“In the hex | ameter | rises the | fountain’s | silvery | column.”
Several modern poets, and in particular Robert Browning, and Lord Bowen (1835-1894) have used with effect a truncated hexameter consisting of the usual verse deprived of its last syllable. Thus Browning:—
“Well, it is I gone at | last, the | palace of | music I | reared.”
It is not sufficiently observed that even the classic Greek poets introduced considerable variations into their treatment of the hexameter. These have been treated with erudition in G. Hermann’s De aetate scriptoris Argonauticorum. The differences in the hexameters of the Latin poets were not so remarkable, but even these varied, in various epochs, their treatment of the separate feet, and the position of the caesura. The satirists in particular allowed themselves an extraordinary licence: these hexameters, from Persius, are as far removed from the rhythm of Homer, or even of Virgil, as possible, if they are to remain hexameters:—
| “Mane piger stertis. ‘Surge!’ inquit Avaritia, ‘heia Surge!’ negas; instat ‘Surge!’ inquit ‘Non queo.’ ‘Surge!’ ‘Et quid agam?’ ‘Rogitas? en saperdam advehe Ponto.’” |
It is also to be noted that various prosodical liberties, due originally to the extreme antiquity of the hexameter, and long reformed and repressed by the culture of poets, were apt to be revived in later ages, by writers who slavishly copied the most antique examples of the art of verse.
See Wilhelm Christ, Metrik der Griechen und Römer, 2te Aufl. (1879).
HEXAPLA (Gr. for “sixfold”), the term for an edition of the Bible in six versions, and especially the edition of the Old Testament compiled by Origen, which placed side by side (1) Hebrew, (2) Hebrew in Greek character, (3) Aquila, (4) Symmachus, (5) Septuagint, (6) Theodotion. See [Bible]: Old Testament, Texts and Versions.