Iambic synonyms

Each of these hymns has eight four-line stanzas and is written in strict iambic tetrameter.

Florus is important as being the first in order of a number of 2nd-century African writers who exercised a considerable influence on Latin literature, and also the first of the poetae neoterici or novelli (new-fashioned poets) of Hadrian's reign, whose special characteristic was the use of lighter and graceful metres (anapaestic and iambic dimeters), which had hitherto found little favour.

His greatest contribution to poetic art consisted in the perfection which he attained in the phalaecian, the pure iambic, and the scazon metres, and in the ease and grace with which he used the language of familiar intercourse, as distinct from that of the creative imagination, of the rostra, and of the schools, to give at once a lifelike and an artistic expression to his feelings.

One of his poems, Alexandra or Cassandra, containing 1474 iambic lines, has been preserved entire.

The verse-form is a heroic hexameter with an Iambic trimeter attendant upon it.