Latin rhythmic hexameter

The Latin rhythmic hexameter^[1] or accentual hexameter^[2] is a kind of Latin dactylic hexameter which arose in the Middle Ages alongside the metrical kind. The rhythmic hexameter did not scan correctly according to the rules of classical prosody; instead it imitated the approximate sound of a typical metrical hexameter by having roughly the same number of syllables and putting word accents in approximately the same places in the line.

The rhythmic hexameter flourished between the 3rd and 9th century A.D. The earliest examples come from what is now Tunisia in north Africa. One poet to use it for literary compositions was Commodian, who is thought to have lived in North Africa in the 3rd century AD. Other examples come from Portugal, Spain, Lombardy in northern Italy, and southern France. Several examples are found on tombstones, but there is also an anonymous Christian work of the 6th or 7th century called Exhortatio poenitendi, and a book of riddles of the 8th century.

Over the centuries the style of the rhythmic hexameter underwent various changes; for example, in some early versions it had six stresses in each line, whereas later it had five. It has been suggested by one scholar that in its later form, with its five stresses with a caesura between the second and third, it eventually developed in France into the early form of iambic pentameter.