Alcaeus shared Sappho’s island of Lesbos and gave his name to the ALCAIC stanza — a four-line shape Horace later carried into Latin. Two eleven-syllable lines, then a nine, then a ten with its dactylic rush at the close: 11 · 11 · 9 · 10, forty-one syllables of built tension and release. Slide to raise each line and read the shape.
The Greater Alcaic stanza has four lines of 11, 11, 9, and 10 syllables (41 total). The first two are Alcaic hendecasyllables (x —≮—≮≮—≮—x), the third an enneasyllable, the fourth a decasyllable ending in two dactyls and a close — the shape driving to a rhythmic release. Alcaeus of Lesbos (c. 600 BCE) is its namesake; Horace made it a workhorse of Latin lyric. A fail-loud self-check throws unless the four line-lengths are 11, 11, 9, 10 summing to 41. ◆ the metrical shape is exact, node-verified.
Line-lengths and the stanza structure are exact; the fine scansion of the anceps (x) positions and the exact placement of long/short within each line admit the usual editorial variation.