Note 6 — Chapter II · CLASSIC VERSIFICATION.
Reading edition
The name Pentameter (five-foot) is derived from the long syllables being incomplete feet, and counting together as one, so as to make five with the four dactyls. In anapæstics and iambics the metre is a dipod, i.e., it includes two feet, so that an iambic dimeter contains not two but four iambics.