In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps (plural ancipitia[1] or (syllabae) ancipites[2]) is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a long or a short syllable.
In general, anceps syllables in words, such as the first syllable of the Greek words ἌρηςÁrēs (the Greek god of war) or πικρόςpikrós "bitter", which can be treated by poets as either long or short, can be distinguished from anceps elements or positions in a metrical pattern, which are positions where either a long syllable or a short syllable can be used.[3]
Another distinction can be made between the ordinary anceps positions at the beginning or middle of a line of verse and the phenomenon of brevis in longo, which is when a short syllable at the end of a line counts as long because of the pause which follows.[4]
The word anceps comes from the Latin anceps, ancipitis, meaning "two-headed, uncertain, unfixed".[5] The usage of the word in a metrical context is, however, relatively modern, and is not found in ancient writers.
^A.M. Devine, Laurence D Stephens (1994) The Prosody of Greek Speech, p. 75; Gratwick, A.S. Plautus: Menaechmi, p. 44.
^August Böckh, (1809). Über die Versmasse des Pindaros, p. 116; C.W. Willink (2010), Collected papers on Greek Tragedy, p. 477.
^M. L. West, "Three topics in Greek metre", The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1982), pp. 281-297; p. 286.
^Cite error: The named reference west287 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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