«Traditionally, most frequent word-ends have been considered as caesurae of Greek hexameter. However, the prosodic study of word-end in Theocritus' Idylls shows that penthemimers and trochaic caesurae have a special behaviour avoiding the elision, correption and consonantal clusters of muta cum liquida. In contrast, these phenomena are frequent in trihemimers and hepthemimers caesurae, and also in bucolic diaeresis. From this is concluded that the caesura is defined not only by word-end frequency but also by prosodic behaviour. Therefore, Theocritus' hexameter would contain a main caesura, penthemimer or trochaic, which would divide it in two hemistiches».
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