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The line should be scanned: – u u | – – | – – | – – | – u u | – x || The 2nd u of unus is short, as is the e of erat. All three syllables of naturae are long. The principal caesura is after the first ...

Let me discuss your second example first. If I understand it correctly, your question is: “OK, caesura can only happen at the end of a word, but is it admissible that it happens one syllable earlier, ...

There are really two senses of "caesura", one of them objectively definable, the other not so much. Most basically, a caesura is defined simply as any word break in the line that occurs ...

As a supplement to qwertxyz's answer, which gives the correct scansion, I'll note that this line fits into the scheme described in D.S. Raven, Latin metre §66: The 'weak' third foot caesura is far ...

Here is the correct prosodic scan of this holodactylic verse: sṓlĭs ĕquī́, | sŏlĭtā́quĕ || iŭgū́m | grăvĭtā́tĕ cărḗbat

To me the most natural positions for caesuras in hendecasyllabic verse are before either of the consequent short syllables: - - - | u | u - u - u - u. This is similar to how caesuras work in hexameter,...