Alcmanian verse

Alcmanian verse refers to the dactylic tetrameter in Greek and Latin poetry.

Ancient metricians called the dactylic tetrameter the Alcmanic because of its use by the Archaic Greek poet Alcman, as in fragment 27 PMG:

This length is scanned like the first four feet of the dactylic hexameter (giving rise to the name dactylic tetrameter a priore). Thus, a spondee substitutes for a dactyl in the third line, but the lines end with dactyls (not spondees).

The final syllable of each line in the above fragment counts as short and brevis in longo is not observed.

Horace composed some poems in the Alcmanian strophe or Alcmanian system. It is also called the Alcmanic strophe or the 1st Archilochian. It is a couplet consisting of a dactylic hexameter followed by a dactylic tetrameter a posteriore (so called because it ends with a spondee, thus resembling the last four feet of the hexameter). Examples are Odes I.7 and I.28, and Epode 12:

It is the only metre in Horace's Epodes not to contain any iambic metra, and the only one to be found in both the Epodes and Odes.

Later Latin poets use the dactylic tetrameter a priore as the second verse of the Alcmanian strophe. For example, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy I.m.3:

Ausonius uses couplets of a dactylic tetrameter a priore followed by a hemiepes in Parentalia 25: