The iambic trimeter was also used in the Epodes of Horace, the fables of Phaedrus, the proverbs of Publilius Syrus, and the tragedies of Seneca the Younger.
In the accentual-syllabic verse of English, German, and other languages, however, the iambic trimeter is a meter consisting of three iambs (disyllabic units with stress on the second syllable) per line, making a line of six syllables.
An example of the structure: A caesura (break between words) is usually found after the fifth or seventh element of the line.
In comedy, which is closer to casual speech, resolution is fairly common.
In tragedy, resolutions are virtually never consecutive, and two instances in the same line are rare.
It was the preferred meter of the Roman fabulist Phaedrus in the first century AD.
Any long or anceps element except the last could be resolved into two short syllables, giving rise to lines like the following (the resolved elements are underlined): The above line also illustrates another feature found in Plautus and Terence, namely iambic shortening or brevis breviāns, where the syllables ab ex- are scanned as two short syllables.