Two and Half Feet in an Elegiac Trenchcoat

 In preparing for the June sampler of the Greek group, I was reminded how the second part of the elegiac couplet, the dactylic pentameter, resembles its lankier predecessor not so much as a younger sibling as much as a burn victim whose skin has been removed from one area to patch another, a Frankenstein of metrical composition. The dactylic hexameter is a well-behaved meter, rarely breaking its structure for moments of deep pathos or extraordinary gravity; the iambic pentameter, however, rather than losing a foot before the final spondee, amputates the spondee in order to graft a long syllable as the second-and-a-half foot, while extending the rigidity of the final dactyl and spondee (despondent for its other half?) to the entire latter half of the line. The iambic pentameter is a pair of two-and-half dactyls (Idaean or Cretan, they are always male) masquerading as a longer line.

If we switch to a more sober frame of mind, like the Medes upon the eve of a great decision, the hemiepes (for that is its name) is a more rational construction, although one would still think that half an epes (dactylic hexameter) would have three full feet. The elimination of the dibrach (two shorts) after the long is suggestive of the principle of brevis in longo, whereby even a syllable short in prose is treated as long at the end of the line; the dissonance comes from the two hemiepes (is the plural hemiepeis?) united in one line, thereby stranding what would have been a final syllable displaying brevis in longo as an orphaned syllable before the caesura. There are two explanation I can think for this. The first, closer to epic, is that the caesura in epes often falls after the first (long) syllable of the third foot, and therefore is the appropriate place for bisecting the meter; the second, closer to lyric, is that a three-line stanza of an epes and two hemiepes would not admit sufficient flexibility in the second line. I am inclined toward the former, if only because a half line with the caesura after the first short of the third foot of a dactylic hexameter would be subject to brevis in longo and therefore result in a half line indistinguishable from the latter half of a dactylic hexameter. But the resolution (pun intended) of this question admits of diverse answers.