French alexandrine French alexandrine The French alexandrine () is a syllabic poetic meter of (nominally and typically) 12 syllables with a medial caesura dividing the line into two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each. It was the dominant long line of French poetry from the 17th through the 19th century, and influenced many other European literatures which developed alexandrines of their own. According to verse historian Mikhail Gasparov, the French alexandrine developed from the Ambrosian octosyllable, by gradually losing the final two syllables, then doubling this line in a syllabic context with phrasal stress rather than length as a marker. The earliest
Aeolic verse consecutive anceps syllables, and which combines double-short and single-short in a single verse, but not in a single metrical group). But there are several important innovations in the "aeolic" practice of Pindar and Bacchylides: The tragic poets of Classical Athens continued the use of Aeolic verse (and dactylo-epitrite, with the addition of other types) for their choral odes, with additional metrical freedoms and innovations. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides each went his own way in developing Aeolics. Theocritus provides an example of the Hellenistic adaptation of Aeolic poetry in his "Idylls" 28–31, which also imitate the Archaic Aeolic dialect. "Idyll" 29,