Hexameter just means that the lines have six feet. What counts as a foot in a language will differ, e.g. English feet are based on stress, whereas Ancient Greek

Hexameter just means that the lines have six feet. What counts as a foot in a language will differ, e.g. English feet are based on stress, whereas Ancient Greek feet are based on length. For example, in Ancient Greek, an iamb would be a short syllable followed by a long one (e.g. 'Δάφνη' - Daphne, which in A.G. was pronounced something like 'daph-neh', with the 'neh' held long), whereas in English it's an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (e.g. 'become').