Hey guys,good afternoon. I just would to know how scan this verses. I’m in doubt about how scan caeruleus ( caé rû lê/ ús or caé rú/ leús) : is it possible divide the ditong “eu” in two shorts vowels ? And I’m in doubt too about if is possible this elision : nóct(em hî)ê/mém quê fê… I’m eliding the “em” of noctem with the “Hi” of hiemem and counting like a one short syllable.
Obs : ´ = long and ^ = short.
Aeneid. 5 :
olli caeruleus supra caput astitit imber 10
noctem hiememque ferens et inhorruit unda tenebris
My dictionary marks the ‘e’ in “caeruleus” with a short vowel mark, so I think the diphthong is split in this case if it even counts as a diphthong here, so I think you end up with --|-··|–|-··|-··|-- (or if we use capital letters to signify long syllables: OllI cAE rule Us sUprA caput Astitit ImbEr) and if there is no elision between noctem and hiemeque, you’d have -(noct)·(em)·(hi) and the next syllable (first ‘e’ in hiemeque) would be forced to be long but again my dictionary says it’s short. So I think the elision must occur:
nOct · emEmque ferEns et inhOrruit Unda tenEbrIs
with the dot signifying whatever the sounds are which should be pronounced when reading this line with the EM+HI crushed into one short (!) syllable…at least I think I’ve got it right… Or looking at “noctem hiememque” in a different light: The ‘i’ and first ‘e’ in “hiemem” are two separate syllables both of which are short vowels. Pretend the elision doesn’t happen. You’d have two adjacent short syllables meaning the previous syllable begins the foot: the “em” in “noctem” would begin a foot. Now what do you do with the “noct”? You’re left with a mono-syllabic foot, which is impossible.
caeruleus is an adjective (meaning caerulean!), and adjectives in -eus end disyllabic, with the -e- normally short, as here. -eu- is not a diphthong. Only Greek names in -eus (Proteus, Nereus, Orpheus, etc., have -eu- as a diphthong, with accusative -ea. (This is off the top of my head, I haven’t checked.)
noct(em) hiemem Is an ordinary elision of a final vowel+m. h has no consonantal value, so in scansion we can ignore it.
Note that both verses have the regular 3rd-foot caesura, after the longum of the 3rd foot. When reading hexameters, always aim for the caesura. You’ll usually find that the lines scan themselves.
Here are the lines again, with the caesura marked:
olli caeruleus | supra caput astitit imber
noctem hiememque ferens, | et inhorruit unda tenebris.
No need to consider alternatives. There are no alternatives.
I was trying to show that all the “alternatives” led to impossibilities, and therefore there were no alternatives, as you say.
But now I want to ask: when you wrote “noct(em) hiemem”, does that represent the way it would be pronounced, with both the vowel sound ‘e’ and the ‘m’ more or less deleted sound-wise? Or would it sound like “noctmiememque”? I mean some of the sounds that WOULD be present without the elision are no longer presentwith the elision. Which sounds get thrown out exactly?
Also, your advice about aiming for the caesura to get the lines to scan themselves is a useful tip! I’m making a better effort to appreciate the meter after the posts/events of the last few days!
I saw a youtube video on a channel called “polyMATHY” where he surprised me by saying:
“and as we know final m is not a consonant in actual natively
spoken Latin of any period of the recorded literary history
except in certain situations”
And the example he gave was part of a conversation: “nunc demum advenisti, fili mi” where he pronounces the phrase in what was apparently a reconstruction of normal, everyday spoken Latin, and he gives the final ‘m’ in “demum” no sound at all! So apparently they were commonly not pronouncing the final ‘m’ before a following word beginning with a vowel even in everyday speech. Which makes me wonder at the necessity of teaching that such an ‘m’ is routinely elided in poetry when it was elided even in everyday speech, unless students are never taught this in modern Latin courses. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when mwh writes “noctem” in this case as “noct(em)”. So the ultimate questions I seek an answer to now are whether some kind of aspiration from the ‘h’ is retained or not, and how to decide which vowel sound of the two to retain in reading poetry aloud. If “noct(em)” was meant as a pronunciation guide, maybe the vowel before the ‘m’ is always left unpronounced as well?