Greek verse seems a less promising field than Latin at a first glance. But one of the choruses in Aristophanes's "Plutus" has an exact echo in English verse.
"ἄνδρες φίλοι κὰι δημόται κὰι τοῦ πονεῖν ἐραστάι."
may fairly run in a curricle with
"A captain bold of Halifax who lived in country quarters."
The great difficulty of finding a corresponding measure in English for Latin or Greek verse, on the accepted theory that the English acute accent answers to the Latin long quantity, and the grave accent to the short, will be found in the spondee. We have no means of replacing the two longs in juxtaposition, and are compelled to find refuge in what, according to the accent-quantity theory, is either an iamb or a trochee.
I subjoin the following attempts to render a few Latin metres, commencing with a translation of the Horatian measure just alluded to:—
"Hapless lasses who in glasses may not drown those pangs of passion,
Or disclose its bitter woes, it's—so they tell you—not the fashion."
Yet this, in spite of the sub-rhymes which give the swing of the Ionicus ( ᴗ ᴗ — ´ — ) may well be read as a succession of trochees—that is to say, according to the quantity-accent system.
Here is an attempt at the Sapphic:—