Aequam memento rebus in arduis
servare mentem, non secus in bonis
ab insolenti temperatam
laetitia, moriture Delli,
The first two lines have correptions in the first syllable. I know it because I have found the metric scheme for this ode. But how to know the metre without looking for a scheme? And where correption can be used by the poet?
Aequam memento rebus in arduis
servare mentem, non secus in bonis
ab insolenti temperatam
laetitia, moriture Delli,
Alcaeic
There’s no correption. In the first two lines the first two syllables are both long, as usual in this meter. (The first is actually anceps, free to be short, but Horace normally keeps it long.) The break after the fifth syllable is normal too (1 aequam memento| … 2 servare mentem| …).
These are Alcaics (so named after Alcaeus), Horace’s favorite meter in the Odes.
,
Gildersleeve&Lodge where I have taken the scheme from mark the first syllable as correption like this: >.
Presumably that was their way of representing an anceps, i.e. a syllable that is free to be either long or short. But that has nothing to do with correption (vocalic shortening).
Then the terminology is confusing: for G/L syllaba anceps is at the end of the verse. see paragr, 741. correption is shortening of a syllable to suit the metre m paragr. 744.
Much of G/L’s treatment of versification is worse than confusing, it’s fundamentally misconceived, and has long since been abandoned. Refer to any book on Greek or Latin meter.
thank you
Another helpful way to know the meter is to look at line lengths. In Horace, a quatrain strophe with line lengths that are similar in verses one and two but then get consecutively shorter in three and four are always Alcaics!