Much talk about Latin hendecasyllables, Episcopus, but you haven’t told us yet what they are and what their rules are. Samples are good. Multus fragor et paucae iuglandis.
Lūgēt?venerēscupidinēsque
etquantumsthominumvenusti?rum
passermortuusestmeaepuellae
passerdēliciaemeaepuellae
quemplusilloculīssuīsam?bat
nammellītuseratsuamquen?rat
ipsamtambenequampuellam?trem
necsēs?gremi?lliusmouēbat
sedcircumsiliēnsmodhūcmodillūc
ads?lamdominūsquepīpi?bat
quīnuncitperitertenebric?sum
illūcundenegatredīrequemquam
atv?bīsmalesitmalaetenebrae
orcīquaeomniabelladēvor?tis
tambellummihipasserabstulistis
?factummale?misellepasser
tu?nuncoper?meaepuellae
flend?turgidulīrubentocellī.
Or at least that’s how I remeber it.
Nice, Lucus, I didn’t expect any less of you.
Actually I had a metrical question about this carmen anyway: it would seem that the ‘e’ of “male” is not elided with the “o” that follows, which is fine and happens sometimes. However, in the paenultimate line, the first syllable is short, “tu-,” yet perhaps it is made long by position?
I think there is some flexibility in the first three syllables of hendecasyllabic meter. Unfortunately, the text I studied isn’t here with me, but I seem to recall it mentioning occasional variety, especially in the second syllable. “Tu” of course is the first, but it may still fall within the poet’s license.
As for position, a vowel that directly precedes another vowel is almost always short, isn’t it? So I’m not sure how it could be long by position.
-david
Perhaps it’s in analogy with tÅ«.
ah yes, hendecasyllabic banter, quid aliud?
indeed the poem quoted above ‘? Lūc?’ (Anglice = ‘by Lucus’) is in Phalaecian hendecasyllables, whose schema consists of a spondaic/trochaic/iambic initial base (de quis uide infra) followed by, in simple terms, a choriamb, then an amphibrach, then a spondee (the latter of whose members can of course be breuis in longo); nonetheless metricians have fought over how to divide the constituent elements of the verse. for the would-be etymologists, some linguists have reconstructed an original semantics for the term ‘hendecasyllable’, to wit ‘eleven-syllables’. scholarship is ever advancing on the matter.
Lucus’ text above was interesting to read through, partly for its plaintive use of macra (which were oddly missed out in four places), partly indeed for its pointless marking of elision (which does not initially reflect the true situation: ‘certe ibi’ was not pronounced wholly and identically like ‘*certibi’), partly too for the meaningless third word of line 12. nonetheless, the metre is now exhibited.
as for the comment about the alleged use of hiatus. well, we are here dealing with an apparent instance of true prosodic hiatus: for prosodic hiatus to be in effect one must both lack Greek words or Graecisms in the vicinity (for the adoption of Greek-style hiatus as a concious echo of their literary ancestors is found passim in high Latin poetry) and have the syllable in hiatus without correption (for such shortening is commonly found in Latin as well as Greek). the fact is, however, that there is no true instance of prosodic hiatus in the whole of the Catullan corpus, once the few shaky instances have been emended away by critical acumen. the great GP Goold led the way in this matter in an article for Phoenix (1969), and demonstrated just how much work needs to be done on the text of Catullus. nonetheless, idiocy prevails here as in so many things, and you will find Thomson (1997) continuing to defend this ridiculous hiatus at iii.16, as Mynors tacitly did. the best emendation offered for this passage is in my opinion that profferred by Goold, namely replacing quod (written qd with the bar) for the latter ‘o’; it may surprise some to learn of the shocking state of this line in the reconstructed Veronese archetype of the Catullan tradition, uiz ‘bonum factum male bonus ille passer’.
as to the other point about the variable quantity of the first element of the hendecasyllable, the facts stand thus. if we take the whole of the Catullan hendecasyllabic corpus synchronically, then it appears that either a short or a long syllable can stand in the first two sedes of the line, although not two shorts simultaneously (which would form an impossible pyrrhic base). the no less great Skutsch wrote a fine piece for BICS 16 (1969) which touched upon the metrical discrepancy between the hendecasyllables of ii-xxvi and those of the later group (which are regarded as reflecting two rough stages of composition). he demonstrated inter alia that of the 263 hendecasyllables of the former group only three possess an iambic base in the mss (all of which can be emended or explained away) and all the rest a spondaic one; in the latter group however both trochaic and iambic bases are allowed relatively freely alongside the spondaic. some have accordingly tried to emend at iii.17 tua to uestra (a variant found in the lost ‘codex antiquus’ quoted by Avantius) – some making it equate semantically to tua (although Housman’s classic article ‘uester=tuus’ demonstrates the grave difficulties in that process), others regarding it as referring to the malae tenebrae, although that really detracts from the witty close to this poem. his omnibus dictis, it is probably best to retain iambic tua here, having made an emendation in line 16, Goold’s faute de mieux. as to the former syllable of tua being ‘lengthened by position’, how that could ever be so is to me unfathomable.
~D
whiteoctave:
Your latest contribution to the forum contains its usual mixture of erudition, sarcasm, and pith.
I am curious, sometimes, whether you refer to your numerous sources for the information you provide, or whether you have it memorized. Surely it would be unduly exhaustive dilectum habere for all the relevant sources and information, ea instruere into an array of cunning sentences, and impetum eis facere in forum unless you were quite familiar not only with their locations in your bookshelf but also with their general arguments? I’m a little sarcastic myself here - forgive me - but I am asking a genuine question. How much do you know off hand?
There’s also the slight problem of paragraphs. There are many, I mean, and much to them. Finding the answer to the questions posed here, for me at least, involved a thorough scrutiny of the post. There’s no executive summary, for better or worse. Some may fail to perservere as I did. Along the way, I may add, meum cor misellum was bruised by the blows of sardonic cudgels, wielded by clever miscreants wearing commas as masks and parentheses as coats. The cudgels, of course, were your words.
I thank you sincerely, whiteoctave, for your informative (satis superque) post. Less gratifying was the latest reminder of your squabble with Lucus. No doubt, he missed a few macrons. As I see it, we can quibble over the errors, or celebrate someone who has memorized a poem of Catullus (v. “or at least that’s how I remembered it”).
As you were discussing your predecessors in classical studies (in which, in all seriousness, I consider your work and devotion absolutely exemplary), you mention that “idiocy prevails here as in so many things.” Rather a cavalier thing to say about published scholars, but let us grant it for a moment. What then? Perhaps there also is a touch of idiocy in flinging insults and flaunting arrogance about the quesiton of whether or not there is an authentic hiatus in one poem of Catullus. Surely a poem about death - even one as urbane and witty as Catullus’s - deserves more than a merely metrical discussion?
Perhaps there is a touch of idiocy also in us. In me, the writer of pompous and long-winded posts, miserly of my time and miserable in my failures. In Lucus and his soaring, audacious passions, winging like Icarus into the searing and merciless heat of the sun. Perhaps even in you.
Respectfully yours,
David
PS - I’ve been wondering. Is whiteoctave an obscure pun? The only white octave on the piano (among major keys, that is) is the key of C. Stands for “Classics”?
David, thanks, as ever, for your manifold and arrestingly sincere words. to respond briefly: all the information above was off the cuff (for knowing the details of various Latin metres is a must for verse composition, and I only gave two explicit references, both of which are important for the poem), although it certainly helped that I was doing textual work on the polymetra of Catullus last term, in which I came across some of the material above (the relevant Catullan books are, at any rate, at home not here with me at uni); in order to find anything useful in what i write i cannot find any easy of circumnavigating the reading of it; Lucus is Lucus; you should have realised by now that a great, great deal of work by modern Classicists is sub-standard - being published is no longer an indicator of any weight (and if I had but a pound for every piece I’ve read that fails to progress the subject I could have bought the TLL already) - on both sides of the pond, albeit more yours than mine, standards need to be raised; as for giving a narrowly metrical discussion of the poem, that may have been itself guided by the circumscriptions of being within a thread about…the metre of the poem; as for ‘idiocy’ being glossed as my answering the questions above to the full, which is further glossed as ‘flaunting’, i expected no less from the serried ranks here; learning and lightening up go not a little way, i suppose; whiteoctave is not an obscure pun.
~D
bardo, I am in no position to advise any one on matters concerning verse, especially hendecasyllables. this book might be of some use http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1898855722/qid%3D1143142644/026-3934949-7746042
whiteoctave is a british “my girlfriend left me so i will now scream into a microphone and call it a song” rock band. of course, being the open minded soul that i am, i listened to them, and a few of their songs are good, such as appeals for insertion and looking past sky. however, jojo is better, but whiteoctave is unwilling to give her a chance because it is not becoming of a good classicist to listen to songs containing lil bow wow, just as we should all choose philosophy over modern greek or italian!
~E
Apologies for a slightly impetuous comment. Obviously, in a thread devoted to hendecasyllabics, metrical discussion is entirely appropriate. Mea culpa, whiteoctave.
Episcope, multas gratias tibi for explaining the name. The band, whatever its quality, has not made it to the states, it seems, or at least not to me.
Humbly,
David
Wikipedia tells me not to confuse hendecasyllables with hendecasyllabics. The thread started about hendekasyllables, no?
According to the Wikipedia article, hendecasyllabic verse was used by Catullus, while hendecasyllable verse was used by a number of Italian poets. So it seems that we were talking about hendecasyllabics all along?
…but I had never heard that distinction before. Whiteoctave uses both terms, “hendecasyllable[s]” as the noun form, and “hendecasyllabic” as the adjective form. That makes more sense to me, but I’m not an Italian literary critic.
-David
Thanks, peeps. I had googled “latin hendecasyllables” instead of “latin hendecasyllabic meter”, thus my confusion and ignorance. Episcopus has used the term “Latin hendecasyllables” in his posts, and I wondered if they were some kind of late Medieval adaptation of Italian hendecasyllables to Latin in qualitative meter.
Googling Lucus’ first verse I got to Catullus and Latin hendecasyllabic meter, so I’m set. Seems like you cannot call a quantitative hendecasyllabic line a hendecasyllable. Perhaps a Phalaecean hendecasyllable?
The Wikipedia article failed to mention that hendecasyllables stressed on the 6th and 10th syllable scheme can be stressed also on the 4th, 8th and 10th syllables; and that the name for the 4th, 7th and 10th scheme is Galician Bagpipes.
You could just go ahead and add the bagpipes to the Wikipedia article 
Seriously though, I’m so happy with the existence of both this forum AND Wikipedia. Hendekasyllables, Dante. Learn something new every day.
me too 
But wiki can’t always be trusted! In any case it’s good for background knowledge before you start really delving into a topic, or for general knowledge on any topic. They seem to have something on everything.
I might say “often can’t be trusted” but in any case, it’s a sentiment that deserves repeating.