galliambic

Updated: July 19, 2025

The accident of its being the only Latin poem extant in the peculiar galliambic metre has combined with the nature of the subject to induce a tradition about it as though it were the most daring and extraordinary of Catullus' poems. The truth is quite different.

J. W. (John William) Mackail - Latin Literature

But these tame and pedantic versifiers could have given no precedent for the wild inspiration of this strange poem, which clothes in the music of finished art bursts of savage emotion. The metre is galliambic, a rhythm proper to the hymns of Cybele, but of which no primitive Greek example remains. The poem cannot be perused with pleasure, but must excite astonishment at the power it displays.

Charles Thomas Cruttwell - The History of Roman Literature : From the earliest period to the death of Marcus Aurelius