In his translation he discarded the native Saturnian metre, and adopted the iambic, trochaic and cretic metres, to which Latin more easily adapted itself than either to the hexameter or to the lyrical measures of a later time.
Cicero preferred the cretic -, which he says is the metrical equivalent of the paean.
Demosthenes was especially fond of the cretic. Rhythm pervades the whole sentence but is most important at the end or clausula, where the swell of the period sinks to rest.
The basis consists of a cretic or its metrical equivalent.