OK. Regarding WhiteO’s six month old challenge to produce an elegiac couplet, I think I have produced 3/4 of something with which I am not totally disgusted. However, I have the half of the pentameter after the diaeresis to go, and I am crying out for dactyls (those of you who have tried to compose Latin verse will know my pain).
My questions are -
(a) is anyone aware of some nice Latin idioms relating to not caring. They needn’t contain dactyls, as I may be able to pervert my pentameter enough to admit them, whatever their shape.
(b) more generally, how do those composing latin verse deal with the lack of dactyls?
(c) I can manage to finish it off, providing I elide a final -ne with a following vo- (both vowels short). Is this permissible? I am quite unsure of how the semi-vowel v behaves in elision. And I should add, it has to be a short syllable.
I would recommend downloading a old French Gradus ad Parnassum from Gallica. It has a decent introduction to versification, but primarily it is a dictionary with a lot of emphasis on metrical uses of Latin words, including exceptions and irregularities. Just keep in mind that it is a) almost 200 years old and b) free.
I’ve just started my first attempt at elegiac verse as well and I was wondering whether every vowel followed by another vowel is elided? Specifically an O followed by an A and would it remain short (provided it is not followed by a double consonant) or would they be long together I’m not too sure on the length of ‘o’ in male or neuter ablatives anyway…
I’ve just been reading up on the quantity of vowels and syllables and now I am completely confused. When determining the length of a syllable, which as far as I am aware is the important thing in writing verse, what is the consequence of the length of the vowel?
e.g. D’Ooge says the vowel before nt and nd is short. Does this mean that
“amandus” is scanned u u u ? Because of the double consonant, I would expect the middle syllable “and” to be long, ie. u - u.
morning turps and k.
i am most pleased to see that you’re spending your time on verse: most admirable.
now, as regards points of scansion:
-all consonantal 'i’s (j for barbarians) and 'u’s (v likewise) serve as fully fledged consonants and do not engender elision. Thus ‘corpora iuris’ could close a hexameter line, and ‘bonum ius’ would scan u–
nt and nd always make the preceding vowel long in scansion. d’ooge must mean that in the natural quantity of the vowel when pronounced it is short, thus amandus is prounced to like Amanda, say, with short middle a. amandus, however, must scan u-u.
in elegiac verse any vowel or final -Vm (where m is a vowel) is elided before a following vowel or h. hiatus, wherein a vowel does not suffer elision, as often in Virgil and very very often in Homer, should be wholly avoided.
your scansion of the interesting combination alueo arundineo atque was correct (though final syl is short).
harsh elision, i.e. of a long vowel before a short one, and especially of long o or u or diphthongs is to be avoided in skilful elegiacs, and elision in the second half of the pentameter is not very neat at all.
as for dactyls, you are right. whereas the ratio of word patterns in greek is roughly 2:1 dactyl:spondee, in Latin those numbers are roughly reversed. it is not too easy, therefore, to find the fifth foot dactyl and the third and fourth feet dactyls of the pentameters. you can of course, in the extreme, only have these as dactyls:
–/–/-//-/–/-uu/-x
–/–/-/-uu/-uu/x
but that would be pretty sombre!
the thing to watch out for is accusatives in -m and -os for with an adjective it becomes rather difficult to get a satisfactory rhythm. once you get the hang of things, you will start to shift things gently towards the fem sing. or n. pl., which helps a lot.
i have a lecture now, but if you post what you have done so far, i’m sure suggestions will be made how to complete it.
Conficiendi sunt mox versiculi mihi. Quaeram
utrum sint graciles, an tibi sint lepidi.
I don’t like that mox. I expect I shall be able to find an appropriate adverb of two short syllables when I have a few minutes on my hands. But overall two dactyls in four feet isn’t bad in hexameter.
you’re almost there, and the sense is nice. elegiac hexameters cannot end in two disyllables however, although the strong sense break after the 5th foot is quite strikingly used. bene or male are two good pyrrhic adverbs. the pentameter must end in a disyllable, and that cannot be an adjective or adverb. tibi can, however, so you could have a choriambic shaped adjective (-uu-) with ne tacked on, and then tibi, with sint naturally understood.
once again, the sense is nice but, sexcenties dixi, if Ovid be the elegiac model, the pentameter must end in a disyllable. You can follow the metrically ruder examples of Catullus and Propertius, in whose cases it is permissible. It is better to have the spondee, should there be one, in the second rather than the first foot of the pent., so sed metuit calcem would be the best order, and avoid unnecessary hyperbaton of sed.
two further rules for your versificatory pleasure:
-a monosyllable only very rarely precedes the third foot caesura of the hexameter in elegy and should thus be avoided.
-the hexameter must end in either a diss- or trisyllabic word (verb or noun as well).
as a point of style, -que on short -e was avoided for reasons of jarring sound in elegy.
your diction is certainly pleasingly poetic, and the pastoral setting reminiscent of the georgics, in spite of the altered metre.
a few points on prosody:
-atque or any other particles should not end the hexameter line, although -que (because it is enclitic and not proclitic) is permitted. Incidentally, atque is only used in elegy when it’s latter syllable is elided.
-final ‘i’ is always long, so uenti and tacendi have a long syllable close, and the elision of uoci before u- becomes rather harsh.
-your hyperbaton of prope is ok.
-astra ad siderea scans —uuu, but siderea ad astra would scan.
-either way, the short open -a is being lengthened by the sp- of the following word. this is fine in the rules of scansion, but for some reason the elegists always avoided an open short final syllable before sc- sp- sq- and st-. this objection is, however, a rather recondite one and does not perhaps merit changing things.
-spectabat scans --u
-elegy normally progresses with a strong sense pause at the end of the pentameter, and accordingly is not well fitted for continuous description and longer sentences. ovid, the great master of the metre, shows the problems this engendered in his fasti, wherein he attempts longer accounts with rather poor effect. there is little doubt that his uncharacteristic shift to hexameters in the metamorphoses was to free up his syntax for more verbose epic discourse. incidentally, there is not much tweaking you would have to do in order to alter your six lines to hexameters. the advantage would be that your punctuation would not have to be altered, imitation of virgilian pastoral could be claimed and the license of the metre is somewhat freer than elegy, so your elisions would be more permissible.
I see there are a lot of minor things that can probably only be learned through practice (a verse composition book would be brilliant!!!)
anyway, about the long -i in venti or tacendi, am I to understand that regardless whether they are following by a double or single consonant, or even a vowel, they will scan long?
as for astra ad siderea, I realise it scans —uuu, which is what I intended: the first foot is a spondee, the second a dactyl, and the final a is lengthened by spectabat, thus fitting the metre. Have I missed something because this seems good to me?
I was not aware that a sentence is supposed to end at the end of each pentameter. In that light I think I’ll abandon this one and start something new. Would you mind if I posted it here for you to have a look at it again?
hey kasper. i think your question re scansion of siderea was answered by whiteoctave:
either way, the short open -a is being lengthened by the sp- of the following word. this is fine in the rules of scansion, but for some reason the elegists always avoided an open short final syllable before sc- sp- sq- and st-. this objection is, however, a rather recondite one and does not perhaps merit changing things.
personally im not sure about the elision of ad- it seems rather harsh to me, yet sure enough Ovid does have
and I was wondering whether every vowel followed by another vowel is elided? Specifically an O followed by an A and would it remain short (provided it is not followed by a double consonant) or would they be long together 
I’m not too sure on the length of ‘o’ in male or neuter ablatives anyway…
