Introduction to Latin poetry

Latin Latin Poetry
1

The following questions that are probably basic enough to be annoying, so if anyone simply wants to point me to resources instead of typing out answers, I don’t mind. However, I assume that most (all) textbooks are aimed at people with no knowledge of Greek poetry, and might be a little tedious for me. I hope to finish Ørberg pars I in the next 2-3 weeks, and noticed that it did have some introduction to meter in the last chapter, but I haven’t quite gotten there yet.

What rules are there for scanning Latin syllables? What consonant combinations can be scanned light? What elides, etc.?

How does Latin iambic and hexameter differ from the Greek?

Is there a general outline of the classical Latin poets and their works?

2

A few fundamentals.

  1. Latin takes over the Greek stichic meters (dactylic hexameter, elegiac; iambic and trochaic in various lengths). Catullus and Horace introduce the Lesbian meters too.
  2. Archaic Latin comedy (esp. Plautus) is very different from classical Latin, both in its patterns of stress and in its metrical behaviors.
  3. If you can read Homer metrically you’ll be able to do the same with Vergil. The main difference is that classical Latin verse elides rather than correpts (e.g. odi et amo scans —uu—).
  4. Latin verse tends to be more sensitive to sound than Greek, and accentual placement counts for more.
3

The main difference is that classical Latin verse elides rather than correpts (e.g. odi et amo scans —uu—).

If I can clarify what I think mwh means, elision is not indicated in Latin orthography, as it usually is in Greek verse, so that you have to effect the elision yourself in reading metrically wherever a vowel ends a word and another follows at the beginning of the next word. Hiatus occurs in Latin verse, but it’s always a special effect (such as imitation of Homeric license). The words o and a (the exclamations “o” and “ah”) are not elided.

One other important point: when a vowel + m at word-end is followed by a vowel at the beginning of the next word, the first vowel is nasalized, so that the combination Vm# is treated as a vowel and elided with the following vowel. Example from the third line of the Aeneid: multum ille et terris scans as five long syllables, -um is elided with il-, -le is elided with et, and et is lengthened by the following ter-. mult’ ill’ et terris. (There are various theories about how the elisions would have been realized in reading aloud.) In all other environments, m is treated as a consonant.

As in Greek, pay attention to the caesura.

“Spondaic” lines, i.e., hexameters with a spondee in the fifth foot are less common in Latin than in Greek. When they occur, they are typically a special effect, usually an evocation of Greek or a deliberate weighting and slowing down of the rhythm as a sound-painting effect.

Beyond basic scansion –

Word-accent (stress) and ictus tend to conflict at the beginning of the hexameter and to eventually resolve into concord at the end, in the final adonic.

A warning: be prepared for hyperbaton that will at first appear insane, especially intertwining of adjectives and nouns: siluestrem [Adj. 1] tenui [Adj. 2] Musam [Noun 1] meditaris auena[Noun 2] “You are meditating your sylvan Muse with your watery oatmeal.” (No, “slender oat reed.”) After reading a certain amount of Latin verse (especially hexameter), you will find the patterns of hyperbaton follow a logic of their own and you will come to expect them and find them natural.

Hypallage is a pervasive figure: e.g., altae moenia Romae – the walls, not Rome itself, are lofty, but the adjective is attached to Rome. This is not because Vergil couldn’t think of different way to express the idea that would scan: it’s a conscious effect. (Gian Biaggio Conte contends that in Vergil, many instances of hypallage have been smoothed out in the course of transmission.)

Particularly in Vergil, be attentive to complex and elaborate patterns of assonance: uere nouo gelidus canis cum montibus umor . . . Alliteration of m, s, u, um.

Although superficially the prosodic rules of Latin verse are almost identical to those of Greek, the internal dynamics of Latin verse are very different from those of Greek, and the music of Latin verse is unique, and, in my view, unequalled by Greek verse. Wilkinson’s Golden Latin Artistry addresses this at an advanced level. It’s out of print but available used.

4

Thank you both. After mwh’s post, I had taken a look at Aeneid 1-11, and was actually just going to ask about line 3, and also about how the word stress works with the verse.

5

There is some disagreement as to whether you should emphasize the ictus (in hexameter, the first long syllable in the foot) or the Latin stress accent in reading. Purists will probably say stress, but I got into the habit of following ictus early on and I’ve never been able to shake it.

6

What I actually meant about elision as opposed to correption was not orthographical practice with regard to elision (that’s merely superficial) but the fact that word-final long vowels in classical Latin verse, when followed by a word beginning with a vowel, are normally fully elided (that is, they leave no trace in the scansion) rather than being shortened (“correpted”) as they routinely are in the Greek hexameter (e.g. Il.1.17, 57, 65). Sorry not to have expressed myself more clearly. It’s an indication of how artificial the prosody of the Latin hexameter is.
I called it the main difference between the Latin hexameter and the Greek. There are of course other differences, as Hylander mentions, most obviously perhaps the treatment of word-final -m in Latin (in stark contrast with Greek -ον, where the -ν is always consonantal). But that is a function of ordinary Latin phonology, however stylized, unlike the unnatural avoidance of correption in the hexameter.

All this emphatically does NOT apply to the iambo-trochaic versification of Plautus and Terence, which gives a much better idea of how ordinary Latin actually behaved. There you have all sorts of shortenings and other intriguing prosodical phenomena (brevis brevians in particular) reflective of regular Latin, showing the great importance of accent(=stress) rather than quantity in Latin, unlike in Greek. A very worthwhile enterprise would be develop the ability to read Plautus metrically without thinking about all the implied rules and complications. It takes practice, since there’s so much more involved than there is with the dactylic hexameter (simplicity itself), but it’s fun and enlightening, best done fast.

That reminds me of something I ought to have added to my list of fundamentals. Most stichic Greek verse counts metra rather than feet—the iambic trimeter, for example, where the unit of metrical recurrence is not the foot but the metron (x—u—; in the dactylic hexameter, exceptionally, the foot is the metron). Not so in Latin, where the distinction between short and anceps within the metron is erased and verses are accordingly not trimeters or tetrameters but senarii, septenarii, octonarii.

Textbooks tend not to be “aimed at people with no knowledge of Greek poetry.” Avoid any that are. Latin meter (the Saturnian apart) is best viewed against the Greek that engendered it and in terms of historical development, and I’d recommend against a blinkered fixation on the Vergilian hexameter, wonderful though that is.

As to Hylander’s latest, call me a purist. I’m quite shocked that anyone but an outright beginner would wreck the dynamics by stressing the so-called ictus. altae moenia Romae (Aen.1.7, cited by Hylander), with its natural word accent coinciding with ictus in the 4th foot as well as in the final two, is a typically clausular pattern reserved for this imposing sentence-end (and avoided in the first verse).

7

I admit my practice is wrong, but I haven’t been able to get away from it without focusing too much on the stress patterns at the expense of the poetry.

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Sorry Hylander, that won’t wash. The stress patterns are a port of the poetry, a highly significant part, as you must be aware. Features that are killed stone dead by bashing the beat come to life when so-called ictus (“ictus fictus,” as I think you once quipped) is simply ignored. Ictus inheres in the metrical pattern itself, and there’s no need to give it prominence beyond that.

But I hope this thread will not degenerate into a debate over how to render the dactylic hexameter, when there’s so much more to Latin poetry than the hexameter, much of it more revealing. I’ll try not to intervene further.

9

I’ll try harder.

10

Looking for information about Plautus specifically, I found a helpful database marking the type of meter for each line:

http://romancomedy.wulib.wustl.edu/index.html

There are apparently several types of iambics?

senarii:
| x – x – | x – x – | x – u – |

septenarii:
| x – x – | x – u – || x – x – | x – – |

octonarii:
| x – x – | x – x – | x – x – | x – u – |

Is there anywhere that I can find a vowel-marked text of Plautus? It might be difficult to internalize the stress and vowel lengths otherwise, though I’ve been very careful about them so far in Ørberg.

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DESIDERATUM: Michael and Hylander, it would be awesome for one of you or someone with equivalently deep knowledge to create a Latin poetry instructional video illustrating all these (excellent) points.

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jeidsath, Two things on these early Latin iambic meters (and analogously on the trochaic ones).

These three verse forms, corresponding respectively to the Greek iambic trimeter and the catalectic and acatalectic iambic tetrameter, show only the basic structure, which admits of multiple variations—as in Greek only more so. The anceps may be actualized by two shorts, for example, and the longum similarly; and more.

And be aware that in certain circumstances, and quite frequently, properly long vowels become short and heavy syllables light, in accordance with phonological principles unique to Latin. This doesn’t apply to the more stringently regulated classical meters, but it gives great insight into live Latin.

You might want to work your way through a random passage in one of these meters and see (or rather hear) how it fits the scheme. (Prologues are easier than dialogue, and the senarius is more common than the others.) Coming from Ørberg you’re in for some surprises, but once you get the basic rhythm down you’ll find that it all works out. A practical tip: always aim for the principal longa (or the first syllable of their resolved forms), where the natural stress falls.

You should probably learn Latin first, complete with proper quantities, and only then experience the prosodic behavior of the language in Plautus.

Randy, Sorry, I have other fish to fry.

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One of the best threads (for me anyway) in a while. Joel, just an affirmation of MWH’s last point about learning Latin well before embarking on the finer details of metrical schemata (though I think you are better prepared to grasp what’s being said due to your experience in Greek). Usually this is covered in course material devoted to particular authors, so you cover hexameter when reading Vergil or senarii, et al., when reading Plautus, and so forth. In other words, you’ve got a way to go, but it’s worth the journey.

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Michael/mwh wrote

Randy, Sorry, I have other fish to fry.

Alright Hylander, that leaves you. Are you feeling the pressure?!

Seriously, though, from my perspective, as one who would benefit greatly from it, I think this would be awesome for someone to do. Any ideas, anyone, about any other candidates?

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Randy, should you be able to convince an expert, I suggest you make a video call to him with Skype or Google Hangouts and record the session. Then you can edit the video and upload it to your YouTube channel.

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That would be a very big task that would require a lot of time and energy to prepare and do right, and I’m not sure a video would be that useful,

You can find the essential information about prosody, scansion and meter in any number of books (provided they were published after about 1920 or so – if they use musical notes to explain meter, find something else).

Wilkinson’s Golden Latin Artistry goes into the dynamics of Latin verse in depth.

Besides, I’m not completely familiar with the entire range of Latin meter, particularly Plautus and Terence, and as mwh noted, I don’t read Latin verse aloud the right way.

So I’m sorry, but this is not something I would feel comfortable undertaking.

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Understood, of course. But for myself I believe a well-done oral presentation with examples (distributed as a video) would greatly complement if not almost substitute for the tedium of the gobs of written introductions that exist. Hearing versus reading information about.

(Roberto/Bedwere - As Michael says, I’ve also got other fish to fry. But if I could find a willing expert(s), I’d seriously consider it. I know some professors who could definitely do it, but I wouldn’t presume to ask them.)

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I won’t comment about your fish, but I do think you should presume. What use are university professors if they just stay in their ivory tower and speak only among themselves? Are all those words they are so fond of about giving back to the community just words? Besides, who pays at least part of their salary? You and I. If a school or a group of amateurs asks one of my peers to come for a lesson, we are willing to oblige. Why shouldn’t Latin professors do the same at a convenient time? And you can make their task much lighter, since you know well how to engage a professor with focused and intelligent questions in the form of an interview.

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Some questions about elision and stress:

  1. Does “h” prevent elision in Latin? I’ve seen some indications that it wasn’t actually pronounced.

  2. Are long vowels fully elided?

  3. I assume that enclitics like “-ne” or “-que”, written with the preceding word, move word stress. Is there anything similar that isn’t written together with the preceding word?

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  1. No, h does not block elision. See Allen for a discussion of /h/ in colloquial speech. There’s a famous epigram of Catullus about someone who put initial /h/ in the wrong words as an ignorant hypercorrection. Catullus 84.

  2. Yes, and as mwh noted, if the following syllable is short, it stays short even though the preceding long vowel has been elided. I don’t know how this works in Plautus and Terrence, though.

  3. No, but check Allen.