Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T20:06:00.853Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Trochaic Tetrameter and the Versus Popularis in Latin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2024

W. B. Sedgwick
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In discussing popular verse we may note, first, that speaking generally it is originally rhythmical rather than metrical, usually only becoming metrical under literary influence—as was probably the case in Greek and Latin; secondly, that it tends to be strongly accentual, being very often (and perhaps by origin) connected with dancing or rhythmical movement (spinning, grinding, &c.); and thirdly, that therefore the number of accents is more important than the number of syllables. These considerations are of almost universal application, many languages, indeed, never developing any precise metrical rules at all—as Old English and Hebrew.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , February 1932 , pp. 96 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1932

References

page 96 note 1 Cf. Quintilian, 9. 4. 114: ‘poema nemo dubitaverit impetu quodam initio fusum, et aurium mensura et similiter decurrentium spatiorum observatione esse generatum; mox in eo repertos pedes.’

page 96 note 2 Compare the ‘triplicity’ of the Carmen Arvale.

page 97 note 1 In the same way, I suppose, as not a single fugue of Bach's Well-tempered Clavier obeys all the rules of the text-books.

page 97 note 2 Cf. Lejay, P., Hist. Lat. Lit., pp. 162, ff. (Paris, Boivin, n.d.).Google Scholar

page 99 note 1 Lepidus and Plancus, who had their brothers proscribed, Vell. Pat. 2. 67. 4.

page 100 note 1 I have not ventured to include the verses on Aurelian, ‘mille mille mille (mille mille) decollavimus … tantum vini habet nemo quantum fudit sanguinis’ as the restoration is most uncertain.

page 100 note 2 Add 1830, 1899, 1939.

page 101 note 1 Can we conclude on the strength of the verses ‘nón té peto, píscém, peto; quíd mé fugis, Gálle’ (the chant of the mirmillo in the arena), and ‘quém nón pudet, étnón rubet, nón ést homo séd rópio’ (in abuse of Pompey), that the Sotadean also was a popular verse? The metre may have become familiar from the music of the low ‘Ionic’ dancers (see e.g. Plaut. St. 769). Note that accentually both are ordinary trochaics (the former syncopated).

page 101 note 2 Both poems are in the anthologies of Dr. Mackail and Mr. Garrod.

page 102 note 1 Not that the soldiers' rough Fescennines could be fairly called a triumph-song. It is fanciful to suggest a connexion between this metre and the triumph of the Church; for instance, Apparebit repentina is no triumph-song but a very early and close parallel to the Dies Irae.

page 102 note 2 The refrain, as usually printed, ‘omnes qui gaudetis de pace, modo verum iudicate’, has neither rhythm nor metre. I would cut out the unnecessary de.

page 103 note 1 They would tend to read as trochaics, like late Greek ionics, e.g. Gregory Nazianzen's or, with anaclasis, (Anacreontea): compare the lilt of the student's song Clementine.

page 104 note 1 That the various metres actually were developed by extension and curtailment is shown by medieval text-books, e.g. Eberhard's Laborintus.

page 105 note 1 Some of the oldest Spanish and Provençal verse, however, is of a decidedly trochaic character.

page 105 note 2 Possibly it was associated with Dionysus (cf. Archil., Frag. 77): at any rate Aristotle tells us it was the original metre of tragedy, which would be non-literary in origin.

page 105 note 3 The verses on the Emperor Mauricius quoted in Krumbacher, Byz. Lit.2 p. 792, similarly waver between iambic and trochaic. Of the versus politicas Eustathius actually says