says: "It makes no difference whether the final word is a cretic (- u -) or a dactyl (- u u), since even in poetry it doesn't matter whether a final syllable is long or short."

However, according to the teacher of rhetoric Quintilian, a spondaic ending such as confiteri "to confess" sounded stronger than a trochaic one such as timere "to fear": "I am well aware that a short syllable can stand for a long one in final position,