The ionic is a four-syllable metrical unit of light-light-heavy-heavy that occurs in ancient Greek and Latin poetry. According to Hephaestion it was known as the Ionicos because it was used by the Ionians of Asia Minor; and it was also known as the Persicos and was associated with Persian poetry. Like the choriamb, in Greek quantitative verse the ionic never appears in passages meant to be spoken rather than sung. "Ionics" may refer inclusively to poetry composed of the various metrical units of the same total quantitative length that may be used in combination with ionics proper: ionics, choriambs, and anaclasts. Equivalent forms exist in English poetry and in classical Persian poetry.
Examples of ionics
Pureexamples of Ionic metrical structures occur in verse by Alcman, Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, and the Greek dramatists, including the first choral song of Aeschylus' Persians and in Euripides' Bacchae. Like dochmiacs, the ionic meter is characteristically experienced as expressing excitability. The form has been linked tentatively with the worship of Cybele and Dionysus. An example of pure ionics in Latin poetry is found as a "metrical experiment" in the Odes of Horace, Book 3, poem 12, which draws on Archilochus and Sappho for its content and utilizes a metrical line that appears in a fragment of Alcaeus. The Horace poem begins as follows: In writing this 4-verse poem Horace tends to place a caesura after every metrical foot, exceptoccasionally in the last two feet of the line.
Anacreontics
The anacreontic | u u – u – u – – | is sometimes analyzed as a form of ionics which has undergone anaclasis. The galliambic is a variation of this, with resolution and catalexis in the second half. Catullus used galliambic meter for his Carmen 63 on the mythological figureAttis, a portion of which is spoken in the person of Cybele. The poem begins: The meter is: In this poem Catullus leaves a caesura at the mid-point of every line. Occasionally the 5thsyllable is resolved into two shorts or the first two shorts are replaced with a single long syllable.
Ionic ''a minore'' and ''a maiore''
The "ionic" almost invariably refers to the basic metron u u — —, but this metron is also known by the fuller name ionic a minore in distinction to the rarely used ionic a maiore. Modern metricians generally consider the term ionic a maiore to be of little analytic use, a vestige of Hephaestion's "misunderstanding of metre" and desire to balance metrical units with their mirror images.
Polyschematist sequences
The Ionic and Aeolic meters are closely related, as evidenced by the polyschematist unit x x — x — u u —. The sotadeion, named for the Hellenistic poetSotades, has been classified as ionic a maiore by Hephaestion and by M. L. West: It "enjoyed a considerable vogue for several centuries, being associated with low-class entertainment, especially of a salacious sort, though also used for moralizing and other serious verse." Among those poets who adopted it was Ennius.
In English poetry, Edward Fitzgerald composed in a combination of anacreontics and ionics. An example of English ionics occurs in lines 4 and 5 of the following lyricstanza by Thomas Hardy: Compare W. B. Yeats, "And the white breast of the dim sea" and Tennyson, "In Memoriam," "When the blood creeps and the nerves prick".
Persian poetry
The ionic rhythm is common in classical Persian poetry and exists in both trimeter and tetrameter versions. Nearly 10% of lyric poems are written in the following metre: The acatalectic tetrameter is less common, but is also found: In these two metres the opening breve may become long, and the final pair of shorts can be replaced by a long. Anaclastic versions of the metre also exist, resembling the Greek anacreontic, for example:
