Latin verse

Latin Learning Latin
1

How many people nowadays learn how to write Latin verse, and suchlike? I work from this book:-

Latin Hexameter Verse
by Samuel Edward Wilbolt
First published 1903
ISBN 0-8240-2982-8

It has pages i to xiv and 1 to 266

As regards the quality of Latin hexameter verse written down the centuries, for example, http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/latinlibrary/scacchia.html
is a poem written by Hieronymus Vida in 1559 about chess.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca%C3%AFssa.

For example, these lines

Tum geminae velut extremis in cornibus arces
hinc atque hinc altis stant propugnacula muris,
quae dorso immanes gestant in bella Elephanti.

describe the Rooks, which Vida described as elephants. Presumably the many spondees describe the size and heaviness of an elephant. Some may query the 4-syllable last word "elephanti"; Ennius is described as routinely using 4-syllable (non-spondaic) last words, if preceded by an elision or a fully stressed monosyllable to get stresses on the first syllables of the 5th and 6th feet; but Virgil uses 4-syllable non-spondaic last words only for special purposes.
2

Great stuff! Neo-latin verse can be fascinating, as well as brilliantly composed. I can’t imagine that Vergil, who is clearly Vida’s model, would have objected to elephanti here.

It’s an almost vanished art today, understandably.

3

I have bought via Amazon a copy of “Latin Hexameter Verse, by Samuel Edward Wilbolt” that has the key (= a list of answers to the exercises). The key is at the back, and the key’s pages do not have page numbers. The key shows that many of the Roman-numbered short examples in the book were translated into English from classical Roman authors. In one such case, the man’s name Turnus was translated as Lancelot, perhaps to put the schoolboys “off the scent” who were looking for a Latin original.