Exceptions to this rule sometimes occur when the poet wishes to produce a particular effect, as in
Parturient montēs, nāscētur rīdiculus mūs (H. AP. 139).
[2566.] (4.) A hexameter generally ends in a word of two or three syllables, almost never in one of four, rarely in one of five. But spondaic verses ([2556]) generally end with a word of four syllables, more rarely with one of three, almost never with one of two.
[2567.] (5.) Spondaic verses are comparatively rare in Ennius and Lucretius, but become more frequent in Catullus. They are not common in Vergil, Horace, Propertius and Ovid, and do not occur at all in Tibullus. Persius has one spondaic verse, Valerius Flaccus one, Claudian five, Silius Italicus six, Statius seven. Ennius has lines composed entirely of spondees, and so in one instance ([116, 3]) Catullus. Ennius also resolves the thesis of a dactyl in a few cases.
[2568.] (6.) A verse which is connected with the following one by elision ([2492]) is called hypermetrical. Such verses are rare, and usually end with the enclitics -que or -ve.
[2569.] (7.) The dactylic hexameter was introduced into Latin literature by Ennius, and was further perfected by Lucilius, Lucretius, and Cicero, who took him as their model. Catullus and the group to which he belonged followed Alexandrian models more closely, while the great poets of the Augustan age carried the technique of the hexameter to its highest perfection. Horace in his lyric poetry treats the hexameter with great strictness; but in the Satires and Epistles he handles it with much freedom, imparting to the measure a more colloquial character by the frequent use of spondees and by less rigorous treatment of the caesura.
[2570.] The Dactylic Pentameter is a verse consisting of two catalectic dactylic tripodies, separated by a fixed diaeresis. Spondees are admitted in the first tripody, but not in the second. The final thesis of the first tripody is protracted to a tetraseme ([2516]) to compensate for the omission of the arsis. The scheme is therefore
–́ ⏔ | –́ ⏔ | ⏘́ # –́ ⏑ ⏑ | –́ ⏑ ⏑ | –́ ⌅
[2571.] (1.) The verse is not asynartetic ([2535]), neither syllaba anceps nor hiatus being allowed at the end of the first tripody.