TY  - JOUR
AU  - Matricciani, Emilio
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/10
TI  - Are the Hexameters and Hendecasyllables of Classical Poetry a Mathematical Imprint of Short-Term Memory?
JO  - Journal of Mathematical Studies of Literature
T2  - Journal of Mathematical Studies of Literature
JF  - Journal of Mathematical Studies of Literature
VL  - 1
IS  - 1
SP  - 28
EP  - 48
DO  - 10.62762/JMSL.2026.283501
UR  - https://www.icck.org/article/abs/jmsl.2026.283501
KW  - Aeneid
KW  - De Rerum Natura
KW  - hendecasyllable
KW  - hexameter
KW  - Italian poetry
KW  - linguistic parameters
KW  - Miller's law
KW  - short-term memory
AB  - The hexameter of Greek and Latin epic and the Italian hendecasyllable are usually described in terms of syllables, feet and accents. This paper tests a different hypothesis: that both verses were shaped, without the poets being aware of it, by the number of words a line can hold, a number close to the central value of Miller's $7 \pm 2$ law. On this view the two metres are an imprint of short-term memory, the stage through which information must pass before it is stored in long-term memory and later recalled, as was required in societies where poetry was learned and recited by heart. The hypothesis is examined on Virgil's Aeneid and Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, both written in Latin hexameters, on their classical Italian translations in unrhymed hendecasyllables by Annibale Caro and Alessandro Marchetti, and on Dante's Divina Commedia. For each book, characters, words, sentences, punctuation marks and lines were counted; from these counts I computed word length, sentence length, the word interval (words between two punctuation marks), the number of word intervals per sentence and the number of words per line. A uniformity index is introduced to measure how evenly each parameter is distributed across books. Word length and words per line are almost constant in every text (about 6.4-6.6 words per hexameter and 6.8-7.0 per hendecasyllable), whereas sentence length and word interval change from book to book and, in the Aeneid, between the two hexads. The results suggest that the poets controlled punctuation and sentence structure deliberately, while the length of the line in words was set by short-term memory rather than by syllable counting alone.
SN  - pending
PB  - Institute of Central Computation and Knowledge
LA  - English
ER  - 

@article{Matricciani2026Are,
  author = {Emilio Matricciani},
  title = {Are the Hexameters and Hendecasyllables of Classical Poetry a Mathematical Imprint of Short-Term Memory?},
  journal = {Journal of Mathematical Studies of Literature},
  year = {2026},
  volume = {1},
  number = {1},
  pages = {28-48},
  doi = {10.62762/JMSL.2026.283501},
  url = {https://www.icck.org/article/abs/jmsl.2026.283501},
  abstract = {The hexameter of Greek and Latin epic and the Italian hendecasyllable are usually described in terms of syllables, feet and accents. This paper tests a different hypothesis: that both verses were shaped, without the poets being aware of it, by the number of words a line can hold, a number close to the central value of Miller's \$7 \pm 2\$ law. On this view the two metres are an imprint of short-term memory, the stage through which information must pass before it is stored in long-term memory and later recalled, as was required in societies where poetry was learned and recited by heart. The hypothesis is examined on Virgil's Aeneid and Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, both written in Latin hexameters, on their classical Italian translations in unrhymed hendecasyllables by Annibale Caro and Alessandro Marchetti, and on Dante's Divina Commedia. For each book, characters, words, sentences, punctuation marks and lines were counted; from these counts I computed word length, sentence length, the word interval (words between two punctuation marks), the number of word intervals per sentence and the number of words per line. A uniformity index is introduced to measure how evenly each parameter is distributed across books. Word length and words per line are almost constant in every text (about 6.4-6.6 words per hexameter and 6.8-7.0 per hendecasyllable), whereas sentence length and word interval change from book to book and, in the Aeneid, between the two hexads. The results suggest that the poets controlled punctuation and sentence structure deliberately, while the length of the line in words was set by short-term memory rather than by syllable counting alone.},
  keywords = {Aeneid, De Rerum Natura, hendecasyllable, hexameter, Italian poetry, linguistic parameters, Miller's law, short-term memory},
  issn = {pending},
  publisher = {Institute of Central Computation and Knowledge}
}