A trochee is a metrical foot made of one long syllable followed by one short syllable (— u). In the dactylic hexameter of Vergil's Aeneid, the trochee appears only in the sixth and final foot of a line, where the last foot is always either a spondee or a trochee (STYL-4.C).
A trochee is one of the three metrical feet you need for AP Latin scansion. It consists of a long syllable followed by a short syllable, written — u. Compare that to a dactyl (long-short-short) and a spondee (long-long), and you can see the trochee as a dactyl missing its second short syllable, or a spondee with a lighter ending.
Here's the rule that matters for the exam. Every line of the Aeneid is dactylic hexameter, meaning six feet per line. The first four feet can be dactyls or spondees in any mix. The fifth foot is usually a dactyl. The sixth and final foot is always a spondee or a trochee. That's the trochee's entire job in epic poetry. It never shows up in feet one through five. When the last syllable of a line is short, the final foot is a trochee; when it's long, the final foot is a spondee. In practice, many teachers mark the final syllable as anceps (it counts as long either way because the line ends there), so on the AP exam you can safely scan the sixth foot as two beats and move on.
Scansion is a required skill across the poetry units, and the trochee is part of the metrical vocabulary the CED spells out. Topic 4.1 introduces the feet directly, naming dactyls, spondees, and trochees as the common metrical feet of epic poetry (learning objective AP Latin 4.1.E). The rule about the final foot being a spondee or trochee is essential knowledge STYL-4.C, which the CED repeats for review in Topics 4.3 and 5.3 under learning objectives AP Latin 4.3.H and AP Latin 5.3.E, and it underpins AP Latin 6.14.A on epic meter. Translation: this concept follows you from the proem of Book 1 (Unit 4) through the underworld of Book 6 (Unit 5) and into the suggested poetry practice of Unit 6. If you can't scan a hexameter line, you can't answer the scansion question, and the trochee is the piece of the rule people forget.
Keep studying AP Latin Unit 6
Dactyl (Units 4-6)
The dactyl (— u u) is the signature foot of epic meter, which is why the whole system is called dactylic hexameter. The trochee is what you get when a line ends one short syllable early. Knowing both lets you account for every syllable in a line, which is exactly what a scansion question asks you to do.
Aeneid (Units 4-5)
Every required line of the Aeneid, from arma virumque cano in Book 1 to the parade of heroes in Book 6, follows the same hexameter pattern, so every single line ends in a spondee or a trochee. The trochee isn't an occasional flourish. It's baked into the structure of all 9,896 lines of the poem.
Elision (Unit 4)
Elision is the other half of scansion. Before you can label feet as dactyls, spondees, or trochees, you have to suppress elided syllables (a word ending in a vowel, vowel + m, or diphthong before a word starting with a vowel or h). Miss an elision and your trochee count will be off by a syllable.
Epic genre conventions (Unit 6, Topic 6.14)
Dactylic hexameter, trochaic line-endings included, is one of the epic elements Vergil inherited from Homer. Using the same meter as the Iliad and Odyssey was how Vergil claimed his place in the epic tradition (STYL-5.B), so meter is a genre marker, not just a sound pattern.
Meter shows up on the AP Latin exam as a scansion task. You're given a line of dactylic hexameter from the Aeneid and asked to mark the long and short syllables, often for the first four feet. The trochee matters here as the boundary rule. The fifth foot is usually a dactyl and the sixth is always a spondee or trochee, so a smart move is to scan a tricky line backward from the end, where the pattern is most predictable. Multiple-choice questions can also test whether you know the components of hexameter, and the term appeared in released 2025 short-answer exam material. You won't write an essay about trochees, but a botched scansion is easy points lost, so drill the rule until it's automatic.
Both feet can fill the sixth and final position of a hexameter line, which is why they get tangled together. A spondee is two long syllables (— —) and can also appear in feet one through four. A trochee is one long plus one short (— u) and in epic poetry appears only in the final foot. Quick check on the last syllable of the line settles it. Long final syllable means spondee, short means trochee, and since the final syllable is often treated as anceps, the distinction rarely costs you points as long as you know both are legal endings.
A trochee is a metrical foot of one long syllable followed by one short syllable, written — u.
In Vergil's dactylic hexameter, the sixth and final foot of every line is always either a spondee or a trochee (essential knowledge STYL-4.C).
The trochee never appears in feet one through five of an epic hexameter line; those positions use dactyls and spondees, with the fifth foot usually a dactyl.
The three feet you need for AP Latin scansion are the dactyl (— u u), the spondee (— —), and the trochee (— u).
When scanning a hard line, work backward from the end, because the last two feet (dactyl, then spondee or trochee) are the most predictable part of the line.
Handle elisions before counting feet, or your scansion will have an extra syllable and every foot after the mistake will be wrong.
A trochee is a metrical foot made of one long syllable followed by one short syllable (— u). In the dactylic hexameter of the Aeneid, it can only appear as the sixth and final foot of a line.
No. In epic poetry the first four feet are dactyls or spondees, the fifth is usually a dactyl, and the trochee is only legal in the sixth and final foot, where the line always ends in a spondee or trochee.
A dactyl is long-short-short (— u u), a spondee is long-long (— —), and a trochee is long-short (— u). The trochee is the only two-syllable foot with a short syllable, and the only one restricted to the end of the line.
You need to scan lines of dactylic hexameter, which means marking long and short syllables correctly, and the spondee-or-trochee rule for the final foot is part of the required essential knowledge (STYL-4.C). Many scansion prompts focus on the first four feet, but knowing the final-foot rule helps you check your work.
Because the final foot can be a trochee, where the second syllable is short. Since the line ends there, that final syllable is often treated as anceps, meaning it counts metrically whether it's long or short, so the line's rhythm still resolves cleanly.