Ictusses

At the ends there is a single “Ablauf” plūrĭs, and a double “Ablauf” aestĭmāstī; these correspond in retrograde movement with the “Anläufe” dēpressām cāē- and quām te: the ictusses are very useful… One syllable still remains, namely quām f.

A small amount of interaction takes place in meters which tend to level the line opening. While narrative verse in iambic pentameter has a sharp rising stressing, narrative verse in iambic tetrameter and hexameter has a slight rising opening. Fulfillment of the first two ictusses in these meters is identical (84% and 88%).

On this occasion, the point should be made that Tomaševskij has nothing in common with Žirmunskij's thesis about the essentially stressed nature of ictusses, though some of his terminologically not very felicitious formulations about scanning, which should always be present in perceiving verse-lines (Tomaševskij 1922, p. 12; 1925, p. 254), have led some students (Hansen-Löve 1978, p. 307) to such an interpretation.