[47]
as in the case
of dactylic rhythm, where one long syllable balances
two short, (there are it is true other feet of which
this statement is equally true, but the title of
dactylic has been currently applied to all,1 while even
boys are well aware that a long syllable is equivalent
to two beats and a short to one) or it may consist of
feet in which one portion is half as long again as the
other, as is the case with paeanic rhythm (a paean
being composed of one long followed by three shorts,
three shorts followed by one long or with any other
arrangement preserving the proportion of three beats
to two) or finally one part of the foot may be twice
the length of the other, as in the case of the iambus,
which is composed of a short followed by a long, or
of the choreus consisting of a long followed by a
short.
1 For purely rhythmical purposes the term dactyl is arbitrarily used by the rhetoricians to include anapaests as well. See below.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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