Hey guys, can you help me to find the anomalies in these two verses ?
Saltantis satyros imitabitur Alphesiboeus. → i think we have a synizesis in oe or eu, i dont know.
sAltAn/tIs satyr/Os imi/Abitur/Alphensi/boeus.
Non injussa cano. Si quis tamen haec quoque si quis. →
Here the line seems to me perfect, i can’t find anomalie. : NON ini/Ussa ca/nO.sI/quIs tamen/hAEc quoque/si quis
In the second I think it’s the monosyllable after the caesura, in the first I don’t know. I’m not sure œ counts as synesis, but that may be what you’ve been sent to look for.
Alphesiboeus is Gk. Αλφεσιβοιος. οι (> oe) is a diphthong. And not many lines end in a 5-syllable word.
(I think anphph means not synesis but synizesis, but that doesn’t come into it, since oe is a diphthong.)
si quis, two monosyllabic words (but tantamount to a single disyllabic one) at clause beginning, is an unusual and striking way to end the verse.
But I have to say this seems to me a pretty pointless exercise, scanning for scanning’s sake, without any kind of context or consideration of effect. And neither of these verses is really anomalous. What book are you using?
Yes, I miswrote, was responding to Lucas’ hypothesis. I meant I wasn’t sure diphthongs, being two vowels next to the other, would be invariably considered synizesis out of principle, because that could be the “trick” Lucas was being sent for, since I couldn’t find anything else.
A guide to latin meter - David J.Califf. There are other exercises with context and relation between sound and sense, but I haven’t gotten there yet. Do you think should i leave this book ? I read good opinions about it . Thanks anphph and mwh for your help.
I found the explaining in the book :
"In order to mark the ending of a hexameter line, it is customary to have a dactyl in the fifth foot and for the initial long syllables of the last two feet to coincide with their words accents e.g, primus ab oris (Aeneid.1.1)
“A line ending in a monosyllable is likely to cause a conflict between vowel quantity and stress because the preceding word will generally have more than one long syllable and/or a long final syllable, which never receives an accent in Latin. A preceding choriamb has long syllables where accents cannot fall, e.g., ilicibus sus (aeneid.3.390), as does a preceding iamb, e.g, virum quem ( A.1.151), or a preceding anapest, e.g, hominum rex (A.2.648). A line ending with two monosyllables may be similarly disruptive if they, in turn, are preceded by a pyrrhic, whose first syllable is both short and accented. Furthermore, if the pyrrhic is itself preceded by a word of towo or more syllables, the initial long syllable of the fifth foot will necessarily be unaccented. If, however the pyrrhic is preceded by a monosyllable, e.g. haec tibi mens est ( A.8.400), or a trochee whose final syllable is elided e.g.,his vocibus usa est(A.164), the harshness is arguably lessened.”
“pentasyllabic endings are irregular because they have at least two long syllables but only one accent”.
For dactylic hexameter it looks as if Califf is heavily dependent on Winbolt’s Latin Hexameter Verse (1903), similarly skewed towards Vergil. Use it if you find it helpful, but the extract you quote seems pretty deadly to me, as well as dreadfully old-fashioned. The good thing about it is that it pays attention to the relationship between word-accent and meter (clashing in the first half, resolving towards the end),
And Alphesiboeus is accented on Al- as well as on -boe-, so there’s nothing irregular about the rhythm.
My advice would be simply to read Latin poetry, which means reading it metrically and sensitively, with the natural word accents. Never divorce the meter from the sense (or vice versa!). In hexameters it’s a good idea to aim for the caesura.
Thanks for your helpful tip Mwh. There is in this book an exercise of reading poetry ( Vergil’s eclogues). I think the advantage of doing these exercises is that they select verses in which sound and sense or word order and sense are connected. Not every verse has a relationship between sound and sense. The downside is that these verses are out of context. Perhaps these exercises are useful at the beginning of versification learning, but then it is necessary to read entire poems (within their full context).
“And Alphesiboeus is accented on Al- as well as on -boe-, so there’s nothing irregular about the rhythm” . Do you saying that the word Alphesiboeus has two natural accents or that the “Al” is accented because is long ? If it’s the first option (and i find is that), how do you do to find this second natural accent ? I’m supposing that each word has just one natural accent.