Wiener Studien 124/2011, pp. 117-142, 2011/11/07
Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie, Patristik und lateinische Tradition
The metre primarily used for Byzantine poetry is the so called dodecasyllable which has its origin in the ancient and late antique iambic trimetre. The first author who used the dodecasyllable extensively for his poems was Georgios Pisides (1st half 7th century A. D.). However, the development towards the dodecasyllable is to be observed much earlier. “Dodecasyllable” verses do not only occur in the 6th century A. D. – as is stated in the previous literature – but already in earlier periods which is demonstrated by several examples of (primarily inscribed) epigrams from the late Hellenistic era up to the year 600 A. D. Whereas within the poems of Pisides we still find solutions and anapests, in later centuries these phenomena hardly occur; a specific section within the article is devoted to the (rare) use of the ancient/late antique iambic trimetre (with solutions and anapests) in the middle Byzantine period.
