[12] A brief description of some of the feet and metres most frequently used by Roman poets may be useful. These were, with the exception of the Saturnian verse (see p. 7), borrowed, with certain modifications, from the Greek. The most usual feet are the iambus (◡—), the trochee (—◡), the spondee (——), the dactyl (—◡◡), the anapæst (◡◡—), and the choriambus (—◡◡—). The dactylic hexameter consists of six feet, each of which is either a dactyl or a spondee, though the sixth is always a spondee and the fifth almost always a dactyl. An illustration of this is the line from Lucilius, _Maior erat natu; non omnia possumus omnes_, the rhythm of which is retained in this translation: He was the elder by birth; not all of us all things can compass. The iambic _senarius_ consists of six iambics, as _Hominem inter vivos quaéritamus mórtuom._ (Plautus, _Menæchmi_, 240.) Among the living we do seek a man who’s dead. This is a common metre in the dialogue parts of dramas. It is one foot longer than the line in English blank verse. The trochaic _septenarius_, also a common metre in the drama, consists of seven trochees and an additional long syllable. The English line, Do not lift him from the bracken; leave him lying where he fell gives an idea of the rhythm. The elegiac distich consists of an hexameter followed by a so-called pentameter, that is, a line made up of six dactyls or spondees, with the omission of the last half of the third and of the sixth feet. This is illustrated and described by Coleridge in the lines, In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column. In the pentameter aye falling in melody back. In the iambic and trochaic metres other feet are often substituted for the iambus and the trochee, but without change of rhythm. Some of the other metres will be explained or illustrated as they occur. [13] iv, Frg. 8, Müller. [14] v, Frg. 33, Müller. [15] vi, Frg. 16, Müller. [16] libr. incert., Frg. 1, Müller. [17] Lucius Ælius Præconinus Stilo, of Lanuvium, Stoic philosopher, philologist and rhetorician, was the first to give regular lessons in Latin literature and eloquence and to apply the historical method to the study of the Latin language. He was born not far from 154 B. C., and lived well into the first century B. C. His contemporary, Quintus Valerius Soranus (from Sora), also wrote on Latin literature, the study of which was, in his case, joined with that of Roman antiquities. Volcacius Sedigitus, of whose personality nothing is known, wrote a didactic poem on the history of Latin literature about 90 B. C. Besides these, numerous works on grammar, philology, antiquities, agriculture, and other subjects were written by various authors, whose names are in many cases lost, but whose works served as quarries from which Varro and other writers derived their treasures of learning.