Using Finite-State Machines to Automatically Scan Classical Greek Hexameter

Greek literature has, for centuries, served as a paradigm and model for literary writing all over Europe. The oldest surviving texts of Classical Greek literature - texts such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the works of Hesiod - are epic poems that all share the same metre: hexameter. They are written in an artificial language that has never been spoken in everyday life and owes its origin and many of its peculiarities to the nature of metrically bound language (Meister (1921)). Comprehensive hexameter annotation is, therefore, crucial for large-scale and data-driven investigations into some of the linguistic features of Ancient Greek epic language. Furthermore, it may provide additional criteria for the evaluation of Homer's repeated verses, the so-called iterata. Within Classical Philology, controversy around the nature of the Homeric repetitions started in 1840, and it remained one of the central research questions in the field for a long period of time (see Strasser (1984), pp.