety of factors combine to condition the degree to which the rules of word
prosody may be extended to phrasal domains in any structure. This is why
detailed analysis of the phonology of nonlexicals generally reveals a hierarchy
(Devine and Stephens 1994: 330).

To obtain a conservative count of prosodic words we included all words

( lexical or not) except for the traditional class of proclitics ( Wackernagel
1914; Vendryes 1945; Sommerstein 1973) and enclitics (Postgate 1924;
Vendryes 1945), short nonlexical words that tend to surface without the
pitch accent associated with other words. Thus in the section from Medea
in (11) above, the two words en ‘in’ in the first line and ouk ‘not’ in the
third were not counted as prosodic words on their own because they are
toneless. As can be seen, the resulting ratios are roughly identical for
Euripides and Aristophanes, and although the number of words per line
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 121

varies, it hovers around four. We take this as supporting evidence for

our analysis.

2.3. Tetrameter catalectic

The anapestic tetrameter catalectic is the most common of the anapestic

meters. It has 15 metrical positions, each of which must contain a heavy
syllable or a sequence of two lights as with any anapestic meter. An
example from comic dialogue is as follows.
(30) Knights 773–776 (final catalexis)
(H H ) (L L H ) (H H ) (L L H ) (H H ) (L L H ) (L
kaı̀ pô:s àn [Link]́ù mâ[Link]́n se [Link]̂:n ô: dê:.me gé.[Link]
and how prt me more you loving o Demos become
L H )(H —)
po.lı́:.te:s
citizen
(H H )(L L H )(L L H ) (H H ) (H H ) (L L H)
hòs prô:.ta mén he:nı́k’ [Link]́.leu.ón soi khré:.[Link] pléı̀st’
who first prt when advised you money much
1
(L L H ) (H —)
[Link]́.[Link]
accepted
(H H ) (H H ) (H H) (H H ) (H H ) (H H ) (L
en tô koinô: toùs mèn [Link]̂:n toùs d’ ánkho:n toùs dè
in the public the prt stretching the & strangling the &
d d ap ap gp ap
L H )(H —)
metaitô:n
begging
(H H )(H H ) (H L L)(H H ) (H L L) (H H )
ou phron.tı́[Link]:n tô:n [Link].o:.tô:n [Link]́.s ei soı̀
not noticing the private none if you
gp gp g d
(L L H ) (H —)
[Link].oı́.me:n
please
1pl
‘And how could anyone come to love you more than I do,
you who took in so much money when I first started to help you
out,
squeezing and strangling favors from some in public, begging from
others,
Not caring how any of the private citizens did as long as I
pleased you?’
122 C. Golston and T. Riad

As we have said, it is hard to know exactly which metrical position is

the catalectic one, so we follow traditional analyses and assume it is the
last, since catalexis ( like extrametricality) seems to target final constitu-
ents rather than initial ones, at least in phonology ( Kiparsky 1991).
Quite a lot hinges on this, however, and we do not pretend that the
matter has been decided. For one thing, the clearest case of catalexis in
Greek stichic meter, iambic tetrameter catalectic, has initial catalexis, not
final (see below). Burling (1966) shows that both initial and final catalexis
can be found in children’s meter cross-linguistically, and classicists assume
both initial and final catalexis in analyzing various Greek meters. Indeed,
the very idea that this meter is anapestic comes from the claim that the
seventh foot is almost always LLH in comedy. The problem of course is
that if the catalexis is initial, the seventh foot is regularly HLL, as
shown below.8

(31) Knights 773–776 (assuming that catalexis is initial )

(— H ) (H L L) (H H )(H L L)(H H ) (H L
kaı̀ pô:s àn [Link]́ù mâ[Link]́n se [Link]̂:n ô: dê:me
L) (H L L)(H H )
gé.[Link] po.lı́:.te:s

(— H ) (H L L) (H L L) (H H )(H H) (H L L)
hòs prô:.ta mén he:.nı́k’ [Link]́.leu.ón soi khré:.[Link]
(H L L) (H H )
pléı̀st’ [Link]́.[Link]

(— H )(H H )(H H ) (H H ) (H H) (H H)
en tô: koinô: toùs m̀en [Link]̂:n toùs d’ ánkh:n
(H L L)(HH )
toùs dè metaitô:n

(— H ) (H H ) (H H ) (L LH )(H H ) (L L H)
ou phron.tı́[Link]:n tô:n [Link].o:tô:n [Link]́.s ei
(H L L)(H H )
soı̀ [Link].oı́.me:n

This is not an issue we can answer here — we know of no conclusive

evidence (from bridges, caesurae, etc.) that catalexis in this meter is either
initial or final.9 But we should not assume that the seventh foot is always
LLH any more than we should assume that it is always HLL. We simply
don’t know at this point whether the catalectic position is line-initial or
line-final.
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 123

With that in mind we can sketch the meter at hand as follows.

(32) Anapestic tetrameter catalectic

Int line

Ph Ph Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w — metrical position

Comparing this meter with the dimeter discussed above (27) we see that
the only differences are that the tetrameter has four daughters (tetrameter)
instead of two and that the final verse foot is half-empty (catalexis).
The tetrameter part of this can be treated as violating the constraint
INTBIN, which requires that lines (intonational phrases) be binary, not
ternary or quaternary or the like.10 If the unmarked case is to have an
intonational phrase branch once (dimeter), then having it branch twice
should violate INTBIN once and having it branch three times should
violate INTBIN twice.

2.4. Markedness

We want to show that distinctive violation of constraints is the simplest

way of defining meters. The idea is that the poet intentionally violates a
prosodic constraint to achieve some kind of noticeable structural or
rhythmic effect. In the cases at hand we need to define what it is to be
anapestic dimeter, anapestic dimeter catalectic, and anapestic tetrameter
catalectic.
Anapestic dimeter we take to be completely unmarked in terms of both
rhythm and length. We repeat its structure below for convenience.

(33) Anapestic dimeter

Int line

Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

w w w w w w w w metrical position
124 C. Golston and T. Riad

Since it doesn’t violate any constraints on binarity or on rhythm, there

isn’t a lot to say about it in terms of markedness. We can say that it
ranks binarity and rhythm very highly, even above morphosyntactic
concerns, but this is not something peculiar to this meter. So we will
leave the unmarked meter unmarked.
Moving on to the catalectic version of anapestic dimeter that we find
at the end of most dimeter systems, we note that it has one less filled
metrical position than we expect a dimeter to have.

(34) Anapestic dimeter catalectic

Int line

Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

w w w w w w w — metrical position

Again, most of the structure and rhythm is unmarked, so we are left

with little to notate overtly except the catalexis. We capture this formally
by noting that a catalectic meter intentionally violates FILL.

(35) Catalexis
FILL

The formalism is to be read ‘a line is catalectic (C ) if it violates the

constraint FILL’. We could of course find some other way of making
the line violate FILL and then note that the line does violate FILL, but
the point of using markedness in grammatical description is precisely to
avoid this type of indirectness (Golston 1996). Unless the catalexis we
find regularly is demonstrably the byproduct of something else, we can
simply note the markedness of the situation with a constraint violation.
Put less formally, if someone respects binarity and moraic rhythm but
violates FILL, she is speaking anapestic dimeter catalectic.
Anapestic tetrameter catalectic is still rhythmically unmarked, but it
now has two peculiarities in terms of length: it is twice as long as we
would expect it to be (if it were a dimeter) and it has one less metrical
position than we’d expect it to have (binary meters always have an even
number of metrical positions).
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 125

(36) Anapestic tetrameter catalectic

Int line

Ph Ph Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w — metrical position

The length part comes about because the line has four daughters (tetra-
meter) instead of two (dimeter), that is, because it branches three times
instead of just once. We can register this in terms of markedness as a
double violation of INTBIN, the requirement that intonational phrases
( lines) branch once.
(37) Tetrameter
INTBIN
TT

The formalism reads ‘a line (intonational phrase) is a tetrameter if it

branches two times more than normal’. The marked parts of anapestic
tetrameter catalectic are thus just being catalectic, (35), and being a
tetrameter, (37), which are enough to distinguish a catalectic tetrameter
from the unmarked dimeter.
Turning back to the anapestic part of the meter, let us see precisely
how the constraints we have invoked describe the structures we find.
Recall that there are four distinct ways to realize an anapestic verse foot
in Greek meter: HH, LLH, HLL, and LLLL, in descending order of
preference. These represent all and only the strings that consist of exactly
two bimoraic trochees. Two binarity constraints ( WDBIN and FTBIN-m)
ensure this, as we can see in the tableau below, where actual verse feet
(y) are compared with a few nonoccurring ones.
126 C. Golston and T. Riad

(38) The anapestic verse foot

WDBIN FTBIN-m

y (H H)
y ( H LL)
y (LL H )
y (LL LL)
(L H ) *!
(L L) *!
( H LL H ) *!
(H H H) *!

The first two losing candidates lose because they contain degenerate feet
(L), in violation of FTBIN-m, an essential constraint in this meter; the
last two candidates (and many more imaginable ones) lose because they
branch twice, in fatal violation of WDBIN, another essential constraint
in Greek anapestic meter.
We have defined the natural class of verse feet in anapestic meter as
just those verse feet that respect both WDBIN (two metrical positions
per verse foot) and FTBIN-m (two moras per metrical position). Going
up one level in the metrical hierarchy, we see that the class of metra in
anapestic meter includes all and only those 16 metra that respect PHBIN,
WDBIN, and FTBIN-m.
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 127

(39) The anapestic metron

PHBIN WDBIN FTBIN-m

y (H H ) (H H )
y (H H ) (H LL)
y (H H ) (LL H )
y (H H ) (LL LL)
y (H LL) (H H )
y (H LL) (H LL)
y (H LL) (LL H )
y (H LL) (LL LL)
y (LL H ) (H H )
y (LL H ) (H LL)
y (LL H ) (LL H )
y (LL H ) (LL LL)
y (LL LL) (H H )
y (LL LL) (H LL)
y (LL LL) (LL H )
y (LL LL) (LL LL)
(L H ) (H H ) *!
(H L H ) (LL LL) *!
(H H ) (H LL) (H H ) *!

A tableau for an entire line of anapestic dimeter would include 256

(16×16) distinct winning line types.
The distinctive violation of FILL in a catalectic meter occurs in the
evaluation of full lines. Below we compare three lengths of anapestic
meter on the grammar of anapestic tetrameter catalectic (recall that ‘C’
marks catalexis).
128 C. Golston and T. Riad

(40) Anapestic tetrameter catalectic

PHBIN FILL
a. (LL H ) (LL LL) (H H ) <C>!
(LL H ) (LL H ) (H LL)
(LL H ) (LL H )
b. (— H ) (LL LL) (H H ) C *!
(LL H ) (LL H ) (H LL)
(LL H ) (H —)
c. y (LL H ) (LL LL) (H H ) C
(LL H ) (LL H ) (H LL)
(LL H ) (H —)

Candidate (a) is acatalectic, that is, the distinctive violation of FILL is

lacking because all of the metrical positions have text in them. This line
is essentially better than it is supposed to be. A catalectic line is supposed
to have an unfilled metrical position and candidate (a) does not.
Candidate (b) has the required violation (—) but also one more at the
beginning of the line. That is one too many; a catalectic line is supposed
to have only one unfilled metrical position. Finally, candidate (c) has
exactly one unfilled metrical position, as called for, and is therefore a
well-formed line in this type of meter.
A constraint-based approach like this entirely avoids the need for metrical
templates. The result looks as if text were matched to an abstract template
but this is brought about not by a matching procedure but simply by
respecting (or violating) specific constraints on binarity and faithfulness.
Once we know how much of the structure is marked, we know how much
of the prosodic structure must be unmarked; and these two bits of informa-
tion are enough to rule out ill-formed lines and to rule in acceptable ones.
As we now move on to the other spoken meters of Greek, we should
keep the anapest in mind. Anapestic meter is rhythmically unmarked, most
of its character flowing directly from unviolated constraints on binarity
from the mora to the utterance. The other meters we will consider —
dactylic, iambic, spondaic — are all rhythmically marked and it is their
rhythmic markedness that sets them apart from the anapests.

3. Dactylic hexameter

The works of Homer (Iliad, Odyssey), Hesiod (Theognis, Works and

Days), and others were written in a meter with six HLL or HH verse
feet per line. Consider the first few lines of the Iliad.
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 129

(41) Homer, Iliad A 1–7

(H L L)(HL L)(H H ) (H LL) (H L L)(H H )
mê:.nin á.[Link], the.á:, pe:.le:.i.á.deo: [Link]̂:.os
anger sing goddess Pelian Achilles
g g
(H L L)(H H) (H L L) (H H ) (H L L) (H H )
[Link]́.ne:n, hè: mu.rı́ [Link].óı̀s á[Link]’ é.the:.ke
devastation which thousands Achaians pains put
(H H ) (H H) H ) (H LL)(H LL) (H H )
[Link]̀s d’[Link]ı́:.mous psu:.khà:s á.[Link]: [Link]
many & strong souls Hades forth-sent
g
(H H )(H H ) (H L L)(H LL) (H L L)(H H )
he:.ró:.o:n, [Link]̀s dè [Link]́:.ri.a té[Link] kú.[Link]
heroes them & spoils gave dogs
g
(HH )(H L L) (H L L)(H L L (H L L) (H H )
oi.o:nói.sı́ te pâ:.si, di.òs d’ [Link]ı́.[Link] [Link]́:
birds & all god’s & finished will
g g
(H H) (H H ) (H L L)(H H )(H L L)(H H )
eks hóù dè: tà prô:.ta [Link]́:.te:n e.rı́.[Link]
from which indeed the firsts separated conflicting
g
(H LL)(H L L)(H H ) (H H ) (H L L) (H H )
a:.tre.ı́.de:s te [Link] [Link]̂:n kaı̀ dı̂:.os [Link]́s
Atrean & king men & shiny Achilleus
g
‘Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles,
the devastation that gave endless pain to the Achaians,
and sent so many strong souls down to Hades,
The souls of heroes; but they themselves he gave as spoils to dogs
and to all the birds; and the will of Zeus was fulfilled.
From which time these men first parted in conflict,
Atreus’ son a king of men and brilliant Achilles.’
The dactylic and hexameter parts are clearly separable and so we must
look for phonologically constrained ways to analyze them. We will do
both in terms of markedness essentially by showing how different this
meter is from the anapestic dimeter in terms of rhythm and binarity.

3.1. ‘‘Dactylic’’

The first task is to characterize HLL and HH as a natural class. Note that
it cannot be a characterization based on good rhythm because of the stress
130 C. Golston and T. Riad

clash involved in HH (rhythmically xx at the syllable level ). Indeed, when

we look a bit deeper and apply what we know of Greek prominence, there
is stress clash with HLL as well. If we spell out the prominence relations at
the syllable level for the lines above we get the pattern in (42).
(42) Dactylic hexameter
x x. x x. x x x x. x x. x x
(H LL) (H LL) (H H ) (H LL) (H LL) (H H )
x x x x x x x x. x x. x x
(H H ) (H H ) (H H ) (H LL) (H LL) (H H )
x x x x x x. x x. x x. x x
(H H ) (H H ) (H LL) (H LL) (H LL) (H H )
x x x x. x x. x x. x x. x x
(H H ) (H LL) (H LL) (H LL) (H LL) (H H )
x x x x x x. x x x x. x x
(H H ) (H H ) (H LL) (H H ) (H LL) (H H )
x x. x x. x x x x x x. x x
(H LL) (H LL) (H H ) (H H ) (H LL) (H H )
One rhythmic regularity stands out very clearly:    
  . This is the clearest surface difference between dactylic and
anapestic meter. While anapests lack a specific and predictable rhythm,
dactyls have a stable, recurring,  property. Stress clash occurs
in every verse foot, six times per line in every one of the 28,000-some lines
of the Iliad and Odyssey. This simple observation belies the arrhythmic
nature of dactylic hexameter. Relentless stress clash follows necessarily from
the nature of the meter (HLL or HH ) and the phonological foot of the
language (the moraic trochee). This could not have escaped the Greek ear,
and we therefore propose that stress clash is not an unintended byproduct
of the meter but its defining rhythmic characteristic.
Traditional analysis assumes that dactylic meter is rhythmic and sets
out to find its special rhythm, which is supposed to be HLL. It comes
up with the peculiar result that only 60% of the verse feet have the true
dactylic meter — the rest are deviant. But we suspect that if Homer had
wanted a perfectly rhythmic line, he would not have chosen a meter with
absolutely regular stress clash.
We have taken a more surface-near approach. We put the moraic
trochees of Greek into the meter and read the result off of the syllabic
prominences. The result is anything but rhythmic, but it is 
regular. Our analysis uncovers an exceptionless generalization involving
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 131

stress clash. Once we allow that stress clash can be a rhythmic 
( like rest or syncopation in music) its use in meter is understandable.
Unlike anapestic meter, then, dactylic hexameter has a distinctive and
utterly regular rhythmic anomaly, constant stress clash.
Returning to the possible verse feet in a language with moraic trochees,
consider how stress clash immediately lifts out the two verse feet of
dactylic hexameter from the larger pool of verse feet.
(43) Dactylic verse feet
(H H ) (H L) (H LL)
(L H) (L L) (L LL)
(LL H ) (LL L) (LL LL)

The rhythmic pattern of (LL H ) and (LL LL) are (x.x) and (x.x.) in a
language with moraic trochees, both perfectly rhythmic; those of (L H )
and (L LL) are (.x) and (.x.), also both perfectly rhythmic. None of these
four types supplies the reliable violation of NOCLASH that makes
dactylic meter what it is — they would be rhythmic feet in an otherwise
perfectly  meter. The remaining three unused feet (HL, LL,
LL, L) do not contain the required clashes either: (x..), (x.) (x..).
There is no known Greek (or Latin) work that uses only HLL feet, so
it will not do to characterize the meter as essentially HLL and only
accidentally HH (the traditional analysis). As the lines above make clear,
dactyls (HLL) and spondees (HH ) are about equally common in Greek
epic. The chart below shows the ratio of spondees to proper dactyls in
the first 52 lines of the Iliad.
(44) Verse feet in dactylic hexameter (%)
Homer
58
60
42
40

20

0
HLL HH

The 60–40 split between HLL and HH is fairly common for Greek (Maas
1962: 59); for Latin haxameter ( Ennius, Vergil ) the split works in the
other direction with more spondees than true dactyls. Indeed, for Ennius
the most common type of line is actually (HH ) (HH ) (HH ) (HH )
(HLL) (HH ). So if we are to call Greek hexameter dactylic because of
132 C. Golston and T. Riad

the 60/40 advantage dactyls hold over spondees, we must be willing to

call Latin hexameter spondaic because of the 60/40 advantage spondees
hold over dactyls. All this would fly in the face of what we know to be
true: Latin hexameter was styled directly on Greek hexameter and felt
by its practioners to be the same meter. It will not do to define a meter
in terms of mere statistical trends. And, as we have seen, there is no need
to do so, since there is an exceptionless surface regularity — stress clash —
that unites every foot of every line of both Greek and Latin hexameter.
We need to account for the statistical differences between Homer and
Ennius, but this can be done without abandoning the claim that they
wrote in essentially identical meters. For the Greek dactyl we propose a
violable constraint that favors disyllabic feet.11
(45) FTBIN-s
Phonological feet (metrical positions) contain two syllables.
FTBIN-s is not an ad hoc constraint. It is responsible for languages with
syllabic trochees rather than moraic trochees (see Hayes 1995 for survey
and discussion). Assuming that constraints are universal while their ranking
is language-specific (Prince and Smolensky 1993), we rank FTBIN-s well
below FTBIN-m and allow it only a realizational role in Greek dactylic
meter. (In spondaic meter it plays a bigger role; cf. section 5.) Specifically,
FTBIN-s makes HLL verse feet better than HH. Assuming that the essen-
tial desideratum for dactyls (D) is violation of NOCLASH we may graph
the differences between HH and HLL verse feet as follows.
(46) Realizing the dactyl in Greek
dactyl NOCLASH FTBIN-s
y ( H LL)
D
x x.
y (H H)
D *
x x

For the Latin dactyl it is more important that stressed syllables be heavy
(Prokosch’s law), just as it is in Greek anapestic meter (see [26 ] above).
(47) Realizing the dactyl in Latin
dactyl NOCLASH PROKOSCH
y (H H)
D
x x
y ( H LL)
D *
x x.
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 133

Prokosch’s law makes HH a better realization in Latin than HLL because

HH has no stressed light syllables, where HLL does (the first of the
two Ls).
There is additional evidence that NOCLASH plays a role in hexameter.
The relevant fact is that the fifth verse foot is usually HLL — in Homer
only one line in 18 has a fifth foot that is HH (Ludwich 1885: 215). We
attribute this to the avoidance of stress clash building up at the end of
the line. Allen (1973: 107) points out that metrical preferences are felt
more keenly toward the end of the line than toward the beginning, citing
work on Vedic (Arnold 1905: 9), Classical Arabic ( Weil 1960: 669),
Finnish ( Kiparsky 1968: 138), and Russian (Bailey 1968; 17), to which
we might add Modern English (Hayes 1989) and Middle English (Golston
1998). Thus, it makes sense that gratuitous violations of NOCLASH
introduced by four heavy line-final syllables would be avoided in hexa-
meter. The final verse foot is always HH, which follows from the fact
that the final metrical position is H in all stichic meter (ANCEPS),
and it is likely that this puts pressure on the preceding foot not to
end in a H. Consider the first line of the Iliad again, with phrasal
prominence building as the line wears on (cf. Hayes 1989 on the meter
of Hiawatha).
(48) Homer, Iliad A 1
x
x x x
x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x x x
( H L L)(H L L)(H H ) (H LL) (H L L)(H H )
mê:.nin á.[Link], the.á:, pe:.le:.i.á.deo: [Link]̂:.os
If phrasal stress builds toward the right, the effects of stress clash within
and across verse feet should be felt most keenly toward the end of the
line, especially if meter regulates this part of the line more strictly than
others.

3.2. Hexameter

With the dimeter, the unmarked binary nature of prosodic structure

yields two metra and four verse feet. Dactylic hexameter has six metra,
134 C. Golston and T. Riad

according to traditional analysis, but the number six does not result
straightforwardly from binarity.
We assume a fairly traditional structure for the overall architecture of
the hexameter, with six verse feet.

(49) Dactylic hexameter

Int line

Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

H w H w H w H w H w H w metrical position

Comparing this tree with the tree for a dimeter in (27) shows that the
length of the hexameter comes from the fact that each phonological
phrase (metron) branches twice instead of once. Assuming that prosodic
structure is supposed to be binary everywhere, the tree above violates
this expectation twice at the same level (the metron). Other than that the
meter is perfectly binary, with two moras per metrical position, two
metrical positions per verse foot, and two metra per line.
Again, the real number of prosodic words in a given line varies some-
what. The following shows the distribution of prosodic words in the first
100 lines of books A and B of the Iliad (counting tonic words only, as
discussed above).

(50) Number of prosodic words per line of hexameter

Homer
80 72

60 50
46
40
19
20 9
4
0
4 5 6 7 8 9

The most common type of line has six prosodic words, the next–most
common five or seven, in line with the six-word analysis given here. The
average number of words per line in this sample is 6.18, which we take
as supporting our basic analysis.
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 135

3.3. Markedness

The only surface true and exceptionless generalization about rhythm in

dactylic meter is incessant and completely regular stress clash, something
that is found only sporadically in anapestic meters. Thus it seems that
the Iliad does not go dum di di (x..); and dum dum (xx) is not somehow
an acceptable variant of that basic dactylic rhythm. Rather, dactylic
meter runs dum dum di (xx.) or dum dum (xx), with stress clash in every
verse foot as the unifying property. The meter is thus rhythmically marked
and that makes it what it is. As was hinted at above, we can recognize
this marked situation and define dactylic meter as follows.
(51) Dactylic
NOCLASH
D

The formalism says that ‘a verse foot is a dactyl if it contains a stress

clash’.
The defining characteristic in terms of length is that dactyls have two
phonological phrases that branch twice instead of the expected once.
Assessing one distinctive violation for each additional branch we get the
following desiderata for hexameter.
(52) Hexameter
PHBIN
HH

The formalism here is ambiguous between ‘a line is a hexameter if it

contains a phonological phrase that branches twice more than normal’
and ‘a line is a hexameter if it contains two phonological phrases that
each branch once more than normal’ (=[49]). The former interpretation
would yield a tree like the following (or its reverse with a 4+2
breakdown).
(53) Alternate form of the hexameter
Int line

Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

H w H w H w H w H w H w metrical position
136 C. Golston and T. Riad

We suspect that this is not the actual structure of dactylic hexameter but
are hard pressed to find evidence against it. We will therefore simply
assume that prosodic constituents prefer to be divided equally, all things
being equal; this would tip the scales in favor of a 3+3 hexameter.

4. Iambic meter

We turn now to iambic meters, which come in two common forms: a

simple trimeter and a tetrameter catalectic (also called trochaic tetra-
meter). Iambic meter is the standard meter of Greek dramatic dialogue,
equivalent in that way to the iambic pentameter of Elizabethan drama.
Following is a sample of dramatic trimeter, from the beginning of the
Medea. The parentheses demarcate metra ( of verse feet). Thus
(HH LH ) is two verse feet [HH ] and [LH ], and (HLL LH ) is two verse
feet [ HLL] and [LH ]. This is done to stay in line with traditional analyses,
which recognize the basic iambic unit as the metron, not the verse foot.
(54) Euripides’ Medea, 1–8
(H H L H ) (H H LH)(H H L H)
eı́th’ ó:.phel’ [Link]́ùs mè: [Link]́[Link] ská.phos
if would Argos not through-wing hull
g
(H H L H )(H L L L H ) (H H K H)
kó[Link]:n es áı̀.an [Link]́.as [Link]:.gá.das
Colchis into land grey together-clashers
(H H L H )(L H L H ) (L H L H)
me:.d’ en ná.[Link] pe:.lı́.ou [Link]́ı̀n [Link]
never in glens Pelion fall once
d g
(H H L H )(H H L H ) (H H L H)
tme:.théı̀.sa peú.ke: me:d’ [Link]̂:.sai khé.ras
be cut pine nor oars hands
(H H L H )(H H L H) (H H L H)
[Link]̂:n a.rı́[Link]:n hoı̀ tò pá[Link] dé.ros
men fine who the all-gold fleece
g g
(L L L L H ) (L H L H ) (H H L H )
pe.lı́.ai [Link]̂:[Link].n ou gà.r àn é[Link]’ [Link]̀:
Pelias sought out not for would lady my
d
(H HL H ) (H H L H ) (LH LH )
mé:.dei.a pú[Link] gê:.s é.pleu.s i.o:l.kı́.as
Medea towers land sailed Iolcus
g g
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 137

(L H L H ) (L H L H ) (LH L H )
é.ro:.ti thu:.mò.n [Link]́ı̀s’ i.á:.[Link]
love heart out-hit Jason
d g
‘Would that the hull of the Argos had not winged
to Colchis through the grey Symplegades!
Would that the pine had never been felled in the glens of
Mt. Pelion
nor been cut into oars for the hands
of fine men who sought out the Golden Fleece
under the command of Pelias,
For then my lady Medea would not
have sailed to the towers of the land of Iolcus
her heart smitten with love for Jason.’
With two verse feet to the metron, iambic trimeter has three metra and
six verse feet. As is clear from the sample above, the most striking
regularity in the array of H and L syllables within the metron is that the
third metrical position is always L.

4.1. ‘‘Iambic’’

The commonest verse foot shapes in iambic meter are LH and HH, as
the percentages below (based on Medea 1–8 and Bacchae 616–622) make
clear. The sheer number of HH verse feet (35%) shows that NOCLASH
is not a major consideration for iambic meter, any more than it is for
anapestic meter or for prose.
(55) Verse feet in iambic meters (%)
Trimeter Tetrameter Catalectic

80 80 74
61
60 60

40 35 40
18
20 20
8
2 2 0
0 0
LH HH L LL H LL LH HH L LL H LL

But there is much more to say about iambs in Greek. As we have seen,
Greek iambs always come in pairs or metra (as do also iambs in Arabic
meters; Golston and Riad 1997). When we look at the various metra,
we find that the verse feet LH, HH, and so on are not evenly distributed
throughout the line.
138 C. Golston and T. Riad

(56) Metrical positions and iambic metra

1 2 3 4
(L H L H)
(L H L LL)
(L LL L H )
(L LL L LL)
(H H L H)
(H H L LL)
(H LL L H )
(H LL L LL)
Three constant properties stand out clearly:
i. The third metrical position is always light (L).
ii. The second and fourth metrical positions are always bimoraic (H
or LL).
iii. The first metrical position is always a syllable ( H or L).
How may we account for this? Let’s start with (i) and (ii) and notice that
the third metrical position is always a light syllable between two bimoraic
feet, what Mester (1994) calls a trapped light syllable. Factoring in moraic
prominences gives us two feet with a stressless mora in between. Using ‘x’
for a prominent mora and ‘.’ for a nonprominent mora we can schematize
this as (x.) . (x.). This is the pattern of prominence we find across the second
and third metrical positions of absolutely every metron, as shown below,
where we have replaced L with ‘.’, and H and LL with ‘x.’.
(57) Moraic prominences in iambic metra
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
(L H L H) (. x. . x.)
(L H L LL) (. x. . x.)
(L LL L H ) (. x. . x.)
(L LL L LL) (. x. . x.)
(H H L H) (x. x. . x.)
(H H L LL) (x. x. . x.)
(H LL L H ) (x. x. . x.)
(H LL L LL) (x. x. . x.)
Thus every iambic metron contains exactly one sequence of nonprominent
moras, spanning the second and third metrical positions. Kager (1993)
calls such a sequence of nonprominent moras a moraic lapse and shows
that it is a dispreferred structure in natural languages. This is the only
constant, surface-true rhythmic feature of iambic meter in Greek. We
therefore treat it as the defining rhythmic characteristic of the meter.
So why moraic lapse instead of plain syllabic lapse? In a language with
moraic trochees, heavy syllables (H ) are always stressed and the first of
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 139

a pair of light syllables (LL) is stressed as well. When a single L syllable

follows, we get HL and LLL. The notion of a syllabic lapse covers only
the latter configuration, where the two last light syllables are both
unstressed (LLL). Greek metrics does not, however, make this distinction
between HL and LLL. Therefore, it is not a lapse at the syllabic level
that is relevant, but the lapse at the moraic level, where HL and LLL
are rhythmically equal, that is, (x..). Thus, the only type of lapse consistent
with the basically similar patterning of H and LL one gets in a language
like Greek is a pair of adjacent stressless moras. This is a direct conse-
quence of the quantitative basis for rhythm that the moraic trochee can
provide, when word stress or tone accent is set aside (as it is in Greek
meter). The constraint that iambic meter consistently violates may
therefore be given simply as NOLAPSE.
(58) NOLAPSE12
Unstressed moras are not adjacent
Note that anapestic and dactylic meters never give rise to violations of
NOLAPSE, because they both begin and end in bimoraic — and therefore
lapseless — sequences. Their moraic prominence always reads (x.x.),
whether (HH ), (HLL), (LLH ), or (LLLL). This is equally true, obvi-
ously, of any pair of these verse feet. Thus the iambic arrhythmy we have
uncovered not only defines every iambic metron, it also distinguishes
those metra from the anapestic and dactylic metra discussed earlier.
We have yet to discuss the third of our three properties of iambic meter,
namely that the first metrical position is always a syllable (H or L). This
turns out to be true only for iambic metra that are noninitial; line-initial
metra can begin with LL as well. Thus there seems to be a violable constraint
at play here whose effects are felt more strongly as one progresses in the
line ( like NOCLASH in dactylic hexameter). To capture this we again call
on PROKOSCH. Recall that PROKOSCH bans stressed light syllables. In
the most common types of iambic metron, (HH LH ) and (LH LH ), there
are no stressed lights because no light syllable precedes another light with
which it could be footed (all light syllables are trapped). In the less-common
types of iambic metron, such as line-initial (LLH LH ), we get a stressed
light syllable again, in violation of PROKOSCH.
If this is the right analysis of line-initial violations of PROKOSCH,
we should find the constraint at work elsewhere in the meter as well.
And we do. Metra containing LL are fairly rare compared to metra
containing H in the corresponding positions. Consider the commonness
of various metra in Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound 1–50), Sophocles
(Oedipus Rex 1–50), and Euripides (Helen 1–50), where the category
‘‘other’’ always has a LL sequence in first, second, or fourth position.
140 C. Golston and T. Riad

(59) Metra in iambic meters (%)

Aeschylus Euripides
59
60 60
49
41
40 37 40

20 20
10
4
0 0
HHLH LHLH Other HHLH LHLH Other
Sophocles

60 54

41
40

20
5
0
HHLH LHLH Other

Constraints familiar from earlier discussion rank the different types of

metron in terms of frequency.
(60) Realizing the iamb
metron NOLAPSE PROKOSCH FTBIN-m NOCLASH
y (HH LH )
I * *
x. x. . x.
y (LH LH )
I **
. x. . x.
y (LLH LH )
I * *
x . x. . x.
y (HLL LH )
I * * *
x .x . . x.
y (H H L LL)
I * * *
x . x. . x .
y (L LL LH )
I * **
. x . . x.
y (L H L LL)
I * **
. x. . x .
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 141

The two best types of metron ([Link] and [Link] ) respect PROKOSCH
because they have no stressed light syllables. The remaining metra above
violate PROKOSCH. One generally finds more metra shaped ([Link] )
than ([Link] ), something we attribute to FTBIN-m, which ([Link] )
respects more than does ([Link] ).
With the exception of FTBIN-m, the violable constraints we use here
are the same as those used for anapestic meter, and they should be. The
data are taken from the same dialect group (Attic) and are roughly
synchronic, a few centuries after the composition of the dactylic data
from Homer. FTBIN-m is a violable constraint here but an essential
constraint in anapestic meter. We assume that its natural place in (Attic)
Greek is between PROKOSCH and NOCLASH; in anapestic meter it is
pulled out and ranked above the syntax as an essential constraint for
the meter.
One aspect of our analysis still remains unexplained. Why does it take
two verse feet to realize a moraic lapse? Why not have a single verse foot
HL realize the lapse (x..)? We do not know the answer to these questions
and will only point to where we hope to find an answer. All of the spoken
meters in Greek have verse feet that end in a bimoraic sequence H or
LL, as we mentioned at the outset of this paper. We do not know why
this is so, but we would like to use this observation to shed some light
on the problem at hand. If there is a general constraint that requires
verse feet (prosodic words) to end in a moraic trochee, that constraint
would rule out the possibility of HL verse; the only way to realize a lapse
would then be across verse feet, just as we find in the anapestic metron.
We will not pursue the matter further here and hope to return to it in
future research. This is a general problem in Greek metrics, not one
specific to our proposal.

4.2. ‘‘Trimeter’’

A line of trimeter contains six verse feet organized by pairs into metra;
these three metra give the meter its traditional designation as a trimeter.13
The six feet are thus organized in a substantially different way than the
six feet of hexameter are. To get the three metra we posit the following
fairly traditional structure.
142 C. Golston and T. Riad

(61) Iambic trimeter

Int line

Ph Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

s w w L s w w L s w L w metrical position

The only thing marked about the tree above is that the line branches
twice instead of once as it does in the dimeter; other than that, each
metron and verse foot branches exactly once.
Given this analysis of trimeter we expect to find about six words per
line, and this is more or less what we find, as a 200-line sample from
Euripides shows (Helen 1–100; Phoenicians 1–100).
(62) Number of prosodic words per line of trimeter (%)
Euripides
80 72
66
60

40 35
25
20
2
0
4 5 6 7 8

The most common type of line has five prosodic words where we would
expect six, but the number of six-word lines is very close and the average
number of words per line is 5.45, just under what we would expect given
the present analysis.14 We suspect that two things are responsible for the
lower number of words in trimeter. First, trimeter has only 18–21 moras
per line while hexameter has a full 24; second, the final line in dimeter
systems is catalectic, further reducing the number of moras available
for words.

4.3. Tetrameter catalectic

The iambic tetrameter catalectic is thought to have been the original

meter of tragic dialogue, later replaced by iambic trimeter (Raven 1962:
34). Consider an example of this meter from the Bacchae.
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 143

(63) Euripides, Bacchae 616–622

(— H L H ) (L H L H )(L L L L H ) (H H L H)
tá[Link] kaı̀ [Link]́[Link]’ [Link]́n hó.te me [Link]́.ein [Link]́on
thus and humiliate him when me to bind thinking
(— H L L L) (H H L H )(H H LH ) (L H L H )
oút’ ethigen oúth he:psath’ he:mo:n elpı́sin d’ ebósketo
g d
neither touch nor grasp us hopes but feed
(—H L H ) (L H L H )(H H L H) (L H
pròs phá.tnais dè táù.ron [Link]́:n hóù [Link]̂rks’ he:mâ:s
at manger and bull he found where shut in us
L H)
á.go:n
leading
(— H L L L) (L H L H ) (L L L L H ) (H H L H)
tô:de perı̀ bró.khous é.[Link] gó.[Link] kaı̀ khe:.lı̀s [Link]̂:n
then around knots threw knees and hooves feet
d d g
(— H L H ) (L H L H) H L H ) (H H L H)
[Link]̀n [Link]́.o:n [Link]̂:.ta só:.[Link] stá[Link]:n ápo
anger out-breathed sweat body dripping from
g
(— H L H ) (L H L H ) (H H L H) (L H L H)
kheı́.[Link] [Link]̀s [Link]́[Link] ple:.sı́.on d’ [Link]̀: [Link]̂:n
lips giving teeth nearby & I being there
d
(— H L H ) (H H L H ) (H H L H ) (L H L H)
hé:.[Link] thá[Link]:n é.[Link] en dè tóò.de tóò khróno:
quiet sitting watched in & this the time
d d d
‘This is how I humiliated him: in thinking that he was binding me
he neither touched me nor grasped me, but fed on hopes.
And finding a bull at the manger, where he led and imprisoned me,
he threw a snare around its knees and hoofed feet,
panting his anger out, sweat dripping from his body,
biting his lips. I was there nearby
and watched, sitting silently. And at this time ...’
This meter is often called trochaic tetrameter catalectic, and those who
analyze it as such (e.g. Raven 1962: 34) treat it as having final catalexis:
(HLHs) (HLHs) (HLHs) (HLH—). For this reason we should discuss
why the catalexis is initial and why the meter is better analyzed as iambic
than as trochaic.
Following West (1982: 40), Maas (1962), and others, we note that
‘‘trochaic’’ tetrameter and iambic trimeter mix freely in Greek and share
144 C. Golston and T. Riad

a number of common characteristics including position of the caesura

and major bridges. If we were to analyze the tetrameter with final cata-
lexis, all of this would be coincidental because tetrameter will then have
the opposite type of foot to iambic trimeter. The former would run wLws
and the latter would run swLw. But if we assume that the catalexis is
initial, the positions of the caesura and bridges line up exactly and we
find an understanding for how these two meters could be freely mixed in
with one another. For these reasons, West recognizes ‘‘trochaic tetra-
meter’’ as essentially the same meter as iambic trimeter (1982: 40) and
we follow him in this regard. We will therefore refer to it henceforth as
iambic tetrameter catalectic, since it has the same type of metron as the
tragic trimeter, but with four metra rather than three. A schema for the
meter is given below.
(64) Iambic tetrameter catalectic
Int colon

Ph Ph Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

—w L w s w L w s w L w s w L w metrical position
This meter differs from iambic trimeter in two respects: it has four metra
rather than three and it has one unfilled metrical position at the beginning
of a line. This makes it even more marked than the trimeter since the
unmarked case (acatalectic dimeter) is to have two metra to the line and
no catalexis.
Why is catalexis initial rather than final? Recall that every metron
needs to violate NOLAPSE and that the final metrical position of a line
is always counted as heavy (ANCEPS). Now consider what happens
with final catalexis (a, b) versus initial catalexis (c).
(65) Comparing initial and final catalexis
ANCEPS NOLAPSE
a. [LH LH ] [LH LH ]
*! IIII
[LH LH ] [LH L—]
b. [LH LH ] [LH LH ]
III<I>!
[LH LH ] [LH H—]
c. y [—H LH ] [LH LH ]
IIII
[LH LH ] [LH LH ]
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 145

Candidate (a) has final catalexis and consistent violation of NOLAPSE,

as desired, but removing the final metrical position leaves an L as last
position, in violation of ANCEPS. Candidate (b) has a final H in compli-
ance with ANCEPS but fails to violate NOLAPSE in the last metron
(LHH—). Candidate (c) meets all requirements by virtue of applying
catalexis at the left edge. Catalexis itself must be stipulated for this meter,
but that catalexis is initial is forced by independently needed constraints.

4.4. Markedness

The formal analysis of iambic meter in Greek requires mention of the

constant lapse across the second and third metrical positions in every
verse foot. This may be done as follows.
(66) ‘‘Iambic’’
NOLAPSE
I

(66) simply states that iambic metra contain stress lapses. This picks out
the right combinations of verse feet fairly easily, as we have seen.
The two lengths of iambic meter we find can also be described in terms
of how much they deviate from a dimeter.
(67) Trimeter
INTBIN
Tr

(68) Tetrameter
INTBIN

Te Te

The intonational phrase of a line of trimeter branches once more than it

would if it were a dimeter, hence one distinctive violation (Tr) in (67).
The intonational phrase of a line of tetrameter branches twice more than
it would if it were a dimeter, hence two distinctive violations ( Te Te)
in (68).
Summing up our section on iambs, we have shown that the only
surface-true rhythmic fact of iambic meter in Greek is that each and
146 C. Golston and T. Riad

every metron violates NOLAPSE exactly once. Iambic meter is thus the
phonological opposite of dactylic meter, which violates NOCLASH.
Indeed, we can now see why later Greek metricians called the six-foot
meter of tragedy trimeter and the six-foot meter of epic hexameter. They
were apparently counting how many times the rhythmic anomaly
occurred per line. In epic there are six violations of NOCLASH per line
because there is stress clash in every verse foot (HLL or HH ). In drama
there are only three violations of NOLAPSE per line because there is
stress lapse only between  of verse feet.

5. Spondaic meter

Spondaic meter is a rare meter used for short religious poems, solemn
marches, and the like. It is clearly somewhat special in Greek, but we
consider it here because it shows clearly just how arrhythmic a meter can
be and how well violation of rhythmic expectations can be used as a
defining aspect of meter. Each line has five spondaic (HH ) verse feet.
(69) Spondaic invocation (Page 1962: 0941)
(H H ) (H H ) (H H ) (H H ) (H H)
spé[Link]:men táı̀s mná:.mas pai.sı̀n moú.sais
we pour the memory children Muses
d g d d
(H H ) (H H ) (H H ) (H H ) (HH )
kaı̀ tô:i [Link]́[Link]:i to:i la:.tóùs hui.éı̀
and the muse-leader the Leto son
d d g d
‘We pour [this] to the muses, children of Memory,
and to their leader [Apollo], the son of Leto.’

5.1. ‘‘Spondaic’’

Like dactylic meter, the spondaic invocation contains clashes in every

verse foot, but where dactyls alternate (H H ) with ( H LL), spondaic
meter allows only the former. The spondee is thus a related but more
constrained verse foot than the dactyl, a fact that should be reflected in
the analysis. We note that none of the metrical positions in spondaic
meter has two syllables, in violation of the constraint FTBIN-s discussed
above in relation to the Greek dactyl, which tends to be realized as HLL
rather than HH. Just as every verse foot in spondaic meter violates
NOCLASH, so does every verse foot violate FTBIN-s. We thus treat
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 147

distinctive violation of both constraints as desiderata for this most marked

of meters.

5.2. Pentameter

The spondaic invocation contains five verse feet and so we call it penta-
meter. There is not a lot of research to build on for the spondaic
invocation, so we import some of what has been learned from pentameters
in other languages, especially Spanish, Italian, and English. An overview
of the structure is given below, following Piera (1980), Nespor and Vogel
(1986), and Youmans (1989), who posit two structures for pentameter.

(70) Spondaic invocation

Int line

Ph Ph metron

Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd verse foot

H H HH H H H H H H metrical position

or

Not enough is known about spondaic invocations to determine whether

one of these structures is better suited than the other; Piera (1980) and
Hayes (1988) suggest that the 2+3 structure is unmarked cross-linguisti-
cally, but we will not pursue the issue for Greek. What we do want to
stress is how close both trees are to the unmarked dimeter discussed
above. The only difference is that one of the metra in the pentameter
branches twice instead of the expected once. Given a way to encode this
simple difference, the fact that one has ten verse feet here instead of the
expected eight in a dimeter falls out unproblematically.
148 C. Golston and T. Riad

5.3. Markedness

Spondaic invocations are marked by the same stress clash as dactylic

hexameter, in violation of NOCLASH. In addition, all ten metrical
positions are monosyllabic, in frank violation of FTBIN-s, which favors
moraic trochees shaped LL over ones shaped H. We may formalize this
as a desideratum for spondaic meter.
(71) Spondee
FTBIN-s
SS

This says that a spondaic verse foot contains two metrical positions
(moraic trochees) that each fails to branch into two syllables. The only
verse foot that violates FTBIN-s twice and NOCLASH is HH.
The pentameter part of the spondaic invocation requires a single viola-
tion of binarity at the level of the phonological phrase, as follows,
(72) Pentameter
PHBIN
P

which states that a line of pentameter has one phonological phrase that
branches once more than it would if it were a normal dimeter. The
ternary branching phonological phrase may be realized in the first half
of the line or the second, (70), at least in Spanish and English pentameter.

6. Rhythm and meter

In this section we look at an asymmetry that crops up in our treatment

of metrical constraints (section 6.1) and then review our proposals for
understanding line length, rhythm, and catalexis in Greek meters and
beyond (section 6.2).

6.1. An asymmetry

There is an interesting asymmetry between distinctive violations of con-

straints that regulate line length (catalexis, binarity) and distinctive vio-
lations of constraints that regulate rhythm. The former always involve an
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 149

existential violation (some x isn’t binary) while the latter always involve
a universal violation (every x is arrhythmic). Why should this be?
A clear possibility is that this is merely an artifact of our analysis, and
we would not want to rule out this possibility too hastily. But the question
can be stated more generally. Why do we find catalexis once per line
rather than once per verse foot? Why isn’t it enough in dactylic meter to
have one HLL or HH per line, why must it be all six?
Suppose that the arrhythmy in dactylic hexameter involved only one
violation of NOCLASH in each line; or that the arrhythmy in iambic
trimeter involved only one violation of NOLAPSE per line. This violation
would not be very salient because there is nothing unusual in Greek in
having stress clash or lapse; they are in fact very common indeed in all
forms of speech and prose in Greek as in most languages. In order to be
noticeable at all, violations of NOCLASH and NOLAPSE must be perva-
sive and regular. So rhythmic effects like clash and lapse are found at
the surface in every single metron — this gives the meter its distinctive
rhythmic feel.
The opposite applies to distinctive violations of binarity. Suppose that
catalexis applied to the beginning of every verse foot in tetrameter instead
of just the line-initial verse foot. The result would be something like
(—HLH ) (—HLH ) (—HLH ) (—HLH ), with 12 filled metrical posi-
tions.15 Such a line, we imagine, would invite immediate reparsing as six
acatalectic verse feet, (HL) (HH ) (LH ) (HL) (HH ) (LH ) — that is, as
a random set of verse feet instead of a set of repeated verse feet. Taking
out one position from every metron yields an even number of verse feet
that can always be reinterpreted without catalexis. The main surface cue
for catalexis is an odd number of metrical units on the surface, but this
can only be achieved if distinctive violation of binarity constraints
happens once per line. This, we suspect, is why constraints that regulate
line length and rhythm operate differently.

6.2. A broader picture

We have proposed an account of Greek meter based solely on prosodic

constraints that regulate binarity, rhythm, and faithfulness. Before we
look at other theories of Greek meter, we would like to sum up our
proposals and sketch how our model is meant to work for meter more
generally.
Our analysis makes use of the following very general constraints.
(73) Binarity
a. INTBIN
Intonational phrases ( lines) branch once.
150 C. Golston and T. Riad

[Link]
Phonological phrases (metra) branch once.
c. WDBIN
Phonological words (verse feet) branch once.
d. FTBIN-m
Phonological feet (metrical positions) contain two moras.
e. FTBIN-s
Phonological feet (metrical positions) contain two syllables.
(74) Rhythm and weight
a. NOCLASH
Stressed syllables are not adjacent.
b. NOLAPSE
Unstressed moras are not adjacent.
c. PROKOSCH
Stressed syllables are heavy.
(75) Faithfulness
a. FILL
Syllable positions must be filled with underlying segments.
b. PARSE
Underlying segments must be parsed into syllable structure.
The constraints in (74) and (75) are noncontroversial, at least within
optimality theory, and are cross-linguistically supported. The two FTBIN
constraints are also well motivated in terms of languages that have either
moraic feet ( like Greek) or syllabic feet (cf. Hayes 1995 and references
therein); the rest of the binarity constraints in (73) are harder to justify
in terms of nonmetrical phonology, though it has been claimed that
prosodic structure is generally binary ( Kager 1989: 130ff., 1993; Prince
1989: 55ff.; Hayes 1995).
We begin with the simplest proposal, that catalexis is a marked state and
that the markedness can be understood as violation of a constraint (FILL)
that requires all metrical positions in a line to be filled with text. There is a
related notion in traditional metrics, extrametricality, for lines that have
more text than meter. This situation is also taken to be the marked case and
can be understood as violation of a constraint (PARSE) that requires all
text in a line to be part of a metrical position (cf. Prince and Smolensky 1993).
(76) Catalexis and extrametricality
FILL
Acatalectic
Catalectic C
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 151

PARSE
Metrical
Extrametrical E

Thus a basic insight into meter, that the text is supposed to match a
given pattern, can be handled insightfully by importing constraints devel-
oped in phonology. Again, the matching has two sides to it: the text is
supposed to fill the meter and the meter is supposed to parse the text.
The Greek meters we have looked at do not make systematic use of
extrametricality, but Greek lyric meters do (Golston and Riad 1999).
Greek lyric meters are for the most part very strict indeed about where
H and L syllables must go; so it is surprising to find that many lyric
meters begin with one or two syllables whose quantity is completely
unregulated. These metrically unregulated (extrametrical ) positions are
known as the Aeolic Base in Greek metrics (Maas 1962: section 33;
Raven 1962: section 132).
A more common metrical regularity is line length, almost a sine qua
non of meter. We have looked at five different types of line in terms of
length, from dimeter to hexameter, and have proposed an analysis of
them in terms of two constraints that regulate binarity (INTBIN and
PHBIN ), as follows.
(77) Line length
INTBIN PHBIN
Dimeter
Trimeter Tr
Tetrameter TT
Pentameter P
Hexameter HH

The unmarked line length according to our analysis is the four-word

dimeter, in line with Burling’s (1966) cross-linguistic findings for the
structure of nursery rhymes. From a purely Greek perspective it makes
sense to say that tetrameter is more marked than trimeter, as trimeter is
by far the more common meter for dialogue. But it makes much less
sense to claim that pentameter is less marked than hexameter since there
are great tomes written in hexameter but only short snippets written in
pentameter in Greek. But this difference is probably due to factors other
152 C. Golston and T. Riad

than markedness of line length. Greek pentameter is spondaic (HH )

while hexameter is dactylic (HLL or HH ); it seems possible, therefore,
that spondaic pentameter is less common than dactylic hexameter because
of the difficulty of writing extended texts using only heavy syllables. The
fact that pentameter in other languages (Romance, Slavic, and Germanic
especially, under conditions different from those in Greek) has been very
successful adds some weight to the idea that line length is not what’s
wrong with Greek pentameter.
In any case, our analysis provides a way of understanding all meters
in terms of markedness, that is, in terms of deviation from a dimeter
norm. Since markedness has played an important role in our understand-
ing of phonology, we are hopeful that it will play an equally important
role in our understanding of meter.
The final area we have looked at here involves rhythm and, more
controversially, the claim that most Greek meters are not rhythmic at
all, in their definitions. In some sense this should be a straightforward
claim to make. If one meter is perfectly rhythmic the others must not be.
Let us review the proposal and see what it is meant to do. We have
argued that anapestic meter is rhythmically unmarked because it has no
consistent violations of NOCLASH and no adjacent stressless moras that
would ever violate NOLAPSE. We arrive at this conclusion simply by
parsing anapestic texts into moraic trochees and blindly applying the
Greek rules for prominence. We do the same for dactyls and find that
the metrical prominences pattern in a certain way when we look at the
syllable level: every verse foot has a stress clash in it, in violation of
NOCLASH. A similar result is found for iambic meter, but this time we
find that the metrical prominences produce a pattern at the moraic level:
every metron has a stress lapse in it, in violation of NOLAPSE. When
we come to spondaic meter we find the same incessant stress clash that
was found in dactylic meter but with an additional twist. No metrical
position is disyllabic, in violation of FTBIN-s. This meter is thus doubly
marked because the verse feet are both short and contain a clash.
(78) Rhythm and arrhythmy
NOCLASH NOLAPSE FTBIN-s

Anapest
Dactyl D
Iamb I
Spondee S S
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 153

The data, we feel, speak for themselves once we scan the texts with
Greek prominence relations (moraic trochees) in mind. The question
that remains is whether all this arrhythmy is intentional or just a
byproduct of something else. This is a difficult question to answer head
on, but we feel it is highly unlikely that the only systematic and surface-
true rhythmic regularities in a number of meters would all be accidental.
We find it much more plausible that Greek poets made use of this
markedness to differentiate grown-up poetry from nursery rhymes. No
one has ever suggested that Greek meter was simple, and we are merely
proposing that some of the complexity is in some sense contra naturam,
that is, prosodically marked. This is a commonplace notion in music
and one that we think can profitably be imported into the study
of meter.
A full typology of meters in terms of violations of these constraints
would include very marked meters in which a number of constraints were
violated. Such meters are predicted to be very rare (because ex hypothesi
they are very marked), but it might be worth considering what they
would look like. Let us begin by expanding (77) to include types of meter
that violate INTBIN three times per line (meter X ) or PHBIN three
times per line (meter Y ) or both INTBIN and PHBIN one time per line
(meter Z ).
(79) Real and unattested (italicized ) Greek lengths
INTBIN PHBIN
Dimeter
Trimeter Tr
Tetrameter TT
meter X XXX
Pentameter P
Hexameter HH
meter Y YYY
meter Z Z Z

Meter X would look like the following if it were anapestic.

154 C. Golston and T. Riad

(80) Unattested anapestic meter X

Int

Ph Ph Ph Ph Ph

Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd

w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
No such meter occurs in Greek, where the maximal number of verse feet
is eight (anapestic tetrameter). We cannot of course exclude this type of
meter from the range of possible meters in Greek, but we can note that
it is formally more marked than any existing meter in the language and
thus still account for its nonexistence in the tradition in terms of
markedness.
Meter Y would be instantiated in a dactylic meter as follows.
(81) Unattested dactylic meter Y
Int

Ph Ph

Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd

H w H w H w H w H w H w H w
Again, we find no such line in Greek and we may attribute this to
markedness. A line that violates PHBIN more than twice falls outside
the limits of markedness that Greek poets explored. It is not an impossible
line, but is an unattested line in Greek.
Meter Z would look like the following in an iambic setting.
(82) Unattested iambic meter Z
Int

Ph Ph Ph

Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd Wd

s w L w s w L w s w L w L w
This type of meter also falls outside of the extant types and our analysis
provides a way of understanding why: no Greek meter violates both
INTBIN and PHBIN.
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 155

Turning now to unattested Greek rhythmic patterns, we may expand

(78) to include other possible but unattested meters as follows.
(83) Real and unattested (italicized ) Greek rhythms
NOCLASH NOLAPSE FTBIN-s

Anapest
Dactyl D
meter Q DD
Iamb I
meter R II
Spondee S S
meter S D I

Meter Q would have to contain two cases of stress clash in each verse
foot, which is impossible given binary verse feet: (xx xx) would have to
include four moraic trochees (one per x), in violation of WDBIN, which
is never violated in extant Greek meters. So meter Q is not possible
unless an even more marked meter is constructed, namely one with very
large verse feet. We have no way of excluding such a meter in principle,
of course, but we do predict (correctly we think) that such a meter is
highly unlikely.
Meters R and S are highly marked for the same reason. In order for
a verse foot to have two cases of stress lapse in the same verse foot it
would need to have more than two pairs of moraic trochees, in violation
of WDBIN; this makes R highly marked and thus highly unlikely. And
in order for a verse foot to have both stress lapse (HL or LLL) and
stress clash (HH or HLL) in the same foot it would have to branch three
times in violation of WDBIN; this makes S highly unlikely.
A full typology falls outside the scope of this paper, but we hope that
the foregoing remarks show the scope of our claims. Our analysis arrays
different types of meter along a set of scales from less-to-more marked
lengths and rhythmic types. We have shown that the less-marked of these
occur in Greek and that the more-marked do not, showing that we can
account both for what does occur and what does not occur in Greek
meter.
But the best defense is often a good offense, so we will turn now to
what we see as the major weakness of existing accounts of Greek meter.
156 C. Golston and T. Riad

7. Comparison with other theories

Here we consider two other types of analysis, one traditional and one
generative (Prince 1989) to show that the present analysis is the only
contender that offers strong generalizations that are both meaningful and
surface-true.

7.1. Traditional analysis

We cannot go into all the details of the extensive literature on Greek

meter. Rather, we would like to mount a broad criticism of central (often
implicit) claims of the tradition as a whole, centering on its inability to
insightfully capture the surface patterns of Greek poetry. Our main
concern is that traditional analysis provides no coherent account of the
notions anapest, dactyl, and iamb.
We can begin with the anapest. Traditional analysis is needlessly
abstract and derivational. It posits a basic anapestic LLH and derives
the other verse feet by two metrical rules that split apart H or contract
LL (e.g. West 1982: 19ff., 193–199; see Nagy 1974: 49–102 for a dia-
chronic version of the same). CONTRACTION of LL turns the under-
lying anapest LLH into a spondee HH. RESOLUTION of H turns
underlying LLH into proceleusmatic LLLL. CONTRACTION 
RESOLUTION together turn LLH into dactylic HLL. Assuming that
less-derived types are more basic, this analysis leads us to expect that
most verse feet will be LLH (the basic foot), followed by HH and LLLL
(derived by the application of a single rule), and finally by HLL (derived
by the application of two rules), that is, LLH & HH, LLLL & HLL. As
we saw above, however,  of these expectations is met. Rather, we
find the order to be HH & LLH & HLL & LLLL.
We see no good way of amending the traditional analysis to get these
facts. We could make the basic foot a spondee (HH ) and derive the rest
by application of the resolution rule, getting us HH (basic) & LLH, HLL
(resolution once) & LLLL (resolution twice). This would correctly get
the facts but at great cost. The central claim of traditional analysis is
that anapestic meter is , not spondaic. It is worth stressing
again that the association of the anapest with a particular rhythm (di di
dum) is not warranted in Greek ( West 1982: 23). The very idea of having
a basic verse foot with foot substitutions is absurd, rhythmically speaking.
The idea that di di dum is the real pattern and that dum di di, dum dum,
and di di di di are simply variations on a rhythmic theme can’t be right,
since the various feet have opposed rhythmic properties. In traditional
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 157

terms, di di dum is rising while dum di di is falling, so it is hard to see

how a falling rhythm can substitute for a rising rhythm and still remain
the same type of rhythmic entity. Worse yet, dum dum and di di di di are
neither rising nor falling, so it looks as if there will be no rhythm on the
surface at all for some verse feet.
Furthermore, as we have seen, these are not the right Greek rhythms
in any case. Equating H with prominent and L with nonprominent is a
mistake to begin with (Maas 1962; Raven 1962; Allen 1973; etc.). Again,
recall that the stress matrix in Greek is equally H or LL (Allen 1973).
If we plug this into LLH we get dum di dum not di di dum; so it makes
no sense to treat LLH as rhythmically anapestic to begin with. Similarly
for HLL (dum dum di, not dum di di) and LLLL (dum di dum di, not di
di di di). If we take rhythm in anapestic meter seriously we are left with
the inescapable conclusion that anapestic meter doesn’t care about
rhythm. No surface-true rhythmic characterization is possible if we look
to LLH as somehow basic; and surface-false characterizations are worth-
less lest there are no surface-true generalizations to be had.
We have shown that there are two simple surface-true generalizations
about anapestic meter, namely that it is perfectly rhythmic at the moraic
level, and that it respects binarity of the metrical foot. At the syllable
level it looks quite chaotic. We account for the rich surface array of
anapestic meter by defining a class of well-formed verse feet (HLL, LLH,
LLLL, HH ) and then ordering them in terms of how well they satisfy
other, less important, ranked but violable constraints (PROKOSCH,
NOCLASH ). The verse foot that satisfies them best (HH ) relative to
the other permissible verse feet is the most common verse foot; those
that violate them some more are the next most common (LLH and HLL,
in that order); and the one that violates them most is the least common
(LLLL).
So why would the perception that anapestic meter is essentially rising
(LLH, or di di dum) have had such an unchallenged status in traditional
analysis? The main reason is that in the anapestic tetrameter catalectic
the last full foot is always LLH. Thus it makes some degree of sense to
treat all of the other verse feet as basically LLH as well. Or does it? This
is the form normally found in Aristophanes, but the LLH is contracted
to HH in the last full foot in other comic writers like Cratinus, Crates,
and Philyllius ( West 1982: 94). If we want to characterize the meter of
all these authors’ works, we will have to drop the part about the last full
foot always being LLH.
Moreover, there is actually very little evidence for the claim that the
 metrical position of this meter is catalectic rather than the first.
158 C. Golston and T. Riad

Consider what happens if we scan the following line with initial catalexis
rather than final catalexis.
(84) Aristophanes Knights, 773
(— H ) (H L L) (H H )(H L L)(H H ) (H L L) (H L
kaı̀ pô:s àn [Link]́ù mâ[Link]́n se [Link]̂:n ô: dê:.me gé.[Link]
L)(H H )
po.lı́:.te:s
Now the generalization for Aristophanes is quite different. Lines uni-
formly end in (HLL) (HH ), just as they usually do in Homer. Thus if
catalexis is initial in the anapestic tetrameter, the end of a line is basically
dactylic ( looking at the penultimate foot) or spondaic ( looking at the
last). We do not think the issue is easily resolved either way. We merely
want to point out that the basic assumption behind the traditional analy-
sis (that the catalectic tetrameter has final catalexis) is not a necessary
or even a useful assumption.
We are aware of no strong evidence for bridges in anapestic meter,
and the evidence from word division doesn’t tell us much. If one assumes
final catalexis, one regularly finds word division after the second metron
and usually after the first as well (Raven 1962: section 84); this is called
diaeresis (coincidence of word and verse-foot division) and is what we
find in anapestic dimeter. If one assumes initial catalexis, on the other
hand, one regularly gets word divisions within feet rather than across
them; this goes under the name of ceasura (word boundary inside of foot
boundary) and is what we find in dactylic hexameter. So there are good
antecedents for either type of analysis, and word division cannot help us
determine whether this type of meter has initial or final catalexis.
Let us turn then to traditional analyses of dactylic hexameter, where
there is no catalexis to worry about. Tradition presupposes a basic HLL
verse foot and derives HH by CONTRACTION. But recall that dactyls
account for only 60% of the verse feet in the meter — all the rest are
spondees. Traditional analysis is thus inherently abstract in a serious
way. Dactylic rhythm only occurs at a level of analysis abstracted away
from the actual text,  CONTRACTION, as it were. If we look at
the surface, the allegedly basic pattern doesn’t surface much more than
chance would lead us to expect. Traditional analyses stress that the
penultimate verse foot is usually HLL, but this observation should not
commit us to seeing the entire line as a succession of dactyls. The final
verse foot, after all, is always HH, but this has not led anyone to speculate
that the whole line is really a succession of spondees. Indeed, we could
just as easily analyze hexameter as underlyingly spondaic (HH ) with
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 159

RESOLUTION possible at the end of any verse foot but the last. But
this would be no better than the traditional analysis. Rather than trying
to decide whether HLL or HH is the real verse foot, it seems best to
admit that HLL and HH are both real verse feet in this meter. Any small
discrepancies in which occurs where and how often can be dealt with
using violable constraints (cf. [46 ] and [47] above). This allows us to
separate what is always true of the meter (clash in every foot) from what
is only a tendency (HLL vs. HH ).
Another common misunderstanding of HLL is that it is inherently
rhythmic, essentially dum di di. The acceptable spondaic variation would
then be dum dum. As we have already pointed out, this must be wrong
for Greek (cf. West 1982: 23) because the phonology of the language
itself assigns prominence to the first two light syllables as well as to a
single heavy H. HLL, therefore, is not dum di di, but rather dum dum di,
the first L being prominent. Once we interpret the meter in terms of
Greek phonology, we see that HLL contains a surface stress clash just
as HH does — and that stress clash is the defining rhythmic property of
the meter.
The wide array of permissible iambic metra would also seem to be
problematic for traditional analysis, but the fact that the initial LH can
be realized as HH, LLLL, HLL, or LLH does not seem to be perceived
as a problem. Neither does the fact that the second LH can occur
as L LL. How might this be accounted for using CONTRACTION
and RESOLUTION? Recall that the commonest foot types run
LH>HH>L LL>HLL. If LH is basic, RESOLUTION can only get
us LLL and the second half of HLL.
However, there are two other problems that need to be solved. First,
the initial L of LHLH can also surface as a H, but neither RESOLUTION
(HLL) nor CONTRACTION (LLH ) can bring this about. Some
other rule must be added to the metrical grammar to make L into H; or
the basic form must be sHLH, in which case the verse feet are no longer
both iambic. Second, the medial L of LHLH can never be realized as H.
So whatever rule turns the initial L into a H must be strictly prohibited
from turning the middle L into a H. We conclude that tradition analysis
has no nonstipulative solution to these issues, whereas on our account,
the issues do not even arise.

7.2. Metrical forms (Prince 1989)

Prince’s (1989) study of Greek and Arabic meters follows previous work
in generative metrics (Halle and Keyser 1971, 1977; Kiparsky 1977;
160 C. Golston and T. Riad

Hayes 1989; Hammond 1991) in defining all verse feet as 

 units. Verse feet differ both in terms of prominence (strong–
weak, weak–strong, etc.) and in terms of content (LLH, HLL, LH, etc.).
We find three problems with the analysis as Prince presents it.
First, there is the excessively large set of verse feet. Prince has two
types of verse foot, those that branch once (‘‘binary’’) and those that
branch twice (‘‘split-binary’’). Binary verse feet have the structure
[M M ], where each M may contain one of H, LL, L or s. Split-binary
verse feet embed one binary verse foot inside another: [M [MM ] ] or
[ [MM ] M ].
(85) Binary and split-binary verse feet
Binary [M M]
Split binary [[MM ] M ] ]
[M [MM ] ]
H, LL, L, and s combine to make 16 binary feet, as follows.
(86) Binary verse foot types
LL LH Ls L LL
HL HH Hs H LL
sL sH ss s LL
LL L LL H LL s LL LL

This is a reasonable set of verse feet — we have nine, see (21) — but
when we add in all the possible split-binary verse feet the set grows very
quickly. There are 64 (43) left-branching and 64 right-branching split-
binary types if we allow every metrical position to be H, LL, L, or s.
Adding in the binary verse feet give us fully 144 types of verse foot in
the theory.
(87) 144 possible verse feet
Binary 42 [M M ] 16
Split binary 43 [ [MM ] M ] 64
43 [M [MM ] ] 64
144
And 144 is a conservative estimate of Prince’s metrical system. To keep
the figure low we have made two assumptions that drastically limit its
size. First, we have not factored in differences in SW labeling, which are
completely unnecessary as elements of analysis in Greek meter. Second,
we have not allowed doubly split-binary feet (MM MM ), an option
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 161

clearly predicted by the system that Prince rejects only by fiat; such feet
would swell the number of possible verse feet even further. Under even
the strictest set of assumptions, then, Prince’s analysis allows a very large
number of foot types.
Second, the strong/weak labeling serves no purpose in the analysis.
What really differentiates meters is what their metrical positions contain;
whether one is stronger or weaker is both irrelevant for any generaliza-
tions about the meter and completely predictable from the contents of
the positions. Given [LH ] we invariably opt for the analysis [ WS]. Our
account uses no such notions, limiting itself strictly to what is observable
on the surface.
Third, there is the issue of binarity. The structure [M [MM ]] involves
a richer notion of binarity than is generally encountered in phonology,
where strict layering (Selkirk 1984, 1986, 1995) rules out recursion of
prosodic structure. Just as there are no syllables within syllables, we
expect that there are no feet within feet or metrical positions within
metrical positions. For this reason we have limited ourselves to strict
layering, as any of our charts shows.
To summarize, our proposal is much more conservative than Prince’s.
Our account has nine surface feet rather than 144; it makes no use of
gratuitous distinctions like strong and weak; and it requires no recursive
prosodic structure.16

8. Conclusion: meter as phonology

We can think of Greek meters as modified Greek grammars in which a

few prosodic concerns come to dominate the output, such that speech
takes on a peculiar quality. It may evince perfect binarity and perfect
rhythm (anapestic), arrhythmy in the form of constant stress clash (dacty-
lic and spondaic) or arrhythmy in the form of constant stress lapse
(iambic). Each of these properties is phonological, and in this way we
have described the major components of Greek meter purely in terms of
phonology, as promised in the introduction.
We also tried to show that markedness plays a central role in differenti-
ating Greek meters. While there is a rhythmically unmarked meter (the
anapest), other meters are distinctively arrhythmic, violating NOCLASH
or NOLAPSE. Our answer to the question, ‘‘How can such different
meters all be rhythmic?’’ is that they are not.
And we have tried to show that while there is a meter that is unmarked
in terms of binarity, namely dimeter, other meters are marked in this
respect. Trimeters, tetrameters, and so on violate binarity at various levels
162 C. Golston and T. Riad

and to various degrees to provide the poet with distinct, and distinctive,
line lengths.
In all of this we were able to give surface-true characterizations of
each meter, based strictly on the phonology of Greek. Our analysis is
nonderivational and makes no use of ad hoc rules like CONTRACTION
or RESOLUTION. Nor is it unnecessarily abstract. We do not claim
that the meter is one thing deep down and quite another on the surface.
Rather, we claim that a small number of surface-true properties relating
to things like rhythm, binarity, and faithfulness are enough to define and
differentiate the various meters we find in this language and, we hope,
in others.

Received 14 December 1998 California State University Fresno

Revised version received Stockholm University
27 July 1999

Notes

* Correspondence address: Chris Golston, Department of Linguistics, California State

University Fresno, Fresno, CA 93740, USA; E-mail: chrisg@[Link]; Tomas
Riad, Department of Scandinavian Languages, Stockholm University, S-10691
Stockholm, Sweden; E-mail: [Link]@[Link].
1. On free verse, see Riad (1996), who treats it as rhythmic but not metrical.
2. Some twentieth-century poetry parts company with tradition here. Thus, it is not
immediately obvious that Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (1914) is concerned first and
foremost with meaning, as a snippet shows.
A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.
A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an
arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not
resembling. The difference is spreading.
We currently have no proposals on how syntax, semantics and prosody interact in this
type of poetry.
3. For discussion of the prosodic hierarchy, see Selkirk (1986, 1995), Hayes (1989),
Nespor and Vogel (1986), and the collection of papers in Inkelas and Zec (1990).
Hayes (1989) provides the first evidence for the prosodic hierarchy in meter.
4. The parallels between metrical and prosodic structures seem to be very strict at the
bottom (one moraic trochee per metrical position) and top (one intonational phrase
per line) and somewhat looser in the middle (roughly one prosodic word per verse foot,
roughly one phonological phrase per metron). For a careful quantitative study of these
units in Italian verse, see Helsloot (1995, 1997). We concentrate here on the lower parts
of the hierarchy (foot and word) where the patterns are the clearest.
5. ‘‘Poets normally avoid placing unelidable vowels before a word beginning with a
vowel’’ ( West 1982: 11).
 The phonology of Classical Greek meter 163

6. Cf. Maas (1962: section 34), who notes that ‘‘we have to reckon with the possibility
that even a short final syllable may have been made prosodically long by the presence
of a pause after it.’’
7. This is a proper subset of those used in Hanson and Kiparsky (1996); we do not know
if our smaller set of verse feet will account for the Finnish data there.
8. The only other realizational possibility in this position would be LLLL.
9. We have one piece of evidence but are unclear on how to interpret it. There is a fairly
regular word break after the fourth and eighth surface positions ( West 1982: 94). If it
were common to cut the line up along the edges of metra, this might be taken as
evidence for the type of analysis in (30). But in most Greek meters the main breaks in
the line occur within metra, not at their edges, and a division of lines into equal lengths
is strictly avoided (Allen 1973: 18; Prince 1989). Thus the main line break always
occurs within a metron in dactylic hexameter and in iambic trimeter. This would argue
for an analysis of tetrameter along the lines of (31).
10. Nonbranching intonational phrases (monometers) are very rare in Greek and never
constitute runs, systems, or the like. We exclude them with a constraint that requires
intonational phrases to branch at least once.
11. Prince (1990) proposes a single constraint that requires feet to be binary on a moraic
or a syllabic analysis. We have split the two issues in order to reflect the difference
between moraic and syllabic trochees. We assume that languages with syllabic trochees
respect FTBIN-s; languages with moraic trochees respect FTBIN-m.
12. For lapse avoidance in English meter see Hayes and Kaun (1996), Golston (1998),
Hayes and McEachern (1998); for lapse avoidance in Arabic see Golston and Riad
(1997).
13. Trimeters of roughly this type occur in the poetry of the Italian twentieth-century poets
Ungaretti and Montale as well; the commonest type of line in these authors (7- and
11-syllable lines) are typically parsed into three phonological phrases (Helsloot 1995:
48ff.).
14. Devine and Stephens (1994: 399) make a similar count and arrive at a similar conclu-
sion. Counting appositive groups only (i.e. disregarding function words) they find 2–3
per half-line.
15. A Classical Arabic meter of exactly this type, mutaqa: rib, is discussed in Golston and
Riad (1997).
16. Prince (1989) also contains an analysis of the meters of Classical Arabic. A critical
discussion of those results can be found in Golston and Riad (1997), where the Arabic
data is reanalyzed with the same set of nine verse feet used above in (21).

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