Archilochian or archilochean is a term used to describe several metres of Ancient Greek and Latin poetry.
In the analysis of Archaic and Classical Greek poetry, archilochian or archllochean usually describes the following length: (where "–" indicates a longum, "u" a breve, and "x" an anceps syllable).
360 (Kassel-Austin), where, as Hephaestion notes,[5] no caesura is observed before the ithyphallic ending: The verse also occurs in the choral lyric of tragedy and comedy, with the same caesura as in the example from Archilochus, as a rule, for example in Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes 756-7 ~ 764-5, Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 196-7 ~ 209-10, Euripides, Medea 989-90 ~ 996-7, Iphigenia in Tauris 403 ~ 417, and Aristophanes, Assemblywomen 580-1.
[6] The Byzantine metrician Trichas used the name archilocheion for the trochaic trimeter catalectic: This is seen in Archilochus, fr.
Two other similar metrical couplets imitated from Archilochus combining dactylic and iambic metra are known as the 1st and 2nd pythiambic.