How to Scan Dactylic Hexameter, Step by Step

To scan a line of verse is to mark, syllable by syllable, which syllables are long and which are short, and then to group them into feet. Greek and Latin poetry is built on syllable length (quantity), not on stress as English verse is. That is why scansion feels strange at first, and also why it behaves like a puzzle with exact rules. This guide gives a method for the dactylic hexameter, the metre of Homer, Virgil, Lucretius, Ovid's Metamorphoses and Horace's Satires.

The pattern: six feet, a fixed ending

A hexameter has six feet. Each foot is either a dactyl (one long and two shorts: — ∪ ∪) or a spondee (two longs: — —). Two facts make the end of the line predictable:

• the fifth foot is nearly always a dactyl;
• the sixth foot has only two syllables: a long, then a final syllable that may be long or short. That last syllable is called anceps and is marked ×, so the foot is a spondee or a trochee (— ∪) in practice.

Feet one to four may each be a dactyl or a spondee. The full pattern is:

— ∪ ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — ×

where any `— ∪ ∪` in feet one to four may be replaced by `— —`.

When is a syllable long?

A Latin syllable is long in two cases.

1. Long by nature: it contains a long vowel (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) or a diphthong (ae, au, oe, and a few others, such as eu in heu and seu).
2. Long by position: it contains a short vowel followed by two consonants, or by a double consonant (x or z). The two consonants may sit in the same word or be split between two words.

A syllable that fits neither case is short. Four details prevent most mistakes:

Greek works the same way. The vowels η and ω are long by nature, ε and ο short, while α, ι and υ may be either; diphthongs are long; ζ, ξ and ψ count as double consonants.

Vowel length is not shown in ordinary printed texts, so you often need to know the form: the ablative sonitū ends in a long vowel, the first-person ending of canō is long. A dictionary that marks quantities helps, and so does a tool such as Lemma, which shows the form and the headword of every word in a passage and names its source. Careful parsing, as described in how to translate Latin step by step, pays off twice in verse.

Elision

In Latin, when a word ends in a vowel (or a vowel + m, or a diphthong such as -ae) and the next word begins with a vowel or with h, the final vowel (together with the m) is elided: it does not count in the line. Virgil gives two elisions in one verse:

litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto (Virgil, Aeneid 1.3)
"…shores, much tossed about, that man, both on land and on the deep"

Read multum ille as mult' ille (the -um drops) and ille et as ill' et (the -e drops). If you forget the elisions, the line has two syllables too many and nothing fits. In Greek there is nothing to strike out: the printed text already marks each elision with an apostrophe.

The method in six steps

1. Read the line aloud and divide it into syllables, treating each diphthong as one syllable.
2. Mark the elisions (Latin): strike out a final vowel (or vowel + m) before a word beginning with a vowel or h. In Greek the elisions are already printed with an apostrophe.
3. Mark the longs you can be sure of: diphthongs, vowels you know to be long by nature, short vowels before two consonants.
4. Start from the end: the last syllable is anceps and the one before it is long; the fifth foot is nearly always a dactyl. So the last five syllables are almost always `— ∪ ∪ — ×`.
5. Now work from the beginning: every foot starts with a long. If two shorts follow, the foot is a dactyl; if another long follows, it is a spondee.
6. Check: the six feet must use up every syllable, none left over and none missing. If they do not, look again at elisions and consonant clusters.

Worked example: a line that gallops

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum (Virgil, Aeneid 8.596)
"The hoof shakes the crumbling plain with a four-footed beat"

Seventeen syllables, the maximum: five dactyls and the closing foot.

Why is each foot's first syllable long? dan is long by position (n + t), trem by position (m + the s of the next word), un by position (n + g), cam by position (m + p); tu is long by nature (ablative sonitū). The line also shows the stop + liquid rule both ways: the syllable before dr in Quadru- counts as long, while the one before tr in putrem stays short.

Worked example: Aeneid 1.1

Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris (Virgil, Aeneid 1.1)
"I sing of arms and of the man who first from the shores of Troy…"

Fifteen syllables: dactyl, dactyl, spondee, spondee, dactyl, spondee.

Ar is long by position (r + m), rum by position (m + qu). no is long by nature (canō); the Tr that follows is a stop + liquid and would not have lengthened it. Troi is long because the i of Troia stands between two vowels and counts double (Troi-iae); iae has the diphthong ae; qui is long by nature. The fifth foot is the expected dactyl: pri long by nature, mus and ab short.

Worked example: Iliad 1.1

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος (Homer, Iliad 1.1)
"Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus"

Two things need a comment. The final α of θεά is long, which gives the spondee in the third foot. And the ending -εω of Πηληϊάδεω is pronounced as one long syllable, a fusion of two vowels called synizesis; without it the line would have a syllable too many. The last syllable, -ος, is short: here the sixth foot is a trochee in practice, which the anceps allows.

The caesura

A line is more than a row of feet. It also has an internal pause, the caesura: a place where a word ends inside a foot. The commonest one in Latin falls after the first long of the third foot (the penthemimeral caesura, a "strong" caesura in the third foot):

Arma virumque cano, ‖ Troiae qui primus ab oris
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ ‖ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

In the galloping line the break comes in the same place, after putrem. A second frequent caesura falls after the first long of the fourth foot (hephthemimeral). The caesura gives the line its rhythm and often matches a break in sense; it does not change how you scan the line.

Mistakes to watch for

• forgetting an elision;
• treating a short vowel before a single consonant as long;
• counting h as a consonant;
• splitting a diphthong into two syllables;
• forgetting that consonantal i between vowels counts double;
• not starting from the end, where the pattern is almost always the same.

Scansion also helps with meaning: in a scanned line rosā (ablative) can usually be told apart from rosa (nominative). That is one more reason to work through a poem yourself rather than read it only in translation, a point argued in why translate it yourself.

If you have a few lines of Virgil or Homer in front of you and are unsure of the forms, you can try Lemma on your own passage: it works as a Latin translator that explains every word, and it does the same for Ancient Greek. Then take a pencil and mark the longs and shorts yourself, one foot at a time.