in Grecian antiquity, an Athenian festival in honour of Vulcan, the chief ceremony of which was a race with torches. It was performed in this manner: The antagonists were three young men, one of whom, by lot, took a lighted torch in his hand, and began his course; if the torch was extinguished before he finished the race, he delivered it to the second; and he in like manner to the third: the victory was his who first carried the torch lighted to the end of the race; and to this successive delivering of the torch we find many allusions in ancient writers.

HEPTHIMIMERIS (composed of ἑπτά, seven, ἅμισυς, half, and μέρος, part), in the Greek and Latin poetry, a sort of verse consisting of three feet and a syllable; that is, of seven half feet.

Such are most of the verses in Anacreon:

| Θέλω | λέγειν | Ἀτέλης | δας | |-------|--------|--------|-----| | Θέλω | διὰ Καῦς | μεν α | διν, &c. |

And that of Aristophanes, in his Plutus:

Εἰσίθει παρὰ τὸ γούνιον.

They are also called trimeter catalectic.

HEPTHIMIMERIS, or Hephthimimeres, is also a caesura after the third foot; that is, on the seventh half-foot. It is a rule, that this syllable, though it be short in itself, must be made long on account of the caesura, or to make it an hephthimimeris. As in that verse of Virgil,

Et furiis agitatus amor, et conficia virtus.

It may be added, that the caesura is not to be on the fifth foot, as it is in the verse which Dr Harris gives us for an example:

Ille latus niveum molli fulsus Hyacintho.

This is not a hephthimimeris caesura, but a hemiemimeris, i.e. of nine half feet.