Archilochian or archilochean is a term used in the metrical

Meter (poetry)

In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...

 analysis of Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 and Latin poetry

Latin poetry

The history of Latin poetry can be understood as the adaptation of Greek models. The verse comedies of Plautus are the earliest Latin literature that has survived, composed around 205-184 BC, yet the start of Latin literature is conventionally dated to the first performance of a play in verse by a...

. The name is derived from Archilochus

Archilochus

Archilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...

, whose poetry first uses the rhythms.

In Greek verse

In the analysis of Archaic and Classical Greek

Classical Greece

Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This classical period had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundation of Western civilizations. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, such as...

 poetry, archilochean usually describes the length ׯ˘˘¯˘˘¯×¯˘¯˘¯¯ (where ¯ indicates a longum

Syllable weight

In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical poetry, both Greek and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line....

, ˘ a breve

Syllable weight

In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical poetry, both Greek and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line....

, and × an anceps

Anceps

In Greek and Latin meter, an anceps syllable is a syllable in a metrical line which can be either short or long. An anceps syllable may be called "free" or "irrational" depending on the type of meter being discussed....

 syllable). The alternative name erasmonideus comes from Archilochus' fr. 168 West:

Ἐρασμονίδη Χαρίλαε, | χρῆμά τοι γελοῖον

ἐρέω

Synizesis

Synizesis is a sound change in which two originally syllabic vowels are pronounced as a single syllable without change in writing. In Latin and Greek, this was often to preserve meter, but similar changes occur naturally in languages....

, πολὺ φίλταθ᾽ ἑταίρων, | τέρψεαι δ᾽ ἀκούων.

As indicated, a caesura

Caesura

thumb|100px|An example of a caesura in modern western music notation.In meter, a caesura is a complete pause in a line of poetry or in a musical composition. The plural form of caesura is caesuras or caesurae...

 is observed before the ithyphallic (¯˘¯˘¯¯) ending of the verse. (Because of this, the name erasmonideus has sometimes been used to refer only to the colon ׯ˘˘¯˘˘¯× preceding the ithyphallic.)

The verse is also used stichic

Stichic

Poetry made up of lines of the same meter and length, not broken up into stanzas or verses, is called stichic....

ally in Old Comedy

Old Comedy

Old Comedy is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians. The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes, whose works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively...

, for example in Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...

, Wasps

The Wasps

The Wasps is the fourth in chronological order of the eleven surviving plays by Aristophanes, the master of an ancient genre of drama called 'Old Comedy'. It was produced at the Lenaia festival in 422 BC, a time when Athens was enjoying a brief respite from The Peloponnesian War following a one...

1518-1537 (with irregular responsion) and in Cratinus

Cratinus

Cratinus , Athenian comic poet of the Old Comedy.-Life:Cratinus was victorious six times at the City Dionysia, first probably in the mid- to late 450s BCE , and three times at the Lenaia, first probably in the early 430s...

 fr. 360 Kassel-Austin, where, as Hephaestion

Hephaestion (grammarian)

Hephaestion was a grammarian of Alexandria who flourished in the age of the Antonines. He was the author of a manual of Greek metres, which is most valuable as the only complete treatise on the subject that has been preserved. The concluding chapter discusses the various kinds of poetical...

 notes, no caesura is observed before the ithyphallic ending:

Χαῖρ᾽, ὦ μέγ᾽ ἀχρειόγελως ὅμιλε, ταῖς ἐπίβδαις,

τῆς ἡμετέρας σοφίας κριτὴς ἄριστε πάντων,

εὐδαίμον᾽ ἔτικτέ σε μήτηρ ἰκρίων ψόφησις.

The verse also occurs in the choral lyric of tragedy and comedy, with the same caesura as in the example from Archilochus, as a rule.

Trichas used the name archilocheion for the trochaic trimeter catalectic, ¯˘¯× ¯˘¯× ¯˘¯, seen in Archilochus, fr. 197 West, and used stichically by Callimachus

Callimachus

Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...

 (fr. 202 Pfeiffer).

In Latin verse

In discussion of Horace

Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

's poetry, the Greater Archilochian verse (or Archilochian heptameter) consists of four dactyls

Dactyl (poetry)

A dactyl is a foot in meter in poetry. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight...

 (or alternatively spondee

Spondee

In poetry, a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables, as determined by stress in modern meters...

s) followed after a caesura by three trochee

Trochee

A trochee or choree, choreus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one...

s, producing the seven-foot

Foot (prosody)

The foot is the basic metrical unit that generates a line of verse in most Western traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, the number of which is limited, with a few...

 scheme ¯˘˘ ¯˘˘ ¯˘˘ ¯˘˘ ¯˘ ¯˘ ¯¯, as in the first line of Horace's Odes 1.4:

Solvitur acris hiems grātā vice | vēris et Favōni.

As in that ode, Archilochian verses were usually used in distichs with the iambic trimeter

Iambic trimeter

iambic trimeter is a meter of poetry consisting of three iambic units per line.In ancient Greek poetry, iambic trimeter is a quantitative meter, in which a line consisted of three iambic metra and each metron consisted of two iambi...

 catalectic

Catalectic

A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line....

, in which a caesura marked off the identical ending rhythm of the two verses (the trochaic tripody):

Solvitur acris hiems grata vice | veris et Favoni

trahuntque siccas | machinae carinas,

ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus | aut arator igni

nec prata canis | albicant pruinis.

The distich's name reflects the precedent in Archilochus (for example, fr. 188 West).

The name Archilochian is also applied to similar combinations of dactylic and trochaic rhythms elsewhere in Horace (Epode

Epode

Epode, in verse, is the third part of an ode, which followed the strophe and the antistrophe, and completed the movement.At a certain point in time the choirs, which had previously chanted to right of the altar or stage, and then to left of it, combined and sang in unison, or permitted the...

s 15, 16, cf. Archilochus fr. 193 West; Epode 11, cf. Archilochus fr. 196 West).

The minor Archilochian is equivalent to the hemiepes.