El septenario yámbico de Plauto

The iambic septenarius is one of the verse forms most often used by Plautus; he uses it only slightly less frequently than the iambic senarius, and the trochaic septenarius. The iambic septenarius underwent a long process of evolution, reaching its most developed form in the work of Plautus who took many liberties with it, e. g. by introducing a wide variety of substitutions and by freely shifting the position of the dieresis. Nonetheless, as this paper tries to demonstrate, it is also subject to certain rules which determine its metrical identity