21. The most important Classical meter as defined by the Alexandrian grammarians was the dactylic hexameter , the meter of Homeric poetry. 22. The ancient elegiac couplet form of the Greeks and Romans contained a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of pentameter. 23. The "'metre "'of most poems is the dodecasyllable, but for some Christopher uses the dactylic hexameter . 24. Dactylic hexameter depends on the sequence of long and short ( or dactyl ) or long & ndash; long ( spondee ).25. Today, the modern Latin poets who use the dactylic hexameter are generally as faithful to Virgil as Rome's Silver Age poets. 26. If the feet are primarily " dactyls " and there are six to a line, then it is a dactylic hexameter . 27. The poem is divided into twelve books in imitation of Virgil's " Aeneid " and is composed in dactylic hexameter . 28. The first Greek book on astronomy, by Thales, took the form of dactylic hexameters , as did many works of pre-Socratic philosophy. 29. The two half-lines are each called a hemiepes ( half-epic ), as they resemble half a line of epic dactylic hexameter . 30. Horace was a contemporary of Virgil and, like the epic poet, he wrote verses in dactylic hexameter , but in a conversational and epistolary style.
