Eliding 'est' in poetry (LLPSI XXXIV)

[brookter]

Salvēte amīcī,

I've been steadily fighting my way through the levels of the Lingua Latina dungeon and now it's time to defeat the final Big Boss of poetry... (Cap. XXXIV). (Which is why, incidentally I started learning Latin again - I want to be able to read the Aeneid in Latin. A long way off still, I think...)

I've really enjoyed working through the poems (and even had a go at translating some of them properly) and I think I'm starting to get the hang of the various metres. There's just one line that I can't get to work unless I ignore the instructions given by Mr Orberg, which is on the elision of es or est to 's and 'st.

Cui lēgisse satis nōn est epigrammata centum

I can only get the line to scan properly if I don't elide the nōn est to nōn'st here.

cui lē / gis se sa / tis nō / nes te pi / gram ma ta / cen tum
- - / - u u / - - / - u u / - u u / - -

Is that right? If so, is there a rule to when est is and isn't elided or is it simply a matter of working with the line till you get something that fits? Or am I missing something?

Many thanks

David

[rkday]

I don't have Orberg's explanation on hand, but from what I can see online about prodelision (the term for eliding the first rather than last vowel), it's still a case of elision - it only happens when two vowels come together. So "non est" is always "non est", but if we had "poena est", the special case of "est" means we'd end up with "poenast" rather than "poenest". Does that help?

[brookter]

It does help, thanks!

Looking back, Orberg gives the example verum'st - I'd forgotten than -um, -am etc count as vowels for elision purposes. That's why I was confused... (again!)

Many thanks

David

[lauragibbs]

Hi David, it's not even that "um" counts as a vowel for elision purposes - instead, that "m" is not really consonantal at all - it simply indicated nasalization of the vowel. Some people actually read Latin that way, pronouncing "um" as a nasal vowel sound, not as a consonant at all - and the elision patterns in poetry definitely support that style of pronunciation.
This is also the phenomenon you see with the way that cum becomes co- in many prefixed verbs; the word "cum" itself was being pronounced co- (with the o strongly nasalized), rather than with a consonantal -m at the end.

[brookter]

Thanks Laura,

That makes sense and thinking back I've heard it in some of the readings I've found on the internet. So I had had all the information to answer my own question. Now what would Martial have made of that?

Certainly something a lot better than this...

Stultusque piger es, Davide, et cerebrō parum utendus
Cūr nōn discere tū, discipule improbe, vīs?

[Sorry, the textkit software won't let me indent the pentameter - now that's a problem Martial never had.... And sorry even more for the poetry.]

Regards

David (McGonagallus)