It is an iambic verse of fifteen syllables and has been the main meter of traditional popular and folk poetry since the Byzantine period.
The name is unrelated to the modern English concept of politics and does not imply political content; rather, it derives from the original meaning of the Greek word πολιτικός, civil or civic, meaning that it was originally a form used for secular poetry, the non-religious entertainment of the people of the polis, the city-state.
It is also called "ἡμαξευμένοι στίχοι" (imaksevméni stíhi "like-a-chariot-on-a-paved-road") verse, because the words run freely like a chariot on a good driving surface.
A short "admonitory" poem of his contemporary, Michael Psellos, to the emperor Constantine IX Monomachos is titled: ΣΤΙΧΟΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΟΙ ΠΡΟΣ ΤΟ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΑ ΚΥΡΟΝ ΚΩΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΝ ΤΟΝ ΜΟΝΟΜΑΧΟΝ ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗΣ (Political verses to the Emperor Kyr (Sire) Constantine Monomachos on Grammar).
Examples can be found even in some Homeric verses, but it isn't clear if that occurrence was intentional or incidental.
There is a standard cesura (pause in the reading of a line of a verse that does not affect the metrical account of the timing) after the eighth syllable.
To this day, each half-foot can also begin with a trochee; this is called choriambic, by comparison to its ancient metrical counterpart.
A typical example of the use of Political verse in Greek folk poetry is the beginning of the medieval ballad The Bridge of Arta (Το γεφύρι της Άρτας): Saránta pénte mástori — ki' eksínda mathitádes Yofírin ethemélionan — stis Ártas to potámi.
Either by been explained, or completed, or supplemented, or quite often the theme of the main clause is amplified by been repeated or restated in other words.
Political verses are usually, but not exclusively, organized in pairs (thus forming "stanzas" of two lines, known as distichs or couplets).
In the case of such "distichs" the second verse shows the same structure with the first, except that it is not introducing the theme of the main clause, but it completes it.
The language used with Political verse is of a utilitarian, frugal, type: Nouns, verbs, linking words and pronouns.
In English poetry the type of meter that resembles, somehow, this Greek Political verse is the one called "iambic heptameter" or a "fourteener".
For example, (from Book 2, THE SECONDE BOOKE OF OVIDS METAMORPHOSIS): The Princely Pallace of the Sunne stood gorgeous to beholde On stately Pillars builded high of yellow burnisht golde, Beset with sparckling Carbuncles that like to fire did shine.
Another, later, example is from Lord Byron's Youth and Age: 'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath.
In fact it is such a natural meter for the language that one could actually form continually ones' everyday speech in political verse, if one wished to do so.