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When you count the links in a bicycle chain, do you begin with the slender middle of each link or with one of the swelling ends? So is it with this "iambic" and "trochaic" matter.
The Saturnian measure is, like every other occurring in Roman and Greek antiquity, based on quantity; but of all the antique metres perhaps it is the least thoroughly elaborated, for besides many other liberties it allows itself the greatest license in omitting the short syllables, and it is at the same time the most imperfect in construction, for these iambic and trochaic half-lines opposed to each other were but little fitted to develop a rhythmical structure adequate for the purposes of the higher poetry.
I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming occupation it must be to "make up" verses. I made my first rhymes when I was about seven years old.
Did the Romans require a more forcible style when the long iambic or the trochaic was employed? or is it the weakness of his metrical treatment that Quintilian complains of? Certainly the trochaics of Terence are less clearly marked in their rhythm than those of Ennius or Plautus.
Swinburne's anapaests are far too delicate for swagger or strut; but for all their dance, all their spring, all their flight, all their flutter, we are compelled to perceive that, as it were, they perform. I love to see English poetry move to many measures, to many numbers, but chiefly with the simple iambic and the simple trochaic foot.
It is a succession of trochaic beats, six in all, preceded by a single syllable, as in the instance quoted by Macaulay: "The | queen was in her chamber eating bread and honey," So in the Scipionic epitaph, "Qui | bus si in longa licuiset tibi utier vita." These are, doubtless, the purest form of the measure. In these there is no break, but an even continuous flow of trochaic rhythm.
But even in the earliest examples of Saturnians there is a very strong tendency to form a break by making the third trochaic beat close a word, e.g. "Cor | nelius Lucius || Scipio Barbatus," and this structure prevailed, so that in the fragments of Livius and Naevius by far the greater number exhibit it.
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