The loss or rhyme and meter through the progression of language over time

I read that you would be hard pressed to find strict meter in Chauncer's Canterbury Tales (written near the end of the 14th century), simply due to the change in the English language over time - after all, they are written in what is called middle English. This makes complete sense. Though, I've often wondered why it is understood as fact that the Odyssey, Iliad and Aeneid are written in dactylic hexameter, as they are so ancient (well surpassing the age of Chauncer) and naturally language progresses so rapidly. I could understand academics having a firm grasp of Homeric Greek or Classical Latin (through literature) in terms of what is on paper, but it defies me how they could have an understanding of the phonic elements upon with attributing a certain meter to a poem depend. How is this so?

Thank you for offering your knowledge and time.

I've heard, but unfortunately cannot remember where anymore, that Chaucer's meter is a blend of Old English alliterative meter and a more recent iambic meter from Europe. I don't know it well enough to be able to offer more than this as an idea of how to interpret Chaucer's meter.

While reading the thread on Ovid's Metamorphoses, I found the following description on how people scan a line of Ovid's dactylic hexameter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYD1z...eature=related

When I hear people reciting Ovid on YouTube, I also wonder how they really know what it sounded like.

The metre survives despite the language: the evolution of language is often a process outside written text, so the phonetic change may not be related anything to metre. It is just hard for us to understood, because he measure it differently. You can imagine it as the metre is retained even in different idioms. And really, people did not had a big grasp of Homer greek, most of it was by latim translations, etc.