penthemimer

Updated: May 13, 2025

Another licence, still more alien from Roman usage, is the retention of a short or unelided syllable at the end of the first penthemimer. Catullus's elegiac belongs to the class of half-adapted importations, beautiful in its way, but rather because it recalls the exquisite cadences of the Greek than as being in itself a finished artistic product. The six long poems are of unequal merit.

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