Metres of Roman comedy
metres used in Plautus and Terence
Roman comedy is mainly represented by two playwrights, Plautus (writing between c.205 and 184 BC) and Terence (writing c.166-160 BC). The works of other Latin playwrights such as Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius, and Caecilius Statius are now lost except for a few lines quoted in other authors. 20 plays of Plautus survive complete, and 6 of Terence.
Various metres are used in the plays. The most common are iambic senarii and trochaic septenarii. As far as is known, iambic senarii were spoken without music; trochaic septenarii (and also iambic septenarii and trochaic and iambic octonarii) were chanted or recited (or possibly sung) to the sound of a pair of pipes known as tībiae (the equivalent of the Greek aulos), played by a tībīcen ("piper"); and other metres were sung, possibly in an operatic style, to the same tībiae.
In Plautus about 37% of lines are unaccompanied iambic senarii, but in Terence more than half of the verses are senarii. Plautus's plays therefore had a greater amount of musical accompaniment than Terence's. Another difference between the playwrights was that polymetric songs (using metres other than iambic and trochaic) are frequent in Plautus (about 14% of the plays), but hardly used at all by Terence.
The different metres lend themselves to different moods: calm, energetic, comic, mocking, high-flown, grandiose, humorous, and so on.
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