Difference between revisions of "Asclepiad"

Latest revision as of 20:01, 30 May 2020

The words Asclepiad (pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, IPA: / æs 'kliː pɪ æd/) and Asclepiadean (pronounced with the stress on the penultimate syllable, IPA: /æs ,kliː pɪ ə 'd iː ən/) may be used, either as adjectives or as nouns, to describe or refer to a line of verse which conforms to one or other of two metrical schemes:

either

+ + | ¯ ˘ ˘ | ¯ || ¯ ˘ ˘ | ¯ ˘ | ¯ (Lesser Asclepiad)

or

+ + | ¯ ˘ ˘ | ¯ || ¯ ˘ ˘ | ¯ || ¯ ˘ ˘ |¯ ˘ | ¯ (Greater Asclepiad).

(¯ = a long syllable in quantitative metre or a stressed syllable in stress metre; ˘ = a short syllable in quantitative metre or an unstressed syllable in stress metre; and + = a syllable which may be either long or short in quantitative metre or stressed or unstressed in stress metre.)

The Asclepiad is so called after Asclepiades of Samos (flourished c270 BCE), a Greek lyric poet and epigrammatist, who is said to have been its creator.

Asclepiads were also used by a number of Roman poets, perhaps most extensively by Horace, 34 of whose 103 lyric poems (carmina, ‘odes’) are written in this metre. Here as an example are the opening lines of the final Ode in Book III:

    Exegi monumentum aere perennius
    regalique situ pyramidum altius,
    quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
    possit diruere aut innumerabilis
    annorum series et fuga temporum.
    non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei
    vitabit Libitinam.  (Odes III, 30, ll. 1-7)

(Translation: I have raised a monument more enduring than bronze, higher than the noble structure of the pyramids. No devouring rain nor violent gale from the north can destroy it, nor the infinite succession of the years, nor time’s swift passing. I shall not entirely die: a great part of me will escape the grave.)

Horace’s Odes, like all Classical Latin poetry, use quantitative metres – unlike almost all English poetry, which uses stress metres. Here, as an example of Asclepiads in English poetry, is the opening stanza of W.H. Auden’s In Due Season:

    Springtime, Summer and Fall: days to behold a world
    Antecedent to our knowing, where flowers think
    Theirs concretely in scent-colours and beasts, the same
    Age all over, pursue dumb horizontal lives.
    On one level of conduct and so cannot be
    Secretary to man's plot to become divine.

(It will be seen that the lines in both examples are Lesser (not Greater) Asclepiads.)