Aeolic verse

Aeolic verse is a classification of Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed in their native Aeolic dialect. These verse forms were taken up and developed by later Greek and Roman poets and some modern European poets.

General description

Essential features and origin

Sappho and Alcaeus' verses differ from most other Greek lyric poetry in their metrical construction:

Verses consist of a fixed number of syllables (thus, for example, no resolution, contraction, or biceps elements).

Consecutive anceps syllables may occur, especially at the beginning of the verse (where two initial anceps syllables are called the aeolic base). (This forms an exception to the principle, otherwise observed in Greek verse, that two successive unmarked elements are not permitted. Lines beginning with multiple anceps syllables are also exceptional in not being classifiable as having rising or falling rhythm.)

Antoine Meillet and later scholars, by comparison to Vedic meter, have seen in these principles and in other tendencies (the sequence ... – u u – u – ..., the alternation of blunt and pendant verses conserved traces of Proto-Indo-European poetic practices.

In Sappho and Alcaeus, the three basic metrical groups – u u – u – (dodrans or choriambo-cretic), – u u – (choriamb) and – u – (cretic) figure importantly, and groups are sometimes joined (in what is probably a Greek innovation) by a link anceps. Aeolic poems may be stichic (with all lines having the same metrical form), or composed in more elaborate stanzas or strophes.

Choriambic nucleus and expansion

One analysis of Aeolic verses' various forms identifies a choriambic nucleus ( – u u – ), which is sometimes subject to:

dactylic expansion (some number of dactyls preceding the choriamb, or "prolongation" of the pattern that alternates long elements with double-short elements);

choriambic expansion ("juxtaposition" of additional choriambs).