This is from my edition of Greek lyric poetry, about the differences between Horace's, Catullus's, & Sappho's use of the meter.
Quote:
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The 4th syllable of lines 1-3, long in Horace though not always long in Catullus, is long in only two-thirds of Sappho's lines; word-end after the 5th syllable, usual in Horace but observed in only two-thirds of Catullus' lines, occurs in less than half of Sappho's examples.
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There's some solid philology for you. Anyway, I generally think of that syllable as an anceps, a long or short (x), probably because that's the way I saw it scanned first in my Student's Catullus, being the way Catullus treated it.
But there's something else here; we keep talking about dactyls, but the main unit of the Sapphic, (as it is for most if not all of the Aeolic meters,) is not the dactyl but the choriamb. In Greek class, we divide the feet of the Sapphic line as follows:
-~-x / -~~- / ~--
We describe this as a trochee (trochees in Greek are twice as long as in English, same with iambs), a choriamb, and a bacchius. This isn't merely to use difficult terms & make ourselves feel smart; if we look at the scansions of other Aeolic meters, we'll see the choriamb in a similar position of prominence. Examples:
Lines 1 & 2 of the Alcaic: x-~-x / -~~- / ~-, and in the final line, where it is said to undergo dactylic expansion: -~~-~~- / ~--.
The glyconic: xx -~~- ~-
The Greater Aesclepiad: -x / -~~- / -~~- / -~~- / ~-
& of course, the fourth line of the Sapphic: -~~--
The reason for this is historical: the choriamb is also the basic unit for formulaic utterance in the Indo-European proto-language. Formulas of our own such as “last but not least” or “sadly but surely,” with their further Indo-European characteristics of marked alliteration and consonance, attest to its persistence. In Indo-European poetics, which in those societies was inextricable from ritual and religion, such phrases were ritualistic, being both familiar and elevated; they stuck in the mind, making verses memorable for generations of poets whose livelihood was their memory, before the invention of writing. It is thought, in fact, that the stanzas of Sappho and Alcaeus were mere refinements, or even appropriations, of the meters of folk songs already in use in their corner of Asia Minor, the virtual equivalent of our own ballad stanza. In other Indo-European metrics, too, most notably the Indic, the choriamb is enshrined as the basic metrical unit; & I’m confident that if I were to research this, I would find no shortage of examples throughout the Indo-European world, no less in the Germanic ancestors of our own tongue than in those that flourished around the Mediterranean. Anyway, it is the choriamb which gives these Aeolic meters their distinct Indo-European character, a character which the dactylic hexameter lacks--most philologists therefore do not think the hexameter of Indo-European origin, but rather borrowed late from some other tradition, though there are loose cannons who disagree.
Practically speaking, there is no reason why contemporary writers of English sapphics should not speak of a dactyl surrounded by four trochees, or some combination of trochees and spondees; but it makes me wrinkle my nose, & this is why.
Chris