Reading a book, I came across the following verses in Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiæ, 1. I, “in fine“ (I’m not reading Boethius: a note at the page’s footer says where those verses come from):
Gaudia pelle,
Pelle timorem,
Spemque fugato
Nec dolor adsit.
Nubila mens est
Hæc ubi regnant.
The first four lines clearly scan as a dactyl followed by a trochee, but the last two have a dactyl followed by what seems to be a spondee. The thing is, while est and regnant have a vowel followed by two consonants, which should make them long or heavy syllables, the vowels themselves are short (est with and long e means to eat, and the ending ant has this a short). Can one count such syllables as short or long (I know that to be the case when a vowel is followed by two consonants, both being on the following syllable and the second of which being a liquid, such as to-ni-trus, in which ni, despite having a short I, in poetry can be scanned as long, as it is followed by the pair tr, which is in the next syllable trus), at the poet’s will? Did he make a mistake? Am I just overthinking it, and in fact he just decided to switch the meter (from a dactyl followed by a trochee to a dactyl and a spondee) because he wanted so? Keep in mind this is actually the first lines of Latin poetry I read (which is slightly funny, because I find them in a commentary of the Book of Genesis), so I have no experience whatever.
The meter is the so-called adonean, named after ὦ τὸν Ἄδωνιν, the lament for Adonis. It echoes the closing rhythm of the dactylic hexameter … δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς, a dactyl + spondee. Since the final syllable is verse end, it counts as long (“brevis [syllaba] in longo [elemento]”).
And fugato is an imperative (as in memento mori), as I dare say you know.
Michael, since you corrected line 3 to end in a spondee (long o in fugato), wouldn’t you also want to make the same correction to line 2 (-em is pronounced with a long e nasalized)? This is discussed on pages 30 and 31 of Allen.
Yes. At verse end the prosodic continuity is broken, and the closing syllable counts as long, even if it’s a short vowel. That’s true of all meters, both Greek and Latin. Here for example is the first line of Euripides’ Bacchae (iambic trimeter): ἥκω Διὸς παῖς τήνδε Θηβαίαν χθόνα.
And the first verse of the Odyssey (dactylic hexameter): ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε Μοῦσα πολύτροπον ὃς μάλα πολλά.
Yes. At verse end the prosodic continuity is broken, and the closing syllable counts as long, even if it’s a short vowel. That’s true of all meters, both Greek and Latin. Here for example is the first line of Euripides’ Bacchae (iambic trimeter): ἥκω Διὸς παῖς τήνδε Θηβαίαν χθόνα.
And the first verse of the Odyssey (dactylic hexameter): ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε Μοῦσα πολύτροπον ὃς μάλα πολλά.
And in reply to katalogon above what I meant to post was:
Here, where each line is a metrically independent verse, the inherent quantity of the last syllable of each line doesn’t matter, since it always scans long regardless of its length in other prosodic contexts.
Yes, I realize that. I was trying to address the OP’s initial statement:
“The first four lines clearly scan as a dactyl followed by a trochee”
This is a different concern than that of brevis in longo, and indicated to me a more general confusion about scanning than simply the issue of the last syllable in the verse being a special case.
The only trochee that I see (regardless of brevis in longo) is line 1: pelle. Here the end is CV, clearly a light syllable.
As for line 4, I see “sit” as being inherently a heavy syllable, CVC.
As to what it means, here is the translation by Richard Green (1962):
“…cast off all joy and fear. Fly from hope and sorrow. When these things rule, the mind is clouded and bound to the earth.”
Boethius’s theme here (don’t get carried away by any emotions–good or bad) eventually finds its way into Spinoza’s Ethics, part IV: de servitute humana seu de afectuum viribus, which was the inspiration for Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. Interesting to see the theme carried clearly into the modern world.
In the third foot, the syllable, mor, is pre-pausal (at the caesura) and scans as heavy.
So this seems to imply that if the last syllable in a verse were mor, then it would be heavy as it would also be pre-pausal.
Also, from the Aeneid:
et dīrepta domus et parvī cāsus Iūlī.
Here mus (at the caesura) scans as heavy.
Allen, in Accent and Rhythm, 1973, discusses at length the quantity of pre-pausal ~VC, where V is short, and comes to the conclusion that there is evidence that this would be heavy, especially if there were thoracic arrest. Of course, because of indifference, there is not much evidence at verse end but most of the direct evidence comes from pre-pausal at caesura.
Yes any verse-final syllable should be classified as heavy, certainly here in Boethius’ adoneans, just as in dactylic hexameter or iambic trimeter (as in the verses I quoted). Joel found a verse where -sit occupies a light syllable, but there it’s in synapheia, which makes all the difference. The question of interstichic pause (Pause, χρόνος κενός) might complicate things, but never mind that.
mwh (who knows far better) and katalogon are both incorrect about the claim that -sit is “inherently heavy” in Latin. It also goes beyond what Allen said. -vC will be heavy at verse end, just as a short vowel -v will be heavy at verse end, and has some increased frequency of being heavy at caesura (though Allen provides no actually useful statistics on pg. 130-131 of A&R for the ratio of heavy/light for -vC at caesura). As Allen mentions, Quintilian describes a word like diceret with “brevis pro longa” at verse end, indicating that he considered the syllable short, even if it counted as “metrically heavy.”
mwh: “there it’s in synapheia” Ie., “not at a pause”. Well, yes, that is the difference we are talking about in this thread.
But Allen says on page 131: “Quintillian’s statement, therefore, can hardly be cited as evidence against the heavy quantity of pre-pausal ~VC (with thoracic arrest)”
I agree that it is not completely clear and that of course is why Allen devotes a lot to this question. This question has bothered me for some time, as so I am interested if others may have any thoughts, which is why I raised it here.
I used the term, inherent, to try to dissociate the question from the brevis in longo, which I think obscures things.
This made me see that I don’t know the little I thought I knew about Latin and Greek meter. Maybe it is too early to bother with it, but is there any good introduction to meter I could use to study?