Talk:Latin prosody

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New edit

Nobody has worked on this article for some time and it certainly needs a facelift. I'll be writing up an overview of Latin prosody and the main meters, using Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer Longman 1962, and Peter Green The Poems of Catullus U.C.P. 2005. These books map out a good exposition of the cardinal points, which is needed in an overview article like this. Hopefully others can cite other sources to support the points I make. The need for a facelift emerged from the discovery of Mess in articles to do with Iambs. Mess exists because there is no coherent structure to verse articles generally. McCronion (talk) 02:11, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I won't cover the theatrical meters. They probably deserve an article on their own since Plautus and Terence are before the period I'm working around - late republic/early empire. Others can add those meters here if they wish, though it would require a slight change to the intro. The models I'll use are Catullus, Horace and Virgil. We probably need to set up other articles to cover in depth the treatment of other poets within the given meters. McCronion (talk) 04:23, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

at issue

The old edit offers this:

Owing to the stress-timed nature of classical Latin(ref){Harvnb|Allen|2003|pp=83–88}(/ref) (as opposed to Greek, which was mora-timed) there is a strong tendency to harmonize word-stress and verse-ictus in the final two feet of a hexameter.(ref){Harvnb|Allen|2003|p=86}(/ref) The fifth foot, therefore, is almost always a dactyl whereas the sixth foot consists of a heavy syllable followed by a syllable anceps; this line ending is perhaps the most notable feature of the meter. In fact, in classical times, it was the only readily audible metrical feature, and Romans unfamiliar with Greek literature and versification often heard no sound pattern at all save in the stress-pattern of the last two feet.(ref){Harvnb|Allen|2003|p=127}(/ref)

However, note 1 of my present edit indicates that there is some uncertainty about how the Romans recited poetry, and my Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer uses the term 'mora' in relation to Latin. So I suspect that Allen (2003) is being a bit dogmatic or he is being quoted as such when maybe he is more flexible than that. I notice also that the link stress-timed seems to indicate that the theory is postulated and not necessarily accepted. So I am going to water Allen's comment down a bit. Comment? Defiance? Submission? McCronion (talk) 06:37, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

The rationale for the final part (beginning "In fact...") may be sound but is unclear to me; it may be worth looking at Allen p. 127 to know how clear a claim this is and how notable it might be for the article. But for my part I'd only defend the part before "In fact..." At least in Virgil's practice, the tendency towards stress/ictus clash in the beginning of the hexameter, resolved at the end, is extremely well-established and widely discussed, so I wouldn't agree to the removal of that much. Wareh (talk) 17:45, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

format for scansion

I tried the following format and I'm storing it here in case I decide to use it. The problem is that people might object to notations over vowels, since that usually indicates vowel length rather than syllable length. The other thing is that the caesuras are hard to see unless I doublespace either side of the | , which cuts through words, so that -|- then marks a cut word.

Ārmă vĭ-|-rūmquĕ că-|-nō,‖ Trō-|-iaē quī | prīmŭs ăb | ōrīs

Ītălĭ-|-ām, fā-|-tō prŏfŭ-|-gūs, ‖ Lā-|-vīniăquĕ | vēnĭt

lītŏră, | mūlt(um) īl-|-l(e) ēt ‖ tēr-|-rīs iāc-|-tātŭs ĕt | āltō

vī sŭpĕ-|-rūm saē-|-vaē mĕmŏ-|-rēm ‖ Iū-|-nōnĭs ŏb-|-īrăm.

I don't like the existing format either since it looks a bit like an accident.

Here is the existing format:

-  u  u|-   u  u|-||  -| -   -|  - u  u |- ^ 
Arma virumque canō, Trōiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs,
- u u|-   -|-   u u|- || -|- u  u| - ^
Ītaliam, fātō profugus, Lāvīniaque vēnit
 - u u|  -       -|     - ||-| -   -| - u  u |-  ^
lītora, mult(um)_ill(e)_et terrīs iactātus et altō
 -  u u|-    -| -  u u|- ||-|- u  u |- ^
vī superum saevae memorem Iūnōnis ob īram;

The blue box is disconcerting and the placement of the caesura is awkward since it should lie between letters not over letters. Also I don't like the use of anceps for the final syllable since really there is no ambiguity about the quoted syllables. The anceps belongs in an abstract scheme and I've made one of those for the article. I notice also that the caesura in the second version suggests i|lle and te|rris and ia|ctatus, whereas I thought it was meant to be l|l and r|r and c|t. Anyway I'm spending too much time worrying about formats. McCronion (talk) 06:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

solutions

Well why re-invent the wheel? The article Prosody (poetry)#Greek and Latin has some good ingredients and somebody has cleverly come up with this notation:

Armă vĭ | rumquĕ că | nō, Troi | ae quī | prīmŭs ăb | ōrīs

("I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy. . . ")

Long vowels only are marked -, dipthongs are understood to be long and are unmarked, and short vowels are marked u when coinciding with short syllables—hence all long syllables are indicated by long vowels or dipthongs or unmarked vowels. Genius! Trouble is, it is intuitively understood by people who already know Latin prosody and it is difficult to explain to people who don't! Hmmm. Such is life. The rich get richer and the poor just have to put up with it. But not if McRobin Hood can help it! So here is my choice, which simply involves hyphenating words that include a foot end. Simplicity itself.

-  u  u| -   u  u|- ||  -| -   - |  - u  u |- ^ 
Arma vi-rumque ca-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmus ab ōrīs,
- u u|-    -|-   u u |-  || -|- u   u | - ^
Ītali-am, fā-tō profu-gus, Lā-vīniaque vēnit
 - u u | -       - |     - ||- | -   -| - u  u |-  ^
lītora, mult(um)_il-l(e) et ter-rīs iactātus et altō
 -  u u| -    -| -  u  u|- || -|- u   u |- ^
vī supe-rum sae-vae memo-rem Iū-nōnis ob īram;

Now I just have to find some way to remove the awkward blue box. McCronion (talk) 22:58, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

(1) I think the system you suggest here is fine, because intuitive enough for people with enough experience in the language to care.

(2) The blue box appears if and only if there is a blank space at the beginning of the line. Indent the lines instead and that problem goes away:

- u u| - u u|- || -| - - | - u u |- ^

Arma vi-rumque ca-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmus ab ōrīs,

- u u|- -|- u u |- || -|- u u | - ^

Ītali-am, fā-tō profu-gus, Lā-vīniaque vēnit

- u u | - - | - ||- | - -| - u u |- ^

lītora, mult(um)_il-l(e) et ter-rīs iactātus et altō

- u u| - -| - u u|- || -|- u u |- ^

vī supe-rum sae-vae memo-rem Iū-nōnis ob īram;

Wareh (talk) 17:48, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, sorry, I missed the obvious point here (that the creation of the ugly blue box was deliberate, because we don't know another way to get the monospaced font). Though there may be a way... Meanwhile, this seems a reason to stick with the other system you've proposed. Wareh (talk) 19:51, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking an interest. Yes the font is a large part of the issue. Hopefully there is an alternative somewhere somehow. McCronion (talk) 00:15, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that you're looking for the <pre> tag. If you declare the style in the opening tag—<pre style="border-width:0px; background:none;">—, it gives:

-  u  u| -   u  u|- ||  -| -   - |  - u  u |- ^
Arma vi-rumque ca-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmus ab ōrīs,
- u u|-    -|-   u u |-  || -|- u   u | - ^
Ītali-am, fā-tō profu-gus, Lā-vīniaque vēnit
 - u u | -       - |     - ||- | -   -| - u  u |-  ^
lītora, mult(um)_il-l(e) et ter-rīs iactātus et altō
 -  u u| -    -| -  u  u|- || -|- u   u |- ^
vī supe-rum sae-vae memo-rem Iū-nōnis ob īram;

Also, one little question. Maybe this has already been discussed, and I don't know what the sources that you're using employ for anceps, but doesn't ^ look a lot like a circumflex? I'm just so used to x. The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 08:18, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Excellent - the font seems exactly what is needed and I'll try it out later. The symbol ^ was already there when I started the article. It's not circumflex (at least not in Greek). Usually the anceps sign is a dash over u but that's not available and I guess people can make up their own symbols if need be. Personally I don't like x as I can't see how they get that out of - and u. Anyhow I'm not marking anceps for examples such as above and I'm not sure I'll even need it for abstract schemes. If I do use it for abstract schemes I guess I'll comply with WP convention for x. Thanks for input! McCronion (talk) 08:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Maybe ū if you need to use it? Or perhaps long upsilon—ῡ—since it wouldn't resemble the u's of the Latin texts? The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 09:06, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe that the final syllable should be marked long; there the position is long and a light syllable is counted heavy by brevis in longo. (I.e. I believe the final paragraph of anceps, contributed by an anonymous Cupertino IP, is corretly stated.) In any case ^ or  (fancy variant that might be from the private-use range of the TLG: works in New Athena Unicode) should be avoided because of its more frequent use in metrical notation to indicate catalectic and acephalous lines. But what do you say to my proposal we just put a macron there?

I had assumed the proper-looking symbols ¯ ˘ × were widely enough supported in fonts to stand for long/short/anceps respectively. See this archived discussion on my talk page for more possible (but less supported) characters, including ⏓ (that's the macron with the breve on top). Wareh (talk) 15:25, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

All my sources scan the final syllable in hexameters as long or short, but brevis in longo would mean that the final syllable is always long, wouldn't it? I have so far avoided using any anceps syllable in the passages scanned in the article instead presenting alternative schemes with either long or short. I certainly think anceps should be mentioned as a term in Latin prosody but so far I still have no intention of using it in the scansion (I'm following Peter Green's lead in The Poems of Catullus). I never thought of using ū but my different sources certainly would support that use rather than x, which none of them uses. But if x is the WP custom I'll employ it if I get around to using any anceps symbol. Incidentally, the Aeneid passage as quoted above has errors in it already, such as the commas and caesuras, and surely an anceps symbol is wrong too, whether the final syllable is long or short. I would only use it in abstract schemes. Anyway, I'll just keep doing what I am doing and others can rework it later if they feel it needs it. Thanks for advice and please keep the suggestions coming. If I don't follow all advice it's because I'm a tidal phenomenon and I can only turn at the destined hour. :} McCronion (talk) 00:18, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

To generalize broadly, anceps is "native" mostly to Aeolic verse and the iambic/trochaic metra, and in Latin even there it's been pretty much standardized out of existence by the time you get to Horace. So if you present the verse-final positions as long, you should hardly need to mention it except for iambic/trochaic. Even in presenting the Sapphic stanza, you could present the standardized Horatian version and comment that for Catullus the fourth syllable, following the archaic Greek practice, could still be long or short. ū (⏓) and × are both perfectly good if you do need it.

As it is, the article only uses "anceps" (as I realize some sources may) where it's a case of brevis in longo (unmentioned in the article), and in the only true case of ancipitia (iambic senarius) the term is not used. This is something eventually to be rationalized for the sake of giving the reader a better orientation to these terms (without, as you say, overworking them).

For mute+liquid, "treated as one consonant" makes sense of the rules, but nearer the truth would be to say that when such combinations don't "make position," it's because the syllabification is different: i.e. ca.pre.ae.que instead of cap.re.ae.

I'll try to address these myself while treading lightly. Wareh (talk) 02:27, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

That's a few too many ifs and buts for a simple man like me and I'll leave you to make the necessary changes when and as you think necessary. A couple of thoughts: 1) maybe some of the excruciating punctilios of prosody should be left for articles specialising in specific meters or concepts, or else maybe they can be placed in foot notes here or subsections titled Note. Even my head spins with all these details and more could be less if it ends up frightening off readers who are trying to understand the basics. But I'll just keep motoring along and by all means follow up as you please. McCronion (talk) 02:53, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

In fact, the fine details about the use of anceps probably justify not employing anceps notation/concepts in this article except very briefly in passing. We can then link to an anceps article that covers detailed explanations. I think there is a place in a popular encylopaedia for basic overviews such as you find in Latin primers and introductions and notes of editions of Latin poetry. McCronion (talk) 03:13, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I've expunged the misleading-anyway "anceps," which I hope meets with your satisfaction. I've also, I hope, simplified the schemes by acknowledging brevis in longo. Perhaps what I wrote on mute + liquid could use some polish. Wareh (talk) 03:21, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

My sources definitely mark the final syllable in dactylic hexameter as either long or short. That's David Mankin (Horace Epodes 1995), Peter Green (The Poems of Catullus 2005), R.D.Williams (Virgil: Aeneid' 1972), Kennedy and Mountford (Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer 1962). I can't ignore that lead so long as I continue using those sources. Maybe they are out of date, or they are presenting matters in a simplistic way, but I've got to follow them. I hope it's OK with you if I change that bit back. Otherwise I'm completely lost. McCronion (talk) 03:37, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'll venture to say your sources are (misleadingly) simplified on this point & have shied away from the truth of things. I don't see any reason against a more carefully analytical treatment here: it's less complicated, not more! Better sources are easily found. Wareh (talk) 03:49, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

P.S. The British were obsessed with telling apart the qualities of their schoolboys & gentlemen by whether they knew Latin vowel quantities. I believe that's 80% of the reason why the student is sometimes admonished not to mark the final syllable long, even though it is metrically felt as long. A writer like Mankin (in his Epodes commentary) likes to give all the possibilities, but he rightly uses the term "brevis in longo": this term has existential import in both halves--there's something short, but there's also something long (the position in the scheme). Wareh (talk) 04:05, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the recent riots in Britain have something to do with the way they are changing Latin prosody. Only a thought. McCronion (talk) 04:13, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

OK. I'll keep using the sources I've got and you are welcome to change things to suit more exacting sources. Things might get a bit confusing if we are both working on it at the same time however. So I'll go through first and you follow up later? McCronion (talk) 04:02, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

caesura

None of my sources gives definitive guidelines about use of caesura, except that, technically, it occurs wherever a word ends inside a foot. Generally they talk about 'caesura' as if there is one per line, a dominant caesura. As far as I understand, even scholars sometimes debate the best placement of the caesura. Below is my thinking about the scansion of the first 4 lines of Aeneid. Let me know if you disagree about my placement of the caesura, or what you think the best approach is.

 -  u  u| -   u  u|- ||  -| -   - |  - u  u |- - 
 Arma vi-rumque ca-nō, Trō-iae quī prīmus ab ōrīs
 - u u|-   -|-  || u u | -   -|- u   u | - u
 Ītali-am fā-tō   profu-gus Lā-vīniaque vēnit
  - u u | -       - |     - || - | -   - | - u  u |-  -
 lītora, mult(um) il-l(e) et  ter-rīs iac-tātus et altō
  -  u u| - ||  - | -   u  u| -   -|- u   u |- u
 vī supe-rum,  sae-vae memo-rem Iū-nōnis ob īram;

I followed the advice in the scholarly literature that the dactylic hex caesura is far and away most commonly ppaced in the third foot. I didn't mark in a caesura after the comma in line 3 because it's a diaeresis. Anyway, if anybody knows better, please advise. McCronion (talk) 00:52, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

That looks mostly fine, but in line 3, after et is unnatural: better would be a hephthemimeral caesura litora, multum ille et terris | iactatus et alto. (And most would analyze line 4 the same way: the idea is that if there is a strong logical caesura in the 2nd foot, look for what still counts definitionally as the "principal caesura" in the 4th.)

Writers on meter consider the caesura an absolute: i.e. they will say that every line in Homer has a penthemimeral (3rd foot) caesura except for 256, and that those 256 have the hephthemimeral caesura. This means the pause or break in sense may sometimes be exceedingly weak. I agree that "wherever a word ends inside a foot" is so niggling a form of bean counting that it's best suppressed for our purposes here, in favor of discussing the principal caesura. Wareh (talk) 03:32, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Excellent, I'll recan accordingly. I did consider the fourth foot but after my sources said the caesura was overwhelmingly in the third, I was reluctant to have caesuras in the fourth foot in lines 3 and 4. The points you made here could be inserted in the article. McCronion (talk) 03:53, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Allen and Greenough §615.d, for what it is worth, places the principal caesura after terris in 3 and after superum in 4.

Still on these lines, but not caesura: is an explanation of Lāvīnyăque for Lāvīnĭăque in line 2 needed? If yes, synaeresis might be a confusing link. The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 07:29, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

That's good. The 4 Aeneid lines then demonstrate the three positions for the caesura: mostly third foot, sometimes the fourth, and just occassionally the second. The article presently deals with i as a double consonant as in eius but not as as a single consonant, so yes the issue should be addressed in the Prosody (Latin)#Quantity section. On a more general note:

There seems to be a difference in some conventions in prosody, such as naming of long/short syllables as heavy/light, but also on the scanning of the last syllable in dactylic hexameter, which can be long or short in my sources but in Wareh's preferred sources is always long. I think the reader should be advised of different conventions or they'll edit the article according to whichever source they have in hand. I've done that with naming quantity length and I think we should do that with the scansion of the dactylic hexameter. If we could find a source that actually considers differences in convention we would live in the best of all possible worlds and we could cite it. Wareh's notion of prosody as a means of social control in the British education system is interesting (see above) but I'm not sure there is a source for it. I've added a note to Wareh's edit of dactylic hexameter to take account of different schemes. I think that may be the best way to go forward. McCronion (talk) 22:39, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Further on the above points, the article now says that the last syllable of a verse is long by position. I guess that means where the syllable is short a pause was used to make up the time difference, or it was filled by a beat of music, and I am wondering what the proof of that might be. Is there a comment by any ancient scholars about what was done to make up the time difference, or is it an inference by modern scholars? That is the sort of info we should add. McCronion (talk) 00:14, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually here is another issue: the meters as demonstrated in the article aren't necessarily complete lines of verse. For example, the next meter I meant to do was iambic dimeter, which sometimes is joined to the hemiepes to form a line of verse in the 2nd Archilochian. Likewise the second hemiepes in dactylic pentameter can be a point of reference for the 3rd Archilochian, where a hemiepes is joined to iambic dimeter. In that case, the scheme presented in my sources is more flexible. Moreover what about the choliamb? It is meant to end on a lame note. How does that fit in with the definition that the final syllable is always long by position? McCronion (talk) 02:06, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

On an early page of West's Greek Metre (I don't have it in front of me now) he cites the following texts for the ancient conception of brevis in longo:

Quintillian 9.4.93 (on clausulae): clausula quoque e longis firmissima est, sed uenit et in breues, quamuis habeatur indifferens ultima. neque enim ego ignoro in fine pro longa accipi breuem, quia uidetur aliquid uacantis temporis ex eo quod insequitur accedere: aures tamen consulens meas intellego multum referre uerene longa sit quae cludit an pro longa.

Choeroboscus on Hephaestion p. 225: Πρόδηλόν ἐστι τὸ λεγόμενον, ἐπειδὴ λέγει παντὸς εἶναι μέτρου τὸ τέλος ἀδιάφορον, τουτέστι ἐὰν μακρὸν ἢ βραχὺ τοῦτο, ἀδιάφορον· ἰστέον ὅτι ἡ βραχεῖα ἀντὶ μακρᾶς εὑρίσκεται εὐλόγως κατὰ τὸ τέλος (βοηθεῖται γὰρ ὑπὸ τῆς σιωπῆς), παραλόγως δὲ ἡ μακρὰ ἀντὶ βραχείας παραλαμβάνεται ἐν τέλει μέτρου, ὅμως δ' οὕτως ἐπεκράτησε.

As for the mixed measures that you bring up, since brevis in longo is a phenomenon that is associated with the end of a period or verse, not simply any recognizable unit or colon, the combinations would only create a new verse in which the final syllable is "long by position" at the end of the line. But the issue here isn't whether or not the syllable is long, it's pedagogical, and West does have some thoughts on our approach to communicating this concept both in Greek Metre and an article in CQ. I should be able to take a look at these tomorrow and will report back if no conclusions have been reached here. Sorry that I don't have a reference at hand that refers specifically to Latin verse. (Also, the choliamb is "lame" because the penultimate syllable is long, giving the sense that the last foot "drags": - -, not the u - of a proper iambic closing.) The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 06:17, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

OK so both the ancient authorities indicate that a pause makes up the missing time. Excellent: that's something to add to the article. Also thanks for your point about the choliamb - the definition you give is very coherent (it was rattling around in the back of my mind like loose change but I didn't quite get my hand on it in time to pay the toll). I agree also that the main issue seems to be pedagogical. I don't think of my role here as a teacher, more like a student presenting information as clearly as I can. It makes sense to treat verses here as units of verse to be mixed together and the final syllable in that case is not necessarily long by position. Of course the dactylic hex is different and so are other long units but then we come to the issue of consistency in notation: I think it is more coherent to present all the schemes as if they are units not lines. The schemes in my sources all seem to use that approach i.e. none of them marks the final syllable long by position when it is short by nature. Anyway, I'm feeling a bit like a bull in a paddock and I should back off before I gore somebody. I'll come back later when time and mood allow. McCronion (talk) 22:10, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Let me try to catch up here with a few points, and let me know if I'm failing to respond to something.

(1) It is clear that the strongest sense-break in Aeneid 1.4 is after vi superum. It is a general fact that lines with caesura in foot 2 also have it in foot 4. Because of the absolute reliability of the principle "caesura in the third foot, or else in the fourth," some authorities restrict the terminology "principal" to these two ("definitionally" as I said above), whereas others will more sensibly call "principal" the one that's most important in the verse (i.e. in foot 2 in verses with this structure, which G.S. Kirk nicely appreciates and calls "rising threefolders" in his introduction to vol. 1 of the Cambridge Iliad commentary--by the way also a sensible discussion of the question of caesuras as creating merely rhythmic vs. sense units). No objection from me to following sense!

(2) I can only be happy to see ancient sources quoted that support and clarify the analysis, but in meter there are many more ancient sources that only obscure the subject with absolutely crazy and irrelevant ideas. Caveat scriptor.

(3) Thanks for the nice compromise in the article on the treatment of the final syllable. I understand that McCronion is trying to use a pragmatically descriptive approach which may be in some tension with a more analytical approach, but I'm glad to see this point restyled, since I think it can clarify and simplify for readers who are struggling to understand all this as something other than a list of 0's and 1's. (In general, I'm not going to intervene here with references to what I think is "the right way to think about meter," because it's all on Greek, and I understand that McC's working premise on this subject is to let the sources on Latin speak for themselves. There could be, however, a longer-term problem here, in that it could be tricky under strict Wikipedia guidelines to apply sound discussions of Gk. quantitiative meter to Latin, even if this is what informed people rightly do all the time.) Wareh (talk) 20:36, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

P.S. I was emboldened about my protest on the old & unsatisfying language of line-end "anceps" by this review's severe words: "Guidance on metre is similarly deficient. The introduction to iambic trimeters (pp. 24-8) fails to mention caesura and confuses line-end brevis in longo with syllaba anceps." God spare us all the wrath of such a reviewer, but I'm afraid he would have similar words for the authors whom McC found committing the same sinful assertion. Wareh (talk) 19:47, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

a few points

• I noticed this edit . I quote from Martin, page 32; "The prosody of the verse of Plautus and Terence is substantially the same as that of classical Latin verse." He is not referring to Roman comedy after those two poets (incidentally, who are the other Latin comic poets?)
• The article now says that a syllable is long by position "if it is the final syllable of the verse". My source for Greek prosody, Goodwin, says "The last syllable of every verse is common, and it may be made long or short to suit the metre, without regard to its usual quantity." I've said before, I'm no scholar, and I'm not sure how far we can extrapolate from Greek to Latin prosody, but surely the final syllable in Latin can't always be long, unless there is a strong difference between Latin and Greek prosody.
• As far as I know, there is no real certainty even among scholars about how Latin verse was pronounced. There are lots of educated guesses. So I don't see how anyone can be dogmatic about a right and wrong way to scan the final syllable in Latin . We should respect all authors who have been published by respectable publishers. If they differ, then we should annotate the article accordingly.

However, I'm not doing any further work here at WP for the forseeable future, and I won't follow up the points I have made here. McCronion (talk) 23:42, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I hadn't found that sentence on p. 32, and I'll try to fix things. A problem here is that Martin's usage of the word "prosody" on p. 32 seems to be in the narrow sense of "the basic rules of scansion" and not in the wider sense (used in the article title here) of "metrical practice of poets, variations in the form of a given shape of verse, etc." Thus it remains the case that the original sentence ("His successors Plautus and Terence further refined these theatrical borrowings and the prosody of their verse is substantially the same as for classical Latin verse.") is misleading or at least unclear: its two limbs do not belong together in the same sentence; on the higher level of the specific dramatic verse forms Martin on p. 1 rightly said ""followed by all subsequent writers in the genre." (Also, "but" for "and.") Wareh (talk) 20:03, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Q verse and the pause

I've been thinking about this and I've decided that quantitative verse necessarily has problems explaining pauses since of course they occupy intervals of time. So the ancient scholars decided to ignore the metrical nature of the pause and they invented the myth that somehow a final short syllable is magically lengthened when, as a matter of fact, it is made equal to a long syllable by the addition of a pause. If they interpreted the pause as a quantity, they would then have had problems accounting for it elsewhere in the line. I don't understand why the myth has to be peddled today. Especially since it leads to other absurdities when trying to schematise meters (e.g. tediously depicting every last syllable as long, even when it happens to be short). Maybe I have misunderstood something here, as I am using reason and common sense rather than any manual on verse. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 02:33, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually the Welsh nut made a good suggestion earlier, coming up with a specially formatted form of brevis in longo: ῡ. I'll try that out. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 03:49, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the props, McCaecus. — the cardiff chestnut | talk — 04:20, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Props? When an electronic signal from Cardiff talks of props, I guess he must be talking Rugby. It was a game the Welsh used to be good at once. Is the Welsh national team now borrowing props from other countries? I haven't played in years so I can't help out. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 06:03, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

An Americanism meaning "acknowledgement", apparently short for "proper respect" according to other electronic signals. (But you probably knew all that.) Trying to figure out what "props" means in rugby argot I came across this at Rugby union positions: "The props "prop up" the hooker in the scrum." It sounds like a lovely game. In America whatever that sentence means would cost some money and probably land you in jail if caught. — the cardiff chestnut | talk — 06:31, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, you aren't Welsh. I'll just have to call you 'the nut' after this. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 09:54, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Continuing edit

I'll continue with my current edit. My expectation is that other articles will spring up sometime to cover specific cases, such as the prosody of comic drama, which I won't develop here. This article is an overview of Latin prosody in the late republic/early empire period and there isn't room enough for everything. It's coarse-grained. Other articles can take a fine-grained look at all the ifs and buts and different theories about specific systems. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 02:36, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion! I have now filled the gap with a page on the Metres of Roman comedy. Kanjuzi (talk) 12:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Quantity

I believe it is not best practice to describe syllables as long by nature or long by position. It should be vowels that are so described. A vowel short by nature becomes long by position if it precedes an x or z, or, with exceptions, a combination of consonants. The examples given of dux and dant may be a bit unfortunate, since the u in dux is short by nature, as appears in its declined forms like ducis, and dant is a form of the only a-stem Latin verb where the a is short, as in damus, datus, etc. These are in fact examples of length by position. Rus and vas would be better examples of length by nature. People may wish to contest these remarks, but if there is no disagreement perhaps the article should be altered.  Seadowns (talk) 09:26, 21 September 2017 (UTC)yyllable's

I don't see how that can be right. Surely the vowel remained the same length and didn't change, but the combination of vowel + consonant in a word like mit-tit made a long syllable. The vowel remained short; the syllable was long. Kanjuzi (talk) 17:10, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

If you say something is long by position, you mean by its position, the position of the thing you are talking about. So if you hypothesize that a syllable's quantity is determined by position, you mean by its, the syllable's, position. Under that hypothesis the same position will give the same quantity. Now consider the second syllables of mittit and mittunt: the position of each is the same, at the end of the word, so under the hypothesis the quantities should be the same, but in fact they are different, one is short and the other is long. Therefore the hypothesis is wrong. What makes the second syllable of mittunt long is the position of the vowel, before two consonants, not of the syllable. Seadowns (talk) 11:46, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me that the quantity of the second syllable of both mittit and mittunt is long when the words are said in isolation or at the end of a line, but that the quantity of the the second syllable of mittit becomes short when a word starting with vowel follows, e.g. India mittit ebur, in which case we syllabify like this: In-di-a-mit-ti-te-bur. In the same way the t of patrem can either belong to the first syllable (pat-rem) or to the second (pa-trem): natum ante ora pa-tris, pat-rem qui obtruncat ad aras. Kanjuzi (talk) 14:14, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't think like this at all, and I know for a certainty that neither Watt nor Nisbet did either, or any of the less well-known but learned and brilliant scholars who taught me. Where, when and why your way of putting it started I don't know, perhaps you will say. (Also, whether you do it in Greek too.) However, it only means that I need another example for my argument, one where the last syllable is short even by your rule, such as mitte. The last syllable has the same position as that of mittunt, but a different quantity, so it cannot be syllable position that determines quantity. Seadowns (talk) 23:07, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

So, according to you, in the word mittit, the first syllable (mit) is long and the second syllable (tit) is short? That doesn't seem quite logical. Obviously they are both closed syllables and take the same length of time to say, so would seem to be of equal length (unless a word like ebur follows, in which case the final t is taken with it). Concerning words like mitte, I won't argue with you. Personally, though, I prefer to follow those scholars who say that at the end of a line every syllable counts as long, including -te. This is the reason why a word like mittite cannot end a hexameter. If it did, it would have to be scanned as a cretic (– u –) and not a dactyl, which wouldn't fit the metre. However, you might be right that in the past, scholars analysed things differently. Kanjuzi (talk) 07:09, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Two consonants take longer than one, don't they? I note from the wiki article on Sanskrit prosody that there also a syllable is short if it contains a short vowel and is followed by only one consonant before the next vowel, very much what Chuck Oughton says. Your method involves notionally shifting a consonant to the next word, which I find hard to swallow. There are places where it means shifting it across a break in sense and a pause, and in principle, it could mean shifting it from one speaker to another, in a passage of oratio recta, which would be odd. But then, it is only notional. The only practical difference is if you wish actually to pronounce short open vowels at the end of a line as long, to make a spondee, whereas I am quite happy to allow the last foot to be a trochee and pronounce the words naturally. I think that the sixth foot is dissyllabic to provide some relief and variation from a possible endless torrent of dactyls. And what about Greek, as I previously asked? Is Homer's swift flow to be weighted down by lengthening short vowels at the end of lines? Seadowns (talk) 12:08, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me that when you say mittit dona, it is syllabified mit-tit-do-na, but when you say mittite dona it is syllabified mit-ti-te-do-na, and similarly when you say mittit ebur it is syllabified mit-ti-te-bur. So the t is sometimes taken with the previous syllable and sometimes with the following one. As for the final short -a or short -e, I wasn't suggesting that they are pronounced long, but merely that the pause which follows them makes the syllable count as long, i.e. the syllable is long, not the vowel. Kanjuzi (talk) 06:00, 19 June 2018 @(UTC)

I don't think there is a way of enforcing one approach against the other, but I do think the old way is simpler and more natural to speech, and easier for learners. Seadowns (talk) 00:00, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps you are right. Kanjuzi (talk) 17:19, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

I would now add that if the final syllable of a line is to be regarded as long, even when is consists of a short vowel, there would be no need for the prohibition against ending a pentameter with a short vowel, which occurs very seldom indeed in Ovid. Whereas ending in a short closed syllable is perfectly permissible. Seadowns (talk) 16:08, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that is true. It seems that Ovid and other poets differentiated between short vowel, short vowel + consonant, and longer endings such as -unt. Kanjuzi (talk) 18:21, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

::::::Yes, at the end of a pentameter, at least. I am not quite so sure about other poets than Ovid, but the fact that Ovid avoided a short vowel ending is enough to show that the final syllable was not long merely by being final. If it had been, there would have been no reason for Ovid's practice. Seadowns (talk) 13:05, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I have tried to simplify and clarify this section, but I am still not fully happy with it. I don't know the full rules about posives and liquids, and it would be nice if someone could help. Seadowns (talk) 00:56, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Two Rhythms

I personally find this section to be rather long and confusing, and wonder what somebody coming to the subject for the first time would be able to get from it. All it really wants to say is that in Latin verse the word stress or accent, and the ictus of the metre, sometimes coincide and sometimes do not. This sets up an interplay which poets could exploit, as in the first line of the Aeneid, where the relative pronoun qui has been placed second in its clause to avoid a coincidence of ictus and accent in the fourth foot. There is no need to mention what happens in English or Greek, or the speculations of scholars about how the Romans spoke verse. If the section were cut down like this it would be clearer and easier, but still get the full message of two rhythms across. Seadowns (talk) 09:28, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I have now polished this section without change of substance, and hope people will like the results. If not, they can revert it. Parts of it still seem to me to be unnecessary. I have not made the obvious point that the way in which verse was read would have varied considerably. Seadowns (talk) 01:47, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Archilochian or Alcmanian?

Well this is a bugger. A 1st Archilochian, according to my source David Mankin Horace: Odes is dact. hex followed by dact tetra catalectic. But other sources such as here say the second line is a hemiepes. The online googlebook I pasted above says dact. hex + dact. tetra. cat. is an 'Alcmanian Strophe' but it is a lot like a 1st Archilochian.

I'll stick with Mankin, but I'll also cite the google book's opinion that it is in fact an Alcmanian Strophe. Unless someone knows better. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 05:46, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The WP article Alcmanian verse agrees with the Google Book. But Mankin is a top scholar, publishing with Cambridge U.P., and I assume there must be different conventions involved. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 06:06, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I do not know. Maybe a note is needed on the varying uses of the classification. Allen and Greenough (626.7.9-10) agrees with that old Google Book, but maybe that's how the meters were classed in the 19th c. and the grammar's metrical appendix wasn't updated in this regard. Perhaps the editor of the updated version of AG has some insight. — the cardiff chestnut | talk — 17:10, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll go with the oldies but note Mankin's use, and include sections for both forms. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 23:57, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

another issue

According to Green's chart, if I read it right, Catullus sometimes used a spondee in the 4th foot of a choliamb. I haven't found it yet and I think it might be a misprint. I'll remove it from the article chart unless someone else can find a spondee there. His choliambs are poems 8, 22, 31, 37, 39, 44, 59, 60 Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 08:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen a long there either (but it's early and I'm pretty lame right now myself) and have always read that the 9th position had to be short. (In Latin, that is. The choliamb article right now presents it as a universal, but that doesn't apply to Greek. West (Greek Metre (Oxford, 1983) 41) gives: "In Hipponax the fourth syllable from the end is usually short (151 times, against 21 long)." Just scanning the first page of Herodas, 1.21 has a long, too (as does Phoenix 2.17). If you have a good reference for the Latin short 9th position, maybe you could point out the difference in that article?) — the cardiff chestnut | talk — 13:33, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Omitted Metres

Two important and frequently found metres not treated here are hendecasyllabics, the metre of Catullus's first poem, and the Asclepiad family, one member of which is the metre of Horace's first ode.Seadowns (talk) 14:29, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

I have now added a section on hendecasyllabics, though as yet it lacks any citations. Anyone is welcome to suggest improvements or make corrections. Kanjuzi (talk) 08:59, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

With Catullus, the line may start with a trochee or an iamb, as in I 2 or I 4. Martial is stricter in starting always (I think) with two long syllables. Also, we were taught to make a break after the fifth or sixth syllable, though this is not universal, witness Martial's "res non parta labore, sed relicta". I don't know how frequent this pattern is. Then again, the final syllable may be short, as in the line of Martial quoted, at least if you believe, like me, that "brevis in longo" is just a bit of rubbish. Basically, this is an easy metre, unlike the Asclepiads. Seadowns (talk) 22:33, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

I have taken advantage of the offer to make a few changes. Also have altered the translation very slightly to be more faithful to Catullus's effect. Seadowns (talk) 11:03, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Modern analysis

This is going to need a bit of work: Latin verse actually isn't divided into "feet," any more than Greek is. We can do better than simply re-hashing the mistakes of long-ago scholars! The whole "meters" section needs to be re-worked. I will try to get to this in the near future, though my major work is over in Latin VP. A. Mahoney (talk) 14:16, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

::Roll on time-travel, so you can go back and tell Ovid how wrong he was! Try to get him at Tomi, he'd really love a visit.Seadowns (talk) 16:20, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Well, live and learn, I say! I am wondering a tad how far the process of modernising should go, considering that most of us here (I think) are working within older structures. Should we have separate 'old' and 'modern' articles, or provide for both views within one article, or go down the path of modernity without inhibitions, like infants that have escaped parental supervision, toddling down the main road stark naked? I'm happy to let you make that choice and I'll take this as a learning opportunity. Meanwhile, I'll hold off further changes till I see which way you are going. Thanks for getting involved. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 23:23, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

There hasn't been much going on here lately so I'll just state my own thinking about the article and where it should go.

First, I think it needs to be inclusive, with old and new approaches.

Second, so far the article deals only with dactylic and iambic rhythms, and its focus is on feet (up to 4 beats only), with metra emerging almost incidentally. There is also a focus on syllabification as part of the scanning process.

Third, I think the next section should be on Aeolian rhythms, with new feet introduced of 5 to 6 beats, such as the choriamb, with an emphasis on metra such as pherecratic and glyconic as building blocks, and with less syllabification (just as well, as it's very tedious, with trial and error needed to jiggle everything into the right place). Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 08:49, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

It is rather bold to call the concept of feet a "mistake" of earlier scholars, when it was explicitly used by Ovid himself! "Musa per undenas emodulanda pedes" Amores 1.1.30. It can't be a mistake to follow the master.Seadowns (talk) 00:43, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

I can understand how a not very bright person could deny that Latin verse can be divided into feet if he or she did not know that Ovid and Quintilian used this word, and others too perhaps. But to take this view while knowing that Ovid wrote as above is inconceivably stupid! Liscaraig (talk) 09:02, 27 May 2024 (UTC) Liscaraig (talk) 17:22, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

more on brevis in longo

Now here's an interesting comment, by R.D.Dawe ed. Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Cambridge U.P. 1982, page 90: Sophocles does not differ from the other poets in allowing short syllables to stand at the end of a line where a long is required by the meter, a practice normally justified by the evidently too facile explanation that the voice pauses there. A little before that, he says: Sophocles evidently felt that there was no significant break at line end: he uses the definite article at the end of a line with its noun at the beginning of the next - Antigone 409, Electra 879, Philoctetes 263, Oedipus at Col. 351... In other words, for Dawe there is no real distinction between brevis in longo and anceps. I imagine the same holds true in Latin verse for some scholars. I'm not going to remove the brevis in longo stuff from the article as it does have an intellectual neatness to it, which I like, but poetry isn't always neat and maybe some kind of reservation can be added later. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 12:56, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand, there is an appendix on meters where Dawe uses brevis in longo. I don't know how he reconciles that with the statements I quoted. According to my Greek Grammar (1879): The last syllable of every verse is common and it may be made long or short to suit the metre, without regard to its usual quantity. It is called 'syllaba anceps'. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 22:12, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

And the brevis in longo article still lacks citations, which makes its use in this article a bit problematic. Eyeless in Gaza (talk) 22:22, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

This concept seems utterly pointless to me. How can you tell whether it is true or false? It should go! Signed in absence of tilde Seadowns  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seadowns (talk • contribs) 13:02, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

To me it seems incorrect to say that -ram, -nit, -bus etc. are brevis in longo. These syllables are naturally long, ending as they do in vowel + consonant. They become short if followed by a word starting with a vowel, in which case the consonant breaks off and becomes part of the following syllable; but in pause they are long, just as they are when followed by a word starting with a consonant. Kanjuzi (talk) 09:11, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

With respect, I cannot accept the preceding comment. Such syllables are long if they contain a long vowel, otherwise they are short, but will be counted as long if followed by a consonant in the same line. Seadowns, 02:28, 21 July 2017 01:29, 21 July 2017 (UTC)Seadowns (talk)

That is an interesting idea, that "is" or "ad" or "in" (followed by a pause) is a short syllable, despite containing two segments (a vowel and a consonant). If the ending "-is" is naturally short, how does it become long in a phrase like "Caesaris castra"? On the face of it, it would seem natural to consider such endings as being long whether followed by a pause or by a consonant. If the other view is taken, which appears to go against common sense, it needs to be supported by a reference to published academic metrical or phonetic studies I think. Kanjuzi (talk) 07:07, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

What is the authority or reason for thinking that a vowel followed by a single consonant makes a syllable long, though pronounced extremely briefly and lightly? Why "common sense"? I've never heard of a final consonant "breaking off" to a following word before: does it mean that when Propertius wrote "Caesaris enses" he expected "Caesari senses"?! The final syllable of Caesaris in Caesaris castra is scanned long because followed by another consonant, making two. This is basically the same reason as why, for example, grex is a long syllable, although the vowel is short by nature, as is seen in the oblique cases, where only one consonant follows. Also, how do you define "pause"? This matter is handled quite well in another net article on Latin prosody by Chuck Oughton. Seadowns (talk) 12:02, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

In prosodic studies of languages that use quantitative metrics, such as Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek, it is normal to classify syllables as follows (writing V for vowel and VV for long vowel): short: (C)V; long: (C)VV or (C)VC; overlong: (C)VVC, (C)VCC, (C)VVCC etc. (Take this one, for example, by Bruce Hayes]. Therefore both (C)VV and (C)VC are long syllables, and both veni and venit scan as a spondee. This seems to be common sense. (Chuck Oughton is not a specialist in metrics, by the way; his PhD was on Livy; so I don't see why his views have to be taken into account.) Kanjuzi (talk) 07:12, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Who devised this schema, and when? Applied to Latin or Greek it makes a smooth place very rough, where metre demands that VC syllables that are long under the schema must be scanned as short. This is apparently to be achieved by transferring the closing consonant of the syllable to the opening of the next syllable, even when the next syllable is in the following word. This latter case alone occurs myriads upon myriads of times, in the first word of the Iliad, for example, and the first lines of both the Odyssey and the Aeneid. Often enough the transfer has to be across a heavy stop or other break, as in "'Quo ruis?' exclamat", which I found by opening a book at random. Then sometimes the consonant to be transferred is not even the final letter of the word, as in the line of Virgil that begins "perge modo, et.." All this rather than stick to regarding such syllables as short, which is the only approach I have ever known. It may be common sense, but it is certainly not the sensus communis. Also, what is the point of lumping in Latin and Greek, which do not have overlong syllables, with languages that do?

Seadowns (talk) 23:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC) PS I had never heard of Chuck Oughton before, but his study of Livy has not disabled him from setting out facts briefly and clearly. Seadowns (talk) 00:07, 24 July 2017 (UTC) Later --he is inadequate on caesuras, though.Seadowns (talk) 13:45, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Another difficulty about the multilingual schema arises if we consider the prosody of the a line like Virgil's beginning Actiaque Iliacis. The schema forces us to deem the final short syllable of Actia to be lengthened by the addition of the enclitic

-que,, and then shortened again by the -que "breaking off" to the next syllable. Is this really profitable?! However, perhaps this discussion does not really belong here, since it does not affect the article. I do, however, agree that the brevis in longo concept is not needed, apparently being an entity that has been created beyond necessity. Seadowns (talk) 13:24, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Relevance of spelling/grammar problems tag

Is this template tag still relevant? The grammar and spelling look fine to me. Pbericcc (talk) 05:05, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Diaeresis and caesura

I don't think it is a good idea to use the same symbol (||) to represent both diaeresis (a compulsory break between feet) and caesura (an optional break in the middle of a foot). It is confusing for the reader; does it represent the end of a foot or not? Since the caesura is not an essential part of the metre, unlike the diaeresis, I think it would be better not to write it at all, or else use a different symbol for it such as￤Kanjuzi (talk) 09:18, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Hendecasyllables

I have deleted these sentences: "There is usually a break between words after the fifth or sixth syllable. In the second half of the verse the stress of the words will thus usually, or always, coincide with the long syllables." The first claim is so weak as to be meaningless (it would be difficult to write a hendecasyllable without such a break). The second is not true, since the break, if it is there, doesn't make the stress coincide with ictus in the second half: witness verses 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 of Catullus 2. Kanjuzi (talk) 15:47, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

I am happy for the second statement to go. It was not mine, and I did not like it, but left it in. The first statement is different. I gave an example of a line from Martial with no break after the fifth or sixth syllable, res non parta labore sed relicta, but this is rare, I think, and was discouraged. As a pupil I had to reject ideas which failed to provide such a break (eg, off the top of my head, magister/longos difficilesque dat labores). Apart from getting the scansion right, this was the main constraint. So, with respect, I think the statement would be useful. Seadowns (talk) 11:14, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, possibly, but it should have a reference from Raven or a similar authority I think. Kanjuzi (talk) 11:38, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I've just skimmed through Martial I, and found rather more exceptions than I expected. But it's fair to say that 7th and 8th syllable breaks are infrequent, so I think "usually" is not wrong. Some of the exceptions are caused by words that won't otherwise fit, such as "epigrammaton". They can't be called licentious, though. Seadowns (talk) 17:21, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

If it has so many exceptions, I can't see any point in it. In any case, what do you mean by a "break"? In a line like "at pater Aeneas, audito nomine Turni", there is a clear break in sense at the caesura as well as between words. You could pause there if you wished. But in "vivamus mea Lesbia atque amemus", what sort of "break" is it between "mea" and "Lesbia"? You couldn't possibly pause at that point. So really, to say there is a "break" there is meaningless. Kanjuzi (talk) 18:06, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

By "break" I mean the end of a word, nothing more. I have now looked through Martial II and all Catullus's hendecas, and still find that the lines without a 5th or 6th syllable break are comparatively few, especially when there are no words which make one impossible, as in Catullus's "adeste, hendecasyllabi, quot estis." This is where the metre gets its dainty, tripping character, noted by Tennyson. However, if you prefer it to remain among the many important facts about Latin metres that readers will not learn from this article, I don't really mind. Seadowns (talk) 10:12, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I just think that for a less obvious statement such as this, a reference to an authority is necessary. It doesn't seem to be a particularly important fact if it's true. It seems to me to be a somewhat vacuous statement, since just about any line, including a hexameter, usually has a break either after the 5th or the 6th syllable. It's difficult to write one that doesn't. Kanjuzi (talk) 11:19, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Dactylic hexameter

It says: "A dactylic hexameter consists of a hemiepes, a biceps, a second hemiepes, and a final long element, so DuuD—." This way of analysing a hexameter seems dubious and unconventional. Is there a citation? Kanjuzi (talk) 17:22, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

I think this is unenlightening and should go. Seadowns (talk) 18:24, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Double scansion

Am I alone in finding the double scansion in this article, in which long and short marks are written not only for the syllables, but also for the individual vowels, both ugly and distracting? No standard work does this. Moreover, it isn't clear if the vowels of words such as "iam" were long or short. Kanjuzi (talk) 16:47, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree. The marks over the vowels should go. Seadowns (talk) 18:21, 1 March 2021 (UTC)