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Nobody has worked on this article for some time and it certainly needs a facelift. I'll be writing up an overview of Latin prosody and the main meters, using Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer Longman 1962, and Peter Green The Poems of Catullus U.C.P. 2005. These books map out a good exposition of the cardinal points, which is needed in an overview article like this. Hopefully others can cite other sources to support the points I make. The need for a facelift emerged from the discovery of Mess in articles to do with Iambs. Mess exists because there is no coherent structure to verse articles generally. McCronion ( talk) 02:11, 3 August 2011 (UTC) I won't cover the theatrical meters. They probably deserve an article on their own since Plautus and Terence are before the period I'm working around - late republic/early empire. Others can add those meters here if they wish, though it would require a slight change to the intro. The models I'll use are Catullus, Horace and Virgil. We probably need to set up other articles to cover in depth the treatment of other poets within the given meters. McCronion ( talk) 04:23, 3 August 2011 (UTC) The old edit offers this:
However, note 1 of my present edit indicates that there is some uncertainty about how the Romans recited poetry, and my Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer uses the term 'mora' in relation to Latin. So I suspect that Allen (2003) is being a bit dogmatic or he is being quoted as such when maybe he is more flexible than that. I notice also that the link stress-timed seems to indicate that the theory is postulated and not necessarily accepted. So I am going to water Allen's comment down a bit. Comment? Defiance? Submission? McCronion ( talk) 06:37, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I tried the following format and I'm storing it here in case I decide to use it. The problem is that people might object to notations over vowels, since that usually indicates vowel length rather than syllable length. The other thing is that the caesuras are hard to see unless I doublespace either side of the | , which cuts through words, so that -|- then marks a cut word.
I don't like the existing format either since it looks a bit like an accident. Here is the existing format: - u u|- u u|-|| -| - -| - u u |- ^ Arma virumque canō, Trōiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs, - u u|- -|- u u|- || -|- u u| - ^ Ītaliam, fātō profugus, Lāvīniaque vēnit - u u| - -| - ||-| - -| - u u |- ^ lītora, mult(um)_ill(e)_et terrīs iactātus et altō - u u|- -| - u u|- ||-|- u u |- ^ vī superum saevae memorem Iūnōnis ob īram; The blue box is disconcerting and the placement of the caesura is awkward since it should lie between letters not over letters. Also I don't like the use of anceps for the final syllable since really there is no ambiguity about the quoted syllables. The anceps belongs in an abstract scheme and I've made one of those for the article. I notice also that the caesura in the second version suggests i|lle and te|rris and ia|ctatus, whereas I thought it was meant to be l|l and r|r and c|t. Anyway I'm spending too much time worrying about formats. McCronion ( talk) 06:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC) solutionsWell why re-invent the wheel? The article Prosody (poetry)#Greek and Latin has some good ingredients and somebody has cleverly come up with this notation:
Long vowels only are marked -, dipthongs are understood to be long and are unmarked, and short vowels are marked u when coinciding with short syllables—hence all long syllables are indicated by long vowels or dipthongs or unmarked vowels. Genius! Trouble is, it is intuitively understood by people who already know Latin prosody and it is difficult to explain to people who don't! Hmmm. Such is life. The rich get richer and the poor just have to put up with it. But not if McRobin Hood can help it! So here is my choice, which simply involves hyphenating words that include a foot end. Simplicity itself. - u u| - u u|- || -| - - | - u u |- ^ Arma vi-rumque ca-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmus ab ōrīs, - u u|- -|- u u |- || -|- u u | - ^ Ītali-am, fā-tō profu-gus, Lā-vīniaque vēnit - u u | - - | - ||- | - -| - u u |- ^ lītora, mult(um)_il-l(e) et ter-rīs iactātus et altō - u u| - -| - u u|- || -|- u u |- ^ vī supe-rum sae-vae memo-rem Iū-nōnis ob īram; Now I just have to find some way to remove the awkward blue box. McCronion ( talk) 22:58, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
(2) The blue box appears if and only if there is a blank space at the beginning of the line. Indent the lines instead and that problem goes away:
Thanks for taking an interest. Yes the font is a large part of the issue. Hopefully there is an alternative somewhere somehow. McCronion ( talk) 00:15, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
- u u| - u u|- || -| - - | - u u |- ^ Arma vi-rumque ca-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmus ab ōrīs, - u u|- -|- u u |- || -|- u u | - ^ Ītali-am, fā-tō profu-gus, Lā-vīniaque vēnit - u u | - - | - ||- | - -| - u u |- ^ lītora, mult(um)_il-l(e) et ter-rīs iactātus et altō - u u| - -| - u u|- || -|- u u |- ^ vī supe-rum sae-vae memo-rem Iū-nōnis ob īram;
Excellent - the font seems exactly what is needed and I'll try it out later. The symbol ^ was already there when I started the article. It's not circumflex (at least not in Greek). Usually the anceps sign is a dash over u but that's not available and I guess people can make up their own symbols if need be. Personally I don't like x as I can't see how they get that out of - and u. Anyhow I'm not marking anceps for examples such as above and I'm not sure I'll even need it for abstract schemes. If I do use it for abstract schemes I guess I'll comply with WP convention for x. Thanks for input! McCronion ( talk) 08:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
All my sources scan the final syllable in hexameters as long or short, but brevis in longo would mean that the final syllable is always long, wouldn't it? I have so far avoided using any anceps syllable in the passages scanned in the article instead presenting alternative schemes with either long or short. I certainly think anceps should be mentioned as a term in Latin prosody but so far I still have no intention of using it in the scansion (I'm following Peter Green's lead in The Poems of Catullus). I never thought of using ū but my different sources certainly would support that use rather than x, which none of them uses. But if x is the WP custom I'll employ it if I get around to using any anceps symbol. Incidentally, the Aeneid passage as quoted above has errors in it already, such as the commas and caesuras, and surely an anceps symbol is wrong too, whether the final syllable is long or short. I would only use it in abstract schemes. Anyway, I'll just keep doing what I am doing and others can rework it later if they feel it needs it. Thanks for advice and please keep the suggestions coming. If I don't follow all advice it's because I'm a tidal phenomenon and I can only turn at the destined hour. :} McCronion ( talk) 00:18, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
That's a few too many ifs and buts for a simple man like me and I'll leave you to make the necessary changes when and as you think necessary. A couple of thoughts: 1) maybe some of the excruciating punctilios of prosody should be left for articles specialising in specific meters or concepts, or else maybe they can be placed in foot notes here or subsections titled Note. Even my head spins with all these details and more could be less if it ends up frightening off readers who are trying to understand the basics. But I'll just keep motoring along and by all means follow up as you please. McCronion ( talk) 02:53, 13 August 2011 (UTC) In fact, the fine details about the use of anceps probably justify not employing anceps notation/concepts in this article except very briefly in passing. We can then link to an anceps article that covers detailed explanations. I think there is a place in a popular encylopaedia for basic overviews such as you find in Latin primers and introductions and notes of editions of Latin poetry. McCronion ( talk) 03:13, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
My sources definitely mark the final syllable in dactylic hexameter as either long or short. That's David Mankin (Horace Epodes 1995), Peter Green (The Poems of Catullus 2005), R.D.Williams (Virgil: Aeneid' 1972), Kennedy and Mountford (Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer 1962). I can't ignore that lead so long as I continue using those sources. Maybe they are out of date, or they are presenting matters in a simplistic way, but I've got to follow them. I hope it's OK with you if I change that bit back. Otherwise I'm completely lost. McCronion ( talk) 03:37, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
OK. I'll keep using the sources I've got and you are welcome to change things to suit more exacting sources. Things might get a bit confusing if we are both working on it at the same time however. So I'll go through first and you follow up later? McCronion ( talk) 04:02, 13 August 2011 (UTC) None of my sources gives definitive guidelines about use of caesura, except that, technically, it occurs wherever a word ends inside a foot. Generally they talk about 'caesura' as if there is one per line, a dominant caesura. As far as I understand, even scholars sometimes debate the best placement of the caesura. Below is my thinking about the scansion of the first 4 lines of Aeneid. Let me know if you disagree about my placement of the caesura, or what you think the best approach is. - u u| - u u|- || -| - - | - u u |- - Arma vi-rumque ca-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmus ab ōrīs - u u|- -|- || u u | - -|- u u | - u Ītali-am fā-tō profu-gus Lā-vīniaque vēnit - u u | - - | - || - | - - | - u u |- - lītora, mult(um) il-l(e) et ter-rīs iac-tātus et altō - u u| - || - | - u u| - -|- u u |- u vī supe-rum, sae-vae memo-rem Iū-nōnis ob īram; I followed the advice in the scholarly literature that the dactylic hex caesura is far and away most commonly ppaced in the third foot. I didn't mark in a caesura after the comma in line 3 because it's a diaeresis. Anyway, if anybody knows better, please advise. McCronion ( talk) 00:52, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Excellent, I'll recan accordingly. I did consider the fourth foot but after my sources said the caesura was overwhelmingly in the third, I was reluctant to have caesuras in the fourth foot in lines 3 and 4. The points you made here could be inserted in the article. McCronion ( talk) 03:53, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
That's good. The 4 Aeneid lines then demonstrate the three positions for the caesura: mostly third foot, sometimes the fourth, and just occassionally the second. The article presently deals with i as a double consonant as in eius but not as as a single consonant, so yes the issue should be addressed in the Prosody (Latin)#Quantity section. On a more general note: There seems to be a difference in some conventions in prosody, such as naming of long/short syllables as heavy/light, but also on the scanning of the last syllable in dactylic hexameter, which can be long or short in my sources but in Wareh's preferred sources is always long. I think the reader should be advised of different conventions or they'll edit the article according to whichever source they have in hand. I've done that with naming quantity length and I think we should do that with the scansion of the dactylic hexameter. If we could find a source that actually considers differences in convention we would live in the best of all possible worlds and we could cite it. Wareh's notion of prosody as a means of social control in the British education system is interesting (see above) but I'm not sure there is a source for it. I've added a note to Wareh's edit of dactylic hexameter to take account of different schemes. I think that may be the best way to go forward. McCronion ( talk) 22:39, 13 August 2011 (UTC) Further on the above points, the article now says that the last syllable of a verse is long by position. I guess that means where the syllable is short a pause was used to make up the time difference, or it was filled by a beat of music, and I am wondering what the proof of that might be. Is there a comment by any ancient scholars about what was done to make up the time difference, or is it an inference by modern scholars? That is the sort of info we should add. McCronion ( talk) 00:14, 14 August 2011 (UTC) Actually here is another issue: the meters as demonstrated in the article aren't necessarily complete lines of verse. For example, the next meter I meant to do was iambic dimeter, which sometimes is joined to the hemiepes to form a line of verse in the 2nd Archilochian. Likewise the second hemiepes in dactylic pentameter can be a point of reference for the 3rd Archilochian, where a hemiepes is joined to iambic dimeter. In that case, the scheme presented in my sources is more flexible. Moreover what about the choliamb? It is meant to end on a lame note. How does that fit in with the definition that the final syllable is always long by position? McCronion ( talk) 02:06, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
OK so both the ancient authorities indicate that a pause makes up the missing time. Excellent: that's something to add to the article. Also thanks for your point about the choliamb - the definition you give is very coherent (it was rattling around in the back of my mind like loose change but I didn't quite get my hand on it in time to pay the toll). I agree also that the main issue seems to be pedagogical. I don't think of my role here as a teacher, more like a student presenting information as clearly as I can. It makes sense to treat verses here as units of verse to be mixed together and the final syllable in that case is not necessarily long by position. Of course the dactylic hex is different and so are other long units but then we come to the issue of consistency in notation: I think it is more coherent to present all the schemes as if they are units not lines. The schemes in my sources all seem to use that approach i.e. none of them marks the final syllable long by position when it is short by nature. Anyway, I'm feeling a bit like a bull in a paddock and I should back off before I gore somebody. I'll come back later when time and mood allow. McCronion ( talk) 22:10, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
However, I'm not doing any further work here at WP for the forseeable future, and I won't follow up the points I have made here. McCronion ( talk) 23:42, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this and I've decided that quantitative verse necessarily has problems explaining pauses since of course they occupy intervals of time. So the ancient scholars decided to ignore the metrical nature of the pause and they invented the myth that somehow a final short syllable is magically lengthened when, as a matter of fact, it is made equal to a long syllable by the addition of a pause. If they interpreted the pause as a quantity, they would then have had problems accounting for it elsewhere in the line. I don't understand why the myth has to be peddled today. Especially since it leads to other absurdities when trying to schematise meters (e.g. tediously depicting every last syllable as long, even when it happens to be short). Maybe I have misunderstood something here, as I am using reason and common sense rather than any manual on verse. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 02:33, 30 November 2011 (UTC) Actually the Welsh nut made a good suggestion earlier, coming up with a specially formatted form of brevis in longo: ῡ. I'll try that out. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 03:49, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
Props? When an electronic signal from Cardiff talks of props, I guess he must be talking Rugby. It was a game the Welsh used to be good at once. Is the Welsh national team now borrowing props from other countries? I haven't played in years so I can't help out. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 06:03, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
OK, you aren't Welsh. I'll just have to call you 'the nut' after this. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 09:54, 30 November 2011 (UTC) |
I'll continue with my current edit. My expectation is that other articles will spring up sometime to cover specific cases, such as the prosody of comic drama, which I won't develop here. This article is an overview of Latin prosody in the late republic/early empire period and there isn't room enough for everything. It's coarse-grained. Other articles can take a fine-grained look at all the ifs and buts and different theories about specific systems. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 02:36, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
I believe it is not best practice to describe syllables as long by nature or long by position. It should be vowels that are so described. A vowel short by nature becomes long by position if it precedes an x or z, or, with exceptions, a combination of consonants. The examples given of dux and dant may be a bit unfortunate, since the u in dux is short by nature, as appears in its declined forms like ducis, and dant is a form of the only a-stem Latin verb where the a is short, as in damus, datus, etc. These are in fact examples of length by position. Rus and vas would be better examples of length by nature. People may wish to contest these remarks, but if there is no disagreement perhaps the article should be altered. Seadowns ( talk) 09:26, 21 September 2017 (UTC)yyllable's
::::::Yes, at the end of a pentameter, at least. I am not quite so sure about other poets than Ovid, but the fact that Ovid avoided a short vowel ending is enough to show that the final syllable was not long merely by being final. If it had been, there would have been no reason for Ovid's practice. Seadowns ( talk) 13:05, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
I personally find this section to be rather long and confusing, and wonder what somebody coming to the subject for the first time would be able to get from it. All it really wants to say is that in Latin verse the word stress or accent, and the ictus of the metre, sometimes coincide and sometimes do not. This sets up an interplay which poets could exploit, as in the first line of the Aeneid, where the relative pronoun qui has been placed second in its clause to avoid a coincidence of ictus and accent in the fourth foot. There is no need to mention what happens in English or Greek, or the speculations of scholars about how the Romans spoke verse. If the section were cut down like this it would be clearer and easier, but still get the full message of two rhythms across. Seadowns ( talk) 09:28, 23 August 2017 (UTC) I have now polished this section without change of substance, and hope people will like the results. If not, they can revert it. Parts of it still seem to me to be unnecessary. I have not made the obvious point that the way in which verse was read would have varied considerably. Seadowns ( talk) 01:47, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
Well this is a bugger. A 1st Archilochian, according to my source David Mankin Horace: Odes is dact. hex followed by dact tetra catalectic. But other sources such as here say the second line is a hemiepes. The online googlebook I pasted above says dact. hex + dact. tetra. cat. is an 'Alcmanian Strophe' but it is a lot like a 1st Archilochian.
I'll stick with Mankin, but I'll also cite the google book's opinion that it is in fact an Alcmanian Strophe. Unless someone knows better. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 05:46, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
The WP article Alcmanian verse agrees with the Google Book. But Mankin is a top scholar, publishing with Cambridge U.P., and I assume there must be different conventions involved. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 06:06, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
I'll go with the oldies but note Mankin's use, and include sections for both forms. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 23:57, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
According to Green's chart, if I read it right, Catullus sometimes used a spondee in the 4th foot of a choliamb. I haven't found it yet and I think it might be a misprint. I'll remove it from the article chart unless someone else can find a spondee there. His choliambs are poems 8, 22, 31, 37, 39, 44, 59, 60 Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 08:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
Two important and frequently found metres not treated here are hendecasyllabics, the metre of Catullus's first poem, and the Asclepiad family, one member of which is the metre of Horace's first ode. Seadowns ( talk) 14:29, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
This is going to need a bit of work: Latin verse actually isn't divided into "feet," any more than Greek is. We can do better than simply re-hashing the mistakes of long-ago scholars! The whole "meters" section needs to be re-worked. I will try to get to this in the near future, though my major work is over in Latin VP. A. Mahoney ( talk) 14:16, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
::Roll on time-travel, so you can go back and tell Ovid how wrong he was! Try to get him at Tomi, he'd really love a visit. Seadowns ( talk) 16:20, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
It is rather bold to call the concept of feet a "mistake" of earlier scholars, when it was explicitly used by Ovid himself! "Musa per undenas emodulanda pedes" Amores 1.1.30. It can't be a mistake to follow the master. Seadowns ( talk) 00:43, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
I can understand how a not very bright person could deny that Latin verse can be divided into feet if he or she did not know that Ovid and Quintilian used this word, and others too perhaps. But to take this view while knowing that Ovid wrote as above is inconceivably stupid! Liscaraig ( talk) 09:02, 27 May 2024 (UTC) Liscaraig ( talk) 17:22, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
Now here's an interesting comment, by R.D.Dawe ed. Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Cambridge U.P. 1982, page 90: Sophocles does not differ from the other poets in allowing short syllables to stand at the end of a line where a long is required by the meter, a practice normally justified by the evidently too facile explanation that the voice pauses there. A little before that, he says: Sophocles evidently felt that there was no significant break at line end: he uses the definite article at the end of a line with its noun at the beginning of the next - Antigone 409, Electra 879, Philoctetes 263, Oedipus at Col. 351... In other words, for Dawe there is no real distinction between brevis in longo and anceps. I imagine the same holds true in Latin verse for some scholars. I'm not going to remove the brevis in longo stuff from the article as it does have an intellectual neatness to it, which I like, but poetry isn't always neat and maybe some kind of reservation can be added later. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 12:56, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
On the other hand, there is an appendix on meters where Dawe uses brevis in longo. I don't know how he reconciles that with the statements I quoted. According to my Greek Grammar (1879): The last syllable of every verse is common and it may be made long or short to suit the metre, without regard to its usual quantity. It is called 'syllaba anceps'. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 22:12, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
And the brevis in longo article still lacks citations, which makes its use in this article a bit problematic. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 22:22, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
This concept seems utterly pointless to me. How can you tell whether it is true or false? It should go! Signed in absence of tilde Seadowns — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seadowns ( talk • contribs) 13:02, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
Seadowns ( talk) 23:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC) PS I had never heard of Chuck Oughton before, but his study of Livy has not disabled him from setting out facts briefly and clearly. Seadowns ( talk) 00:07, 24 July 2017 (UTC) Later --he is inadequate on caesuras, though. Seadowns ( talk) 13:45, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
-que,, and then shortened again by the -que "breaking off" to the next syllable. Is this really profitable?! However, perhaps this discussion does not really belong here, since it does not affect the article. I do, however, agree that the brevis in longo concept is not needed, apparently being an entity that has been created beyond necessity. Seadowns ( talk) 13:24, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
Is this template tag still relevant? The grammar and spelling look fine to me. Pbericcc ( talk) 05:05, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't think it is a good idea to use the same symbol (||) to represent both diaeresis (a compulsory break between feet) and caesura (an optional break in the middle of a foot). It is confusing for the reader; does it represent the end of a foot or not? Since the caesura is not an essential part of the metre, unlike the diaeresis, I think it would be better not to write it at all, or else use a different symbol for it such as¦ Kanjuzi ( talk) 09:18, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
I have deleted these sentences: "There is usually a break between words after the fifth or sixth syllable. In the second half of the verse the stress of the words will thus usually, or always, coincide with the long syllables." The first claim is so weak as to be meaningless (it would be difficult to write a hendecasyllable without such a break). The second is not true, since the break, if it is there, doesn't make the stress coincide with ictus in the second half: witness verses 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 of Catullus 2. Kanjuzi ( talk) 15:47, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
It says: "A dactylic hexameter consists of a hemiepes, a biceps, a second hemiepes, and a final long element, so DuuD—." This way of analysing a hexameter seems dubious and unconventional. Is there a citation? Kanjuzi ( talk) 17:22, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
I think this is unenlightening and should go. Seadowns ( talk) 18:24, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Am I alone in finding the double scansion in this article, in which long and short marks are written not only for the syllables, but also for the individual vowels, both ugly and distracting? No standard work does this. Moreover, it isn't clear if the vowels of words such as "iam" were long or short. Kanjuzi ( talk) 16:47, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
I agree. The marks over the vowels should go. Seadowns ( talk) 18:21, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
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Nobody has worked on this article for some time and it certainly needs a facelift. I'll be writing up an overview of Latin prosody and the main meters, using Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer Longman 1962, and Peter Green The Poems of Catullus U.C.P. 2005. These books map out a good exposition of the cardinal points, which is needed in an overview article like this. Hopefully others can cite other sources to support the points I make. The need for a facelift emerged from the discovery of Mess in articles to do with Iambs. Mess exists because there is no coherent structure to verse articles generally. McCronion ( talk) 02:11, 3 August 2011 (UTC) I won't cover the theatrical meters. They probably deserve an article on their own since Plautus and Terence are before the period I'm working around - late republic/early empire. Others can add those meters here if they wish, though it would require a slight change to the intro. The models I'll use are Catullus, Horace and Virgil. We probably need to set up other articles to cover in depth the treatment of other poets within the given meters. McCronion ( talk) 04:23, 3 August 2011 (UTC) The old edit offers this:
However, note 1 of my present edit indicates that there is some uncertainty about how the Romans recited poetry, and my Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer uses the term 'mora' in relation to Latin. So I suspect that Allen (2003) is being a bit dogmatic or he is being quoted as such when maybe he is more flexible than that. I notice also that the link stress-timed seems to indicate that the theory is postulated and not necessarily accepted. So I am going to water Allen's comment down a bit. Comment? Defiance? Submission? McCronion ( talk) 06:37, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I tried the following format and I'm storing it here in case I decide to use it. The problem is that people might object to notations over vowels, since that usually indicates vowel length rather than syllable length. The other thing is that the caesuras are hard to see unless I doublespace either side of the | , which cuts through words, so that -|- then marks a cut word.
I don't like the existing format either since it looks a bit like an accident. Here is the existing format: - u u|- u u|-|| -| - -| - u u |- ^ Arma virumque canō, Trōiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs, - u u|- -|- u u|- || -|- u u| - ^ Ītaliam, fātō profugus, Lāvīniaque vēnit - u u| - -| - ||-| - -| - u u |- ^ lītora, mult(um)_ill(e)_et terrīs iactātus et altō - u u|- -| - u u|- ||-|- u u |- ^ vī superum saevae memorem Iūnōnis ob īram; The blue box is disconcerting and the placement of the caesura is awkward since it should lie between letters not over letters. Also I don't like the use of anceps for the final syllable since really there is no ambiguity about the quoted syllables. The anceps belongs in an abstract scheme and I've made one of those for the article. I notice also that the caesura in the second version suggests i|lle and te|rris and ia|ctatus, whereas I thought it was meant to be l|l and r|r and c|t. Anyway I'm spending too much time worrying about formats. McCronion ( talk) 06:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC) solutionsWell why re-invent the wheel? The article Prosody (poetry)#Greek and Latin has some good ingredients and somebody has cleverly come up with this notation:
Long vowels only are marked -, dipthongs are understood to be long and are unmarked, and short vowels are marked u when coinciding with short syllables—hence all long syllables are indicated by long vowels or dipthongs or unmarked vowels. Genius! Trouble is, it is intuitively understood by people who already know Latin prosody and it is difficult to explain to people who don't! Hmmm. Such is life. The rich get richer and the poor just have to put up with it. But not if McRobin Hood can help it! So here is my choice, which simply involves hyphenating words that include a foot end. Simplicity itself. - u u| - u u|- || -| - - | - u u |- ^ Arma vi-rumque ca-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmus ab ōrīs, - u u|- -|- u u |- || -|- u u | - ^ Ītali-am, fā-tō profu-gus, Lā-vīniaque vēnit - u u | - - | - ||- | - -| - u u |- ^ lītora, mult(um)_il-l(e) et ter-rīs iactātus et altō - u u| - -| - u u|- || -|- u u |- ^ vī supe-rum sae-vae memo-rem Iū-nōnis ob īram; Now I just have to find some way to remove the awkward blue box. McCronion ( talk) 22:58, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
(2) The blue box appears if and only if there is a blank space at the beginning of the line. Indent the lines instead and that problem goes away:
Thanks for taking an interest. Yes the font is a large part of the issue. Hopefully there is an alternative somewhere somehow. McCronion ( talk) 00:15, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
- u u| - u u|- || -| - - | - u u |- ^ Arma vi-rumque ca-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmus ab ōrīs, - u u|- -|- u u |- || -|- u u | - ^ Ītali-am, fā-tō profu-gus, Lā-vīniaque vēnit - u u | - - | - ||- | - -| - u u |- ^ lītora, mult(um)_il-l(e) et ter-rīs iactātus et altō - u u| - -| - u u|- || -|- u u |- ^ vī supe-rum sae-vae memo-rem Iū-nōnis ob īram;
Excellent - the font seems exactly what is needed and I'll try it out later. The symbol ^ was already there when I started the article. It's not circumflex (at least not in Greek). Usually the anceps sign is a dash over u but that's not available and I guess people can make up their own symbols if need be. Personally I don't like x as I can't see how they get that out of - and u. Anyhow I'm not marking anceps for examples such as above and I'm not sure I'll even need it for abstract schemes. If I do use it for abstract schemes I guess I'll comply with WP convention for x. Thanks for input! McCronion ( talk) 08:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
All my sources scan the final syllable in hexameters as long or short, but brevis in longo would mean that the final syllable is always long, wouldn't it? I have so far avoided using any anceps syllable in the passages scanned in the article instead presenting alternative schemes with either long or short. I certainly think anceps should be mentioned as a term in Latin prosody but so far I still have no intention of using it in the scansion (I'm following Peter Green's lead in The Poems of Catullus). I never thought of using ū but my different sources certainly would support that use rather than x, which none of them uses. But if x is the WP custom I'll employ it if I get around to using any anceps symbol. Incidentally, the Aeneid passage as quoted above has errors in it already, such as the commas and caesuras, and surely an anceps symbol is wrong too, whether the final syllable is long or short. I would only use it in abstract schemes. Anyway, I'll just keep doing what I am doing and others can rework it later if they feel it needs it. Thanks for advice and please keep the suggestions coming. If I don't follow all advice it's because I'm a tidal phenomenon and I can only turn at the destined hour. :} McCronion ( talk) 00:18, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
That's a few too many ifs and buts for a simple man like me and I'll leave you to make the necessary changes when and as you think necessary. A couple of thoughts: 1) maybe some of the excruciating punctilios of prosody should be left for articles specialising in specific meters or concepts, or else maybe they can be placed in foot notes here or subsections titled Note. Even my head spins with all these details and more could be less if it ends up frightening off readers who are trying to understand the basics. But I'll just keep motoring along and by all means follow up as you please. McCronion ( talk) 02:53, 13 August 2011 (UTC) In fact, the fine details about the use of anceps probably justify not employing anceps notation/concepts in this article except very briefly in passing. We can then link to an anceps article that covers detailed explanations. I think there is a place in a popular encylopaedia for basic overviews such as you find in Latin primers and introductions and notes of editions of Latin poetry. McCronion ( talk) 03:13, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
My sources definitely mark the final syllable in dactylic hexameter as either long or short. That's David Mankin (Horace Epodes 1995), Peter Green (The Poems of Catullus 2005), R.D.Williams (Virgil: Aeneid' 1972), Kennedy and Mountford (Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer 1962). I can't ignore that lead so long as I continue using those sources. Maybe they are out of date, or they are presenting matters in a simplistic way, but I've got to follow them. I hope it's OK with you if I change that bit back. Otherwise I'm completely lost. McCronion ( talk) 03:37, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
OK. I'll keep using the sources I've got and you are welcome to change things to suit more exacting sources. Things might get a bit confusing if we are both working on it at the same time however. So I'll go through first and you follow up later? McCronion ( talk) 04:02, 13 August 2011 (UTC) None of my sources gives definitive guidelines about use of caesura, except that, technically, it occurs wherever a word ends inside a foot. Generally they talk about 'caesura' as if there is one per line, a dominant caesura. As far as I understand, even scholars sometimes debate the best placement of the caesura. Below is my thinking about the scansion of the first 4 lines of Aeneid. Let me know if you disagree about my placement of the caesura, or what you think the best approach is. - u u| - u u|- || -| - - | - u u |- - Arma vi-rumque ca-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmus ab ōrīs - u u|- -|- || u u | - -|- u u | - u Ītali-am fā-tō profu-gus Lā-vīniaque vēnit - u u | - - | - || - | - - | - u u |- - lītora, mult(um) il-l(e) et ter-rīs iac-tātus et altō - u u| - || - | - u u| - -|- u u |- u vī supe-rum, sae-vae memo-rem Iū-nōnis ob īram; I followed the advice in the scholarly literature that the dactylic hex caesura is far and away most commonly ppaced in the third foot. I didn't mark in a caesura after the comma in line 3 because it's a diaeresis. Anyway, if anybody knows better, please advise. McCronion ( talk) 00:52, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Excellent, I'll recan accordingly. I did consider the fourth foot but after my sources said the caesura was overwhelmingly in the third, I was reluctant to have caesuras in the fourth foot in lines 3 and 4. The points you made here could be inserted in the article. McCronion ( talk) 03:53, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
That's good. The 4 Aeneid lines then demonstrate the three positions for the caesura: mostly third foot, sometimes the fourth, and just occassionally the second. The article presently deals with i as a double consonant as in eius but not as as a single consonant, so yes the issue should be addressed in the Prosody (Latin)#Quantity section. On a more general note: There seems to be a difference in some conventions in prosody, such as naming of long/short syllables as heavy/light, but also on the scanning of the last syllable in dactylic hexameter, which can be long or short in my sources but in Wareh's preferred sources is always long. I think the reader should be advised of different conventions or they'll edit the article according to whichever source they have in hand. I've done that with naming quantity length and I think we should do that with the scansion of the dactylic hexameter. If we could find a source that actually considers differences in convention we would live in the best of all possible worlds and we could cite it. Wareh's notion of prosody as a means of social control in the British education system is interesting (see above) but I'm not sure there is a source for it. I've added a note to Wareh's edit of dactylic hexameter to take account of different schemes. I think that may be the best way to go forward. McCronion ( talk) 22:39, 13 August 2011 (UTC) Further on the above points, the article now says that the last syllable of a verse is long by position. I guess that means where the syllable is short a pause was used to make up the time difference, or it was filled by a beat of music, and I am wondering what the proof of that might be. Is there a comment by any ancient scholars about what was done to make up the time difference, or is it an inference by modern scholars? That is the sort of info we should add. McCronion ( talk) 00:14, 14 August 2011 (UTC) Actually here is another issue: the meters as demonstrated in the article aren't necessarily complete lines of verse. For example, the next meter I meant to do was iambic dimeter, which sometimes is joined to the hemiepes to form a line of verse in the 2nd Archilochian. Likewise the second hemiepes in dactylic pentameter can be a point of reference for the 3rd Archilochian, where a hemiepes is joined to iambic dimeter. In that case, the scheme presented in my sources is more flexible. Moreover what about the choliamb? It is meant to end on a lame note. How does that fit in with the definition that the final syllable is always long by position? McCronion ( talk) 02:06, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
OK so both the ancient authorities indicate that a pause makes up the missing time. Excellent: that's something to add to the article. Also thanks for your point about the choliamb - the definition you give is very coherent (it was rattling around in the back of my mind like loose change but I didn't quite get my hand on it in time to pay the toll). I agree also that the main issue seems to be pedagogical. I don't think of my role here as a teacher, more like a student presenting information as clearly as I can. It makes sense to treat verses here as units of verse to be mixed together and the final syllable in that case is not necessarily long by position. Of course the dactylic hex is different and so are other long units but then we come to the issue of consistency in notation: I think it is more coherent to present all the schemes as if they are units not lines. The schemes in my sources all seem to use that approach i.e. none of them marks the final syllable long by position when it is short by nature. Anyway, I'm feeling a bit like a bull in a paddock and I should back off before I gore somebody. I'll come back later when time and mood allow. McCronion ( talk) 22:10, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
However, I'm not doing any further work here at WP for the forseeable future, and I won't follow up the points I have made here. McCronion ( talk) 23:42, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this and I've decided that quantitative verse necessarily has problems explaining pauses since of course they occupy intervals of time. So the ancient scholars decided to ignore the metrical nature of the pause and they invented the myth that somehow a final short syllable is magically lengthened when, as a matter of fact, it is made equal to a long syllable by the addition of a pause. If they interpreted the pause as a quantity, they would then have had problems accounting for it elsewhere in the line. I don't understand why the myth has to be peddled today. Especially since it leads to other absurdities when trying to schematise meters (e.g. tediously depicting every last syllable as long, even when it happens to be short). Maybe I have misunderstood something here, as I am using reason and common sense rather than any manual on verse. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 02:33, 30 November 2011 (UTC) Actually the Welsh nut made a good suggestion earlier, coming up with a specially formatted form of brevis in longo: ῡ. I'll try that out. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 03:49, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
Props? When an electronic signal from Cardiff talks of props, I guess he must be talking Rugby. It was a game the Welsh used to be good at once. Is the Welsh national team now borrowing props from other countries? I haven't played in years so I can't help out. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 06:03, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
OK, you aren't Welsh. I'll just have to call you 'the nut' after this. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 09:54, 30 November 2011 (UTC) |
I'll continue with my current edit. My expectation is that other articles will spring up sometime to cover specific cases, such as the prosody of comic drama, which I won't develop here. This article is an overview of Latin prosody in the late republic/early empire period and there isn't room enough for everything. It's coarse-grained. Other articles can take a fine-grained look at all the ifs and buts and different theories about specific systems. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 02:36, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
I believe it is not best practice to describe syllables as long by nature or long by position. It should be vowels that are so described. A vowel short by nature becomes long by position if it precedes an x or z, or, with exceptions, a combination of consonants. The examples given of dux and dant may be a bit unfortunate, since the u in dux is short by nature, as appears in its declined forms like ducis, and dant is a form of the only a-stem Latin verb where the a is short, as in damus, datus, etc. These are in fact examples of length by position. Rus and vas would be better examples of length by nature. People may wish to contest these remarks, but if there is no disagreement perhaps the article should be altered. Seadowns ( talk) 09:26, 21 September 2017 (UTC)yyllable's
::::::Yes, at the end of a pentameter, at least. I am not quite so sure about other poets than Ovid, but the fact that Ovid avoided a short vowel ending is enough to show that the final syllable was not long merely by being final. If it had been, there would have been no reason for Ovid's practice. Seadowns ( talk) 13:05, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
I personally find this section to be rather long and confusing, and wonder what somebody coming to the subject for the first time would be able to get from it. All it really wants to say is that in Latin verse the word stress or accent, and the ictus of the metre, sometimes coincide and sometimes do not. This sets up an interplay which poets could exploit, as in the first line of the Aeneid, where the relative pronoun qui has been placed second in its clause to avoid a coincidence of ictus and accent in the fourth foot. There is no need to mention what happens in English or Greek, or the speculations of scholars about how the Romans spoke verse. If the section were cut down like this it would be clearer and easier, but still get the full message of two rhythms across. Seadowns ( talk) 09:28, 23 August 2017 (UTC) I have now polished this section without change of substance, and hope people will like the results. If not, they can revert it. Parts of it still seem to me to be unnecessary. I have not made the obvious point that the way in which verse was read would have varied considerably. Seadowns ( talk) 01:47, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
Well this is a bugger. A 1st Archilochian, according to my source David Mankin Horace: Odes is dact. hex followed by dact tetra catalectic. But other sources such as here say the second line is a hemiepes. The online googlebook I pasted above says dact. hex + dact. tetra. cat. is an 'Alcmanian Strophe' but it is a lot like a 1st Archilochian.
I'll stick with Mankin, but I'll also cite the google book's opinion that it is in fact an Alcmanian Strophe. Unless someone knows better. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 05:46, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
The WP article Alcmanian verse agrees with the Google Book. But Mankin is a top scholar, publishing with Cambridge U.P., and I assume there must be different conventions involved. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 06:06, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
I'll go with the oldies but note Mankin's use, and include sections for both forms. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 23:57, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
According to Green's chart, if I read it right, Catullus sometimes used a spondee in the 4th foot of a choliamb. I haven't found it yet and I think it might be a misprint. I'll remove it from the article chart unless someone else can find a spondee there. His choliambs are poems 8, 22, 31, 37, 39, 44, 59, 60 Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 08:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
Two important and frequently found metres not treated here are hendecasyllabics, the metre of Catullus's first poem, and the Asclepiad family, one member of which is the metre of Horace's first ode. Seadowns ( talk) 14:29, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
This is going to need a bit of work: Latin verse actually isn't divided into "feet," any more than Greek is. We can do better than simply re-hashing the mistakes of long-ago scholars! The whole "meters" section needs to be re-worked. I will try to get to this in the near future, though my major work is over in Latin VP. A. Mahoney ( talk) 14:16, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
::Roll on time-travel, so you can go back and tell Ovid how wrong he was! Try to get him at Tomi, he'd really love a visit. Seadowns ( talk) 16:20, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
It is rather bold to call the concept of feet a "mistake" of earlier scholars, when it was explicitly used by Ovid himself! "Musa per undenas emodulanda pedes" Amores 1.1.30. It can't be a mistake to follow the master. Seadowns ( talk) 00:43, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
I can understand how a not very bright person could deny that Latin verse can be divided into feet if he or she did not know that Ovid and Quintilian used this word, and others too perhaps. But to take this view while knowing that Ovid wrote as above is inconceivably stupid! Liscaraig ( talk) 09:02, 27 May 2024 (UTC) Liscaraig ( talk) 17:22, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
Now here's an interesting comment, by R.D.Dawe ed. Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Cambridge U.P. 1982, page 90: Sophocles does not differ from the other poets in allowing short syllables to stand at the end of a line where a long is required by the meter, a practice normally justified by the evidently too facile explanation that the voice pauses there. A little before that, he says: Sophocles evidently felt that there was no significant break at line end: he uses the definite article at the end of a line with its noun at the beginning of the next - Antigone 409, Electra 879, Philoctetes 263, Oedipus at Col. 351... In other words, for Dawe there is no real distinction between brevis in longo and anceps. I imagine the same holds true in Latin verse for some scholars. I'm not going to remove the brevis in longo stuff from the article as it does have an intellectual neatness to it, which I like, but poetry isn't always neat and maybe some kind of reservation can be added later. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 12:56, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
On the other hand, there is an appendix on meters where Dawe uses brevis in longo. I don't know how he reconciles that with the statements I quoted. According to my Greek Grammar (1879): The last syllable of every verse is common and it may be made long or short to suit the metre, without regard to its usual quantity. It is called 'syllaba anceps'. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 22:12, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
And the brevis in longo article still lacks citations, which makes its use in this article a bit problematic. Eyeless in Gaza ( talk) 22:22, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
This concept seems utterly pointless to me. How can you tell whether it is true or false? It should go! Signed in absence of tilde Seadowns — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seadowns ( talk • contribs) 13:02, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
Seadowns ( talk) 23:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC) PS I had never heard of Chuck Oughton before, but his study of Livy has not disabled him from setting out facts briefly and clearly. Seadowns ( talk) 00:07, 24 July 2017 (UTC) Later --he is inadequate on caesuras, though. Seadowns ( talk) 13:45, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
-que,, and then shortened again by the -que "breaking off" to the next syllable. Is this really profitable?! However, perhaps this discussion does not really belong here, since it does not affect the article. I do, however, agree that the brevis in longo concept is not needed, apparently being an entity that has been created beyond necessity. Seadowns ( talk) 13:24, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
Is this template tag still relevant? The grammar and spelling look fine to me. Pbericcc ( talk) 05:05, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't think it is a good idea to use the same symbol (||) to represent both diaeresis (a compulsory break between feet) and caesura (an optional break in the middle of a foot). It is confusing for the reader; does it represent the end of a foot or not? Since the caesura is not an essential part of the metre, unlike the diaeresis, I think it would be better not to write it at all, or else use a different symbol for it such as¦ Kanjuzi ( talk) 09:18, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
I have deleted these sentences: "There is usually a break between words after the fifth or sixth syllable. In the second half of the verse the stress of the words will thus usually, or always, coincide with the long syllables." The first claim is so weak as to be meaningless (it would be difficult to write a hendecasyllable without such a break). The second is not true, since the break, if it is there, doesn't make the stress coincide with ictus in the second half: witness verses 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 of Catullus 2. Kanjuzi ( talk) 15:47, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
It says: "A dactylic hexameter consists of a hemiepes, a biceps, a second hemiepes, and a final long element, so DuuD—." This way of analysing a hexameter seems dubious and unconventional. Is there a citation? Kanjuzi ( talk) 17:22, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
I think this is unenlightening and should go. Seadowns ( talk) 18:24, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Am I alone in finding the double scansion in this article, in which long and short marks are written not only for the syllables, but also for the individual vowels, both ugly and distracting? No standard work does this. Moreover, it isn't clear if the vowels of words such as "iam" were long or short. Kanjuzi ( talk) 16:47, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
I agree. The marks over the vowels should go. Seadowns ( talk) 18:21, 1 March 2021 (UTC)