IAMBUS

IAMBUS, one of the commonest feet in Greek and Latin prosody. It consists of two syllables, of which the first is short, and the second long, as Horace says,—

"Syllaba longa brevi subjecta vocatur iambus
Pes citus."

The iambic metre was originally employed in satirical poetry called iambi, of which the laws were first fixed by Archilochus. Before his time, the trochaic tetrameter had been the popular measure in poetry of this class; but when the rapidity of dialogue and theatrical action came to be duly studied, nature herself pointed out the iambic as the most suitable metre; for, as Aristotle remarks, it is the most colloquial of metres, as may be seen by one who chooses to remark that ordinary conversation often falls into

iambic verse, and never into any of the more formal metres—the hexameter, for instance.

The most common form of iambic verse is that known as the Iambic Trimeter Acatalectic, or Tragic Senarius, as it is called, from being the favourite metre of the Greek tragedians. It consists of three measures of two feet each, and has no catalectic syllable. The feet admissible in the various places are given in the subjoined table:—

In the case of proper names, an anapæst may be admitted into any place except the sixth, which must always be an iambus. But for the anapæst to be thus admitted, it is necessary that it be completed within one word, and leave no syllable or syllables over to be carried on to the next place. In the comic trimeter a dactyl may be used in the fifth place, and an anapæst in any of the first five.

Great care was bestowed by the Greek tragedians on the caesural pauses, on the proper distribution of which depends much of the beauty of the iambic metre. The two principal caesuras are the penthemimeral and the hepthemimeral; the first falling (as its name denotes) on the fifth half-foot, and the other on the seventh half-foot. The penthemimeral is by far the most common of these two.

Penth. ὡς τὸν Κρόνου τὸν πόλιν ἔστιν τὴν
Ἡρῖθ. ἱερὸν κρόνου ἱερὸν ἱερὸν.

In certain cases the seventh syllable is a word so intimately connected in sense with that which goes before it, as practically to form part of it. Enclitics, or particles which cannot themselves begin a verse, are the class of words that come under this rule. Sometimes this seventh syllable belongs to the succeeding words, as in the line—

ἄλλ' ἔστιν ἔσται, ὃν τὴν τὴν τὴν.

In such cases it would be better to consider the stop which occurs after the sixth syllable as equivalent to the caesura. Porson, and after him most grammarians, have called this the quasi-caesura.

Sometimes, when the poet desired to produce a particular effect, he violated all these laws; and the instances are numerous in which the caesura is neglected altogether, and that without any division in the verse as an equivalent, and even without an elision. In the iambic trimeter the third and fourth feet seem to have been seldom comprised in the same word; instances of it are very rare.

Iambic verses are not connected; each is complete in itself, and independent both of that which goes before and of that which follows it. Cases sometimes occur, though rarely, in which one verse is connected with another, either by elision, or by a close union between the final word of the first, and the first word of the succeeding verse. (Hermann's Elem. Doctr. Metr.; Tate's Introduction to the Principal Gr. Tragic and Comic Metres; Linwood's Treatise on Greek Tragic Metres, Lond., 1855.)