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APPENDIX: METRE and VERSE (Note. the Following Works

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APPENDIX: METRE and VERSE (Note. the Following Works APPENDIX: METRE AND VERSE (Note. The following works are referred to by author only: Hardie, W.R. Res Metrica, Oxford, 1920, reprinted 1934. Knight, W. F. Jackson. Accentual Symmetry in Vergil, Oxford, 1950. Norden, E. Aeneis, BuchVI, 3rd ed., Leipzig, 1926, reprinted 1957. Winbolt, S. E. Latin Hexameter Verse, London, 1903. An excellent short summary of the basic principles of prosody and Virgil's metre can be found in W. S. Maguinness, Aeneid XII (London, 2nd ed., 1960), 20-8. Also to be consulted: the Excursus on the hexameter in Sir Frank Fletcher's edition of Aeneid VI (Oxford, 1941, reprinted 1951); on the fourth foot, A. M. Woodward, Philological Quarterly 15 (1936), 126 ff.; T.E. V. Pearce, 'TheEnclosingWordOrderin the Latin Hexameter', CQN.S 16 (1966), 140-71 and 298-320. For further discussion of the Ictus-Accent theory on which the following sketch is based, and for criticism of rival theories, see L. P. Wilkinson, Golden Latin Artistry, n8 ff., and Appen­ dix I.) Basic notions The dactylic hexameter of Greek and Latin epic poetry is a line contain­ ing six rhythmic units or feet, with a regularly recurring verse-beat (ictus) on the first syllable, necessarily long, of each foot. The last foot of the line contains only two syllables and is followed by a slight rhythmic pause, which severs the line from the one that follows, and enables the last syllable which precedes it to be indifferently long or short (syllaba anceps). Each of the remaining five feet may contain either two or three syllables which are distinctly pronounced and not slurred over or suppressed (by elision): the first long syllable which carries the ictus is followed either by another long syllable (producing a spondee), or by two short syllables (pro­ ducing a dactyl). Homer clearly regarded each hexameter line as a unit marked off by the pause at the end. Virgil occasionally makes a unit of two lines by giving the first an extra syllable at the end (making it hypermetric), which must be elided before the first syllable of the second line if it is not to disrupt the metre. Some intimate connection in sense is often reflected by the fusion of the lines, as, for example, at A. 6.602 f. quo super atra silex iam iam lapsura cadentiqu(e) imminet adsimilis (and see the note on A. 8.228 f.). Hypermetre occurs very rarely indeed in Latin poetry before Virgil (five instances only are cited by Austin on A. 4.558), and there are no examples in Greek epic poetry. Latin poetry, like English and German poetry, was originally accentual and depended for its rhythm on the natural stress (accent) which every word 194 APPENDIX carries with it on one or more of its syllables. Epic poetry in Greek had always been quantitative, with the rhythm of the verse made clear by the length or time-value of the separate syllables of each word. Ennius was the first to impose this quantitative Greek metre on Latin epic, and in so doing posed the problem of how to reconcile the natural accentual bent of the language with the alien discipline of quantity. The Latin hexameter (I) The middle of the verse. Ennius is plausibly credited with having written the two following lines: (1) sparsis hastis longis campus splendet et horret ( V aria 14 V), (2) poste recumbite, vestraque pectora pellite tonsis (Ann. 230 V). These lines may be experimental, but in one vital respect they run counter to the whole trend of the epic hexameter in both Greek and Latin: they fall apart in the middle because the break between the third and fourth feet of the verse coincides with that between the third and fourth words in the line. The most stable characteristic of the epic hexameter is the unbreakable link between the two rhythmic halves of the verse, formed by a word which spans the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth foot. The shortest and simplest word which can do this is obviously one of two syllables, as in these (far more typical) lines of Ennius: (3) hastati spargunt hastas, fit ferreus imber (Ann. 284 V), (4) aeternum seritote diem concorditer ambo (Ann. 106 V). In (3) hastas spans the critical point, and the break between words does not occur in the middle of the verse, but 'cuts' it (producing a caesura) in the middle of the third foot, and also in the middle of the fourth foot (or after five and seven half-feet respectively, a penthemimeral and hephthemimeral caesura respectively). In (4) the break in the third foot occurs not after the first, long syllable (which would make it a strong or masculine caesura), but after the second, short syllable (a weak or feminine caesura); and in (4) too there is a strong caesura in the fourth foot. Of the first two hundred complete and genuine lines of A. 8 (1-202, excluding 41 and 46), 67·5 % have the mid-point of the verse spanned by a single word which has either (a) spondaic form (30 %) , or (b) anapaestic form (24·5 %), or (c) iambic form (13 %). They are all illus­ trated in A. 8.102-9 (102-5 (a); 106-7 (c); 108-9 (b)). The figures quoted in­ clude words which come to have the metrical form in question through elision of the last syllable. The second obvious way of avoiding a break at the crucial point is to place before it a single long monosyllable whose sense unites it much more intimately with the word(s) following than with the word(s) preceding: it is almost always a preposition or conjunction; cf., for example, A. 8.82-3: candida per silvam cum fetu concolor albo procubuit viridique in litore conspicitur sus. .
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