Dactylic pentameter


Dactylic pentameter is a form of meter in poetry. The dactyl, which is made of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, is repeated five times to create a pentameter line.
In classical literature, it is usually found in the second line of the classical Latin or Greek elegiac couplet, following a dactylic hexameter.
The meter consists of two halves, both shaped around the dactylic hexameter line up to the main caesura. That is, it has two dactyls, following by a longum, followed by two dactyls, followed by a longum. Thus the line most normally looks as follows :
As in all classical verse forms, the phenomenon of brevis in longo is observed, so the last syllable can actually be short or long. Also, the line has a diaeresis, a place where word-boundary must occur, after the first half-line, here marked with a ||.
"Pentameter" is a slightly strange term for this meter, as it seems to have six parts, but the reason is that the two halves of the line, broken here by the ||, each have two and a half feet. Two and a half plus two and a half equals five. The two half-lines are each called a hemiepes, as they resemble half a line of epic dactylic hexameter.
The pentameter is notable for its very structured quality: no substitutions are allowed except in the first two feet.