An Asclepiad (Latin: Asclepiadeus) is a line of poetry following a particular metrical pattern. The form is attributed to Asclepiades of Samos and is one of the Aeolic metres.
As with other Aeolic metrical lines, the asclepiad is built around a choriamb. The Asclepiad may be described as a glyconic that has been expanded with one (Lesser Asclepiad) or two (Greater Asclepiad) further choriambs. The pattern (using "âÂÂ" for a long syllable, "u" for a short and "x" for an "anceps" or free syllable, which can be either â or u) is:
x x - u u - | - u u - u - (Lesser Asclepiad / Asclepiadeus minor) x x - u u - | - u u - | - u u - u - (Greater Asclepiad / Asclepiadeus maior)
In Horace's Odes, there is almost always a caesura after the 6th syllable.
Asclepiads are often found mixed with the pherecratean and glyconic, which have a similar rhythm:
x x - u u - - (Pherecratean) x x - u u - u - (Glyconic)
West (1982) designates the Asclepiad as a "choriambically expanded glyconic" with the notation gl<sup>c</sup> (lesser) or gl<sup>2c</sup> (greater).
In theory the first two syllables are (either long or short) but in practice Horace always starts the line with two long syllables (except possibly at 1.15.36). The last syllable can have .
Asclepiads were used in Latin by Horace in thirty-four of his odes, as well as by Catullus in Poem 30, and Seneca in six tragedies.
Asclepiads are found either in stichic form (i.e. used continuously unmixed with other metres) or in 4-line stanzas mixed with glyconics and pherecrateans. The various forms are known as the "1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th asclepiad". The numbering of these, however, differs in different authors. The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 used by Klingner (1939), Nisbet & Hubbard (1970), D. West (1995), Shackleton Bailey (2008), Mayer (2012), and Becker (2016), (followed here) are called 1, 4, 5, 3, 2 by Wickham (1896) and Raven (1965), and 1, 3, 4, 2, 5 by Page (1895), Bennett (1914) and Rudd (2004). The metre is named after the 3rd century BC poet Asclepiades of Samos, although none of the surviving fragments of that poet are in asclepiads.
In Latin, 34 of Horace's 103 Odes are written in various forms of asclepiads. Asclepiads are also found in Seneca the Younger and in Ausonius. Catullus has one poem (30) using the greater asclepiad, and a number of others combining pherecrateans and glyconics without the asclepiad line.
This consists of a series of (lesser) asclepiad lines used stichically, as in Horace, Odes 1.1, addressed to Horace's patron Maecenas:
And also famously in Ode 3.30, the last ode of the collection (Odes 1âÂÂ3):
This form of the asclepiad is also used in several poems by Alcaeus, e.g. 349AâÂÂ353.
(= Raven and Wickham's 4th, Page and Rudd's 3rd asclepiad)
Three asclepiads are followed by a glyconic, as in Horace, Odes 1.6, addressed to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa:
This form is also found in Alcaeus (5 and 7).
(= Raven and Wickham's 5th, Page and Rudd's 4th asclepiad)
This consists of two asclepiads followed by a pherecratean and a glyconic, as in Horace, Odes 1.5:
(= Raven and Wickham's 3rd, Page and Rudd's 2nd asclepiad)
A glyconic followed by an asclepiad, as in Horace, Odes 1.3, addressed to a ship carrying Horace's friend Virgil to Greece:
(= Raven and Wickham's 2nd, Page and Rudd's 5th asclepiad)
A series of greater asclepiads, used stichically, as in Catullus (30), which begins:
It is also used in three odes by Horace (1.11, 1.18, and 4.10). 1.18 opens as follows:
In surviving Greek poetry this form is found in Alcaeus (e.g. 340âÂÂ9), Callimachus (frag. 400), and Theocritus (28, 30).
The asclepiad has sometimes been imitated in English verse, for example in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia:
It is also found in W. H. Auden's "In Due Season", which begins: