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Metre matters: some higher-level metrical play in Latin poetry1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Llewelyn Morgan
Llewelyn Morgan
Affiliation:
Brasenose College, Oxford
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Extract

‘Choice of metre is never arbitrary’ is a useful rule of thumb for critics of any poetry which conforms to a regular rhythmical pattern. The rhythm of a poem is plainly as much a product of the poet's creative choice as any other aspect of the composition, and consequently a fully integral element of the literary project. Out of all the components of a poem, in fact, metre has a claim to a certain priority, since the choice of metre determines to a significant degree the content of a poem as well as its form. That said, to speak in terms of ‘the straitjacket of traditional metrics’ is of course misconceived: the wealth of ancient metrical forms was an enabling rather than restrictive factor in literary composition–an idiom in itself, offering its own expressive possibilities. Like the classical orders of architecture, metres were not merely structural devices but ‘bearers of meaning’ in their own right, perceived, like Vitruvius' Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders (De arch. 1.2.5), to have their own individual characters, and thus particular uses to which each of them might appropriately be put. To what extent these perceived characters, either of metres or of orders, arose from any intrinsic property they possessed, or merely from associations more or less accidentally accruing with usage and theory over time, is perhaps debatable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 46 , 2001 , pp. 99 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

2 The quotation comes from Drabble, M. (ed.), The Oxford companion to English literature5 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar s.v. ‘metre’.

3 Cf. Onians, J., Bearers of meaning: the classical orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance (Princeton, 1988) 3–6Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Arist., Poetics 1459b 34–5Google Scholar ().

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6 See Coleman, K. M., Statius, Silvae IV (Oxford, 1988) 158Google Scholar (ad 4.5) and also 220, on Ihe similar situation with the Sapphics of 4.7.

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8 Hornblower, S. and Spawforth, A. (eds.), The Oxford Classical dictionary3 (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar s.vv.

9 Coleman, op. cit. (n. 6); Thomson, D. F. S., Catullus (Toronto, 1997)Google Scholar.

10 Thomson, op. cit. (n. 9) 284.

11 Quinn, K., Catullus, the poems (Houndsmills, 1970) 116Google Scholar.

12 Ibid.

13 On the difference between Greek and Roman accounts of the iambic trimeter and other metres see Halporn, J. W., Ostwald, M. and Rosenmeyer, T. G., The meters of Greek and Latin poetry (Norman, Oklahoma, 1980) 72Google Scholar.

14 West, M. L., Introduction to Greek metre (Oxford, 1987) 30Google Scholar.

15 Ibid. 82.

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17 Quinn, op. cit. (n. 11) xxxiii.

18 A salient example might be Ov. Am. 1.1 (esp. 17–18), where a change ofmetre entails a change of character on the part of the poet figure (into a lover), and where the pattern of the elegiac metre even seems to reflect the poet's anatomical processes: see Kennedy, D., The arts of love (Cambridge, 1993) 59Google Scholar.

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20 Cairns, art. cit. (n. 16) 6.

21 Thomson, op. cit. (n. 9) 284.

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23 Kerkhecker, op. cit. (n. 7), has nothing to say on this topic, but at fr. 191.41 the placement of δεσμός (if this means something like ‘arthritis’ or ‘gout’) may look to the ‘lame’ associations of the metre. Cf. 194.38 (ϰάμπτει) and 82 (ἀλγεῖς). Alessandro Barchiesi (personal communication) suggests that the placement of ἥϰω in fr. 191.1, the first line of the Iambi, at the point where the metre ‘limps’ is deliberate.

24 For a comparably arch play on metrical terminology by Catullus see 14.21–2 and Quinn, op. cit. (n. 11) ad loc.

25 McKeown, J. C., Ovid: Amores. Text, prolegomena and commentary in four volumes, Vol. I: text and prolegomena (Liverpool, 1987) 108–23Google Scholar.

26 Catullus' favourite and (as far as later authors were concerned) characteristic metre, the hendecasyllable, might also have carried Sapphic associations. Caesius Bassus argues (Gr. Lat. 6.258) that the metre was called Phalaecian a cultore suo, non inuentore, on the grounds that it was frequently used by Sappho, particularly in her fifth book. The Suda (II p. 582.5 Adler) talks of it as (. Any such Sapphic association would help to explain Catullus' predilection for the metre: see La Penna, A., ‘Sunt qui Sappho malint: note sulla σύγϰϱισις di Saffo e Alceo nell'antichità’, Maia 24 (1972) 208–15Google Scholar. Another likely determinant of the associations which the metre will have borne for Catullus and his contemporaries is its presence in Callimachus' ‘Iambus 14’ (fr. 226), which Cameron, A.. Callimachus and his critics (Princeton, 1995) 165Google Scholar, believes explains Catullus' tendency to refer to hendecasyllabic poems as iambi. Phalaecus himself was an epigrammatist.

27 Courtney, E., The fragmentary Latin poets (Oxford, 1993) 187Google Scholar.

28 On this passage see Rampioni, A. Giordano, Sulpiciae conquestio (Rome, 1982)Google Scholar ad loc. For the association of the hendecasyllable and abuse see Cat. 42.1 and Thomson, op. cit. (n. 9) ad loc.

29 See also Brink, C. O., Horace on poetry: the Ars Poetica (Cambridge, 1971)Google Scholar and Nisbet and Hubbard ad locc.

30 Those iambic trimeters are pure ‘in which all ancipitia are short and no resolutions of the longa permitted’: Halporn, Ostwald and Rosenmeyer. op. cit. (n. 13). In other words, the metre consists of iambi and nothing else.

31 Pierio Valeriano, as quoted by Gaisser, J. H., Catullus and his Renaissance readers (Oxford, 1993) 123–4Google Scholar and 341 nn. 56 and 61. Cf. Thomson, op. cit. (n. 9), 214 and Coleman, K. M., ‘The persona of Catullus’ phaselus', G&R N.S. 28 (1981) 68–72, at 68Google Scholar: ‘[t]he pure iambic metre contributes to the impression of youthful vigour’. The contrary suggestion by Ferguson, J., Catullus (Lawrence, Kansas, 1985) 18Google Scholar, that the metre represents ‘the gentle rocking of the boat on the still lake’, is egregious.

32 Hor., , AP 254–7Google Scholar describes the effect of admitting spondees to the iambic trimeter as a slowing down of the metre (tardior ut paulo grauiorque ueniret ad auris).

33 For suggestions as to the rich symbolic potential of the mule see Freudenburg, K., The walking Muse: Horace on the theory of satire (Princeton, 1993) 206–7Google Scholar.

34 Coleman, op. cit. (n. 6) 105.

35 Strab. 3.4.9; Dio 43.32.1; App. BC 2.103; Oros. 6.16.6.

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The running metre par excellence was of course the τϱοχαῖος (Arist. Rhet. 1409a 1). The galliambics of Cat. 63 are in a class of their own, but note again the ‘swift ship’ in the first line, setting the tone (and advertising the metrical mimesis), and cf. Varro, , Men. 79Google Scholar (also galliambic), tua templa ad alta fani properans citus itere, ‘to your temple on high, hurrying, rapid in my journey’, the words for speed, as at Cat. 63.1, falling after the caesura in the faster second half of the line: for a discussion of 63 making much of the speed of the metre and the narrative see Perutelli, A., ‘Il carme 63 di Catullo’, Maia 48 (1996) 255–70Google Scholar. It is as a tour de force of metre, above all, that Martial (2.86.4–5) treats 63, and the parallels between the characters of its narrative and protagonist and its rhythm (fast, wild) do suggest that the poem is an extended gloss on its own metre: cf. Godwin, J., Catullus, poems 61–68 (Warminster, 1995) 122Google Scholar. The galliambic was regarded as a ‘loose’ version of Ionics, already an agitated metre (cf. Hor. Carm. 3.12).

38 For the regular play in Ovid and elsewhere on pes as a metrical foot and as a means of transport (‘Latin poets are always ready for any word-play involving human and metrical feet’), play which comes particularly naturally to the elegiac couplet, see Hinds, S., ‘Booking the return trip: Ovid and Tristia 1’, PCPS 31 (1985), 13–32, at 18–19Google Scholar, and Barchiesi, A., ‘Alcune difficoltà nella carriera di un poeta giambico. Giambo ed elegia nell'epodo XI’, in Cortés Tovar, R. and Fernàndez Corte, J. C. (eds.), Bimilenario de Horacio (Salamanca, 1994) 127–38, at 135–7Google Scholar.

39 Degani, op. cit. (n. 19) test. 28, etc.

40 Keil, H., Grammatici Latini VI (Leipzig, 1874), 257. 2–3Google Scholar.

41 See especially Ov. Am. 2.17.21–2, carminis hoc ipsum genus impar. sed tamen apte ∣ iungitur herous cum breuiore modo, and the note of McKeown, J. C., Ovid: Amores. Text, prolegomena and commentary in four volumes, Vol. III: a commentary on Book 2 (Leeds, 1998)Google Scholar, ad loc.

42 For details of the MSS of Tibullus and their history see Rouse, R. H. and Reeve, M. D. in Reynolds, L. D. (ed.), Texts and transmission (Oxford, 1983) 420–25Google Scholar.

43 Postgate, J. P., Tibulli aliorumque carminum libri tres2 (Oxford, 1915) viiGoogle Scholar.

44 Fogazza, D., Domiti Marsi testimonia et fragmenta (Rome, 1981) 35Google Scholar.

45 For a convincing refutation of the view, based on Mart. 4.29, that Marsus wrote an epic Amazonis, and for a (less convincing) suggestion that he wrote love elegy as well as epigrams, see Cameron, A., Callimachus and his critics (Princeton, 1995) 311–12Google Scholar.

46 RE s.v. Domitius no. 66, 5.1431.

47 See McGann, M. J., ‘The date of Tibullus' death’, Latomus 29 (1970) 774–80Google Scholar.

48 Feeney, D. C., ‘Horace and the Greek lyric poets’ in Rudd, N. (ed.), Horace 2000: a celebration. Essays for the bimillennium (London, 1993) 41–63, at 44–5Google Scholar.

49 Lattimore, R., Themes in Greek and Latin epitaphs (Urbana, 1962) 183Google Scholar.

50 See Degli Innocenti Pierini, R., ‘Un modulo del linguaggio critico di Cicerone’, SIFC 47 (1975) 68–85. at 82 n. 7Google Scholar, citing Cicero (fr. 2 Courtney) and Caesar (fr. 1 Courtney) on Terence, A.P. 7.263, 438 and a number of instances in Ausonius. Mariotti, Sc., ‘Intorno a Domizio Marso’, in Miscellanea di studi alessandrini in memoria di Augusto Rostagni (Turin, 1963) 588–614, at 610Google Scholar and n. 76 points out the good epitaphic pedigree of Marsus' te quoque.

51 Barchiesi, A., ‘Palinuro e Caieta. Due “epigrammi” Virgiliani (Aen. V 870sg.; VII 1–4)’, Maia 31 (1979) 3–11, at 10Google Scholar, discussing the ‘epitaph’ of Caieta which begins Aen. 7 (tu quoque litoribus nostris. Aeneia nutrix …).

52 Ov. Am. 3.9.33–4, 37 = Tib. 1.3.23–6; Ovid 47–52 = Tib. 3–8; Ovid 60 = Tib. 1.3.57–8. In the last case. where he alludes to the same passage as Marsus, Ovid (in contrast to Marsus) follows the optimistic turn of Tibullus' passage.

53 Hinds, S., The metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the self-conscious Muse (Cambridge, 1987) 141 n. 58Google Scholar.

54 Ibid. 103–4.

55 A related effect is available for Horace in epodic metres like the First Archilochian, which combines a dactylic hexameter with a dactylic tetrameter. Hor. Carm. 1.7 is described by Davis, G., Polyhymnia: the rhetoric of Horatian lyric discourse (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991) 18Google Scholar, as a case of ‘generic remodeling’, whereby epic material is self-consciously assimilated into lyric discourse. In this process of making epic unepic the choice of a metre which promises epic narrative, but then introduces an exclusively lyric metre, is highly effective. (Davis 192 has a rather different interpretation of the metre.)

56 Barchiesi, A., The poet and the prince (Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1997) 23Google Scholar; cf. 22 on Battus in Fasti 3, a king who ‘expresses himself in pentameters, never in hexameters’.

57 Cf. Debrohun, J. B., ‘Redressing elegy's puella: Propertius IV and the rhetoric of fashion’. JRS 84 (1994) 41–63, at 48Google Scholar.

58 Cf. the more complex effect of 381–2, Callimachi numeris non est dicendus Achilles, ∣ Cydippe non est oris, Homere, tui. Ovid's play with rhythm in Am. 3.9.3–4 is one of a number of respects in which his poem resembles Marsus'. See Courtney, op. cit. (n. 27) 303–4.

59 Tarrant, R. J., CP 77 (1982) 351 n. 35Google Scholar.

60 Warmington, E. H., Remains of old Latin III (Lucilius and the Twelve Tables) (Cambridge, Mass., 1938)Google Scholar ad loc.

61 Brown, P. M.. Horace, Satires I (Warminster, 1993)Google Scholar ad loc.

62 Braund, S. H.. Roman verse satire (Oxford, 1992) 11Google Scholar.

63 For other instances of unmetrical names explicitly marked in poetic texts, see Kassel, R., ‘Quod uersu dicere non est’ ZPE 19 (1975) 211–18Google Scholar (= Kleine Schriften (Berlin, 1991) 131–7Google Scholar). The fact that the conceit is an established one does not preclude the possibility that it carries implications over and above the simple metrical requirements of the verse, and this applies to other examples, in particular Archestratus of Gela fr. 39.3 Brandt, sometimes described as Lucilius' model in this fragment.

64 Coleman, op. cit. (n. 6) 102. For the ‘speedy’ associations of the metre, cf. the hendecasyllables of Cinna fr. 9 Courtney: at nunc me Genumana per salicta ∣ bigis raeda rapit citata nanis, ‘but now through the osier-beds of the Cenomani a chariot speedy with a pair of ponies whips me away’.

65 What makes Statius' achievement so impressive is the restrictive nature of the metre, exacerbated in the later first century A.D. by the standardization of the spondaic opening to the hendecasyllable. Catullus allowed himself short or long syllables in the first two spaces. For the later standardization, and the reasons for it see Pliny, , HN 1Google Scholarpraef. 1 and his rewriting of Catullus 1.3 to render it less ‘harsh’.

66 I offer as a random illustration the remarkably high number of Silvae which deploy old age as a closural motif: see 1.2.276–7, 1.3.109–10, 1.5.64–5, 2.4.36–7, 3.4.103–6, 4.3.162–3, 4.7.54–6 and 5.1.261–2.

67 Cf. Coleman, op. cit. (n. 6) 104.

68 Cf. Q. Gellius Sentius Augurinus apud Plin., Ep. 4Google Scholar. 27. 4 on his neoteric-inspired uersus minuti, ‘short lines’, implicitly contrasted with Ennius' uersus longus, the dactylic hexameter (Cic. Leg. 2.68; Isid. Orig. 1.39.6; cf. Gellius 18.15.1).

69 The parallelism is made particularly obvious in texts where the poem is headed by the titulus ‘Via Domitiana’, although Coleman argues that the tituli postdate Statius (xxviii-xxxii).

70 All translations of Book 4 are Coleman's.

71 See the photographs of the road at Coleman, op. cit. (n. 6) 114–15 and Maiuri, A., ‘Nuovi tratti messi in luce della “Via Domitiana”’, NSA (1928) 182Google Scholar.

72 Hendecasyllables are attested for Calvus (frr. 1 and 2 Courtney), Cinna (fr. 9), Furius Bibaculus (frr. 1, 2, 5 and 6, including poems about Valerius Cato) and Cornificius (fr. 1), suggesting that the metre, fairly rare elsewhere, became a kind of hallmark of the noui poetae.

73 Gaisser, op. cit. (n. 31) 4.

74 Once again pack animals figure (naturally) in accounts of slowness; note also their paradoxical speediness on the new road (103–4): tunc uelocior acriorque cursus, ∣ tunc ipsos iuuat impetus iugalis, ‘then swifter and more eager is the journey, even the draught-animals delight in the speed’.

75 For ‘filling’ as ‘possessing’ or ‘inspiring’ see Hor. Carm. 3.25.1–2, and Seneca the Elder's odd account (Suas. 3.6) of the ‘Virgilian’ expression plena deo, which perhaps came from an earlier draft of Virgil's description of the Sibyl: Norden, E., Hermes 28 (1893) 506–11Google Scholar. Does the Sibyl possess the road as she is possessed by the god?

76 In general the relative simplicity of expression which characterizes this poem, as compared with the rest of the Silvae, corroborates this impression of ‘directness’.

77 Cf. Mart. 11.15, like Silv. 1.6 and 4.9 a Saturnalian (12) and hendecasyllabic poem. Martial bids his book not to talk ‘by roundabout ways’, per circuitus (8), about the male genitalia.

78 There is an irony that licence, a lack of encumbrance and freedom from rules, should find expression in a metre as restrictive as the hendecasyllable (Laurence Emmett, personal communication). Yet the freedom brought by the road is explicitly a function of order, since it depends upon the enslavement of the river Volturnus to the control of men (67–95): Coleman comments that ‘Building projects … display man's dominion over Nature’, and represent for Statius ‘the advance of civilization on a disordered wilderness’ (103). That law and order are a prerequisite of libertas is a standard Roman formulation, encapsulated by Cicero at Leg. agr. 2.102, libertas in legibus consistit, and found also in the reference to Domitian's suppression of the practice of castration at 13–15 (Domitian ‘forbids adult males to fear’). And once again the predication of freedom on order discovers a powerful mode of expression in the strict metrics, redolent of freedom, of 4.3. At lines like 75, recti legibus aluei ligasti, it is hard not to think of metrical laws, particularly where natural word accent and ictus coincide as closely as they do here.

79 As long-winded speech epic can also be described by ambages; cf. Virg. G. 2.46.

80 See, for example, Paus. 10.5.7.

81 Keil. op. cit. (n. 40) 258 17–24. The modern analysis is glyconic + bacchiac.

82 Kay, N. M.. Martial Book XI: a commentary (London, 1985) 71Google Scholar.

83 Kay, op. cit. (n. 82) ad loc.

84 On this passage, its Catullan model, and related passages in Martial see Kay, op. cit. (n. 82) ad loc; Hooper, R. W., ‘In defence of Catullus' dirty sparrow’, G&R N.S. 32 (1985) 162–78Google Scholar.