![]() In such cases it is almost impossible to scan the line without also establishing its sense. ![]() Much more common are the words whose form is identified only by their quantity: amīcitia can be nominative singular or ablative singular, cīvis can be nominative or genitive singular or accusative plural, and manus can be nominative singular or nominative or accusative plural, etc. Latin has a number of virtual homonyms, distinguished only by their quantity, such as lěvis ("light") and lēvis ("smooth"). Ideally we would all know, say, that the first syllable of miles was long and the second one short, but in practice we are often uncertain, or even wrong, and it sometimes necessary to consult a dictionary solely to ascertain the quantities of a word.Īn additional problem is that it is often necessary to know the meaning of a Latin word before one can know its prosody. All diphthongs are normally long by nature, but individual vowels can be either long or short, though a vowel followed by another vowel not in a diphthong is normally short. Whereas English meters are based on a word's accent ("Múch have I trávelled in the reálms of góld”), Latin meters are based on quantity what matters most is whether syllables are long or short.įor most of us the obstacle to reading Latin verse aloud is that we have not learned the quantities of Latin very well. ![]() Raven, Latin Metre: an Introduction (Cambridge, 1965). Since the Amores may well be among the first Latin poems a student encounters, it may be helpful to provide a brief introduction to the rules of Latin prosody (the quantity of individual syllables) and to the reading aloud of elegiac couplets. Virgil's hexameters are generally regarded as "the supreme metrical system of Latin literature.Prosody | Eli sion | The Elegiac Couplet | Reading Aloud ![]() Horace was a contemporary of Virgil and, like the epic poet, he wrote verses in dactylic hexameter, but in a conversational and epistolary style. Horace, whose career crossed the divide between the Roman republic and empire, followed Catullus' lead in employing Greek lyrical forms, identifying with Alcaeus of Mytilene, composing Alcaic stanzas, and also with Archilochus, composing poetic invectives in the Iambus tradition (in which he adopted the metrical form of the Epode or "Iambic Distich"). Catullus shared the Alexandrian's preference for short poems and wrote within a variety of meters borrowed from Greece, including Aeolian forms such as hendecasyllabic verse, the Sapphic stanza and Greater Asclepiad, as well as iambic verses such as the choliamb and the iambic tetrameter catalectic (a dialogue meter borrowed from Old Comedy). The late republic saw the emergence of Neoteric Poets, notably Catullus-rich young men from the Italian provinces, conscious of metropolitan sophistication, and looking to the scholarly Alexandrian poet Callimachus for inspiration. Ennius moulded a poetic diction and style suited to the imported hexameter, providing a model for "classical" poets such as Virgil and Ovid. Įnnius (239 – 169 BC), virtually a contemporary of Livius, introduced the traditional meter of Greek epic, the dactylic hexameter, into Latin literature he substituted it for the jerky Saturnian meter in which Livius had been composing epic verses. 159? BC) further refined the borrowings from the Greek stage and the prosody of their verse is substantially the same as for classical Latin verse. Livius translated Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, using meters that were basically those of Greek drama, modified to the needs of Latin. Scholars conventionally date the start of Latin literature to the first performance of a play in verse by a Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, at Rome in 240 BC. The verse comedies of Plautus, the earliest surviving examples of Latin literature, are estimated to have been composed around 205-184 BC. The history of Latin poetry can be understood as the adaptation of Greek models. First century AD located at the Porta Salaria, Rome, commemorating an 11-year-old who won a poetry contest in 95 AD. Memorial Stone of Quintius Sulpicius Maximus, Rome, Italy.
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