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Gaudia nostra: a hexameter-ending in elegy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Nigel Holmes
Nigel Holmes
Affiliation:
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
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Extract

In an earlier article in Classical Quarterly, S. J. Harrison explored the varying frequency of hexameter-endings of the type discordia taetra, where a noun that ends in short a is followed by its epithet with the same termination. It appears from this that while most pre-Augustan poets allow a fairly high frequency of such verse-endings (e.g. Lucretius 1:130, Catullus 1:204), some Augustan poets and their imitators show a distinct tendency to avoid them (e.g. Vergil, Georgics 1:547), while some almost exclude them altogether (e.g. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1:4999, Statius, Thebaid 1:1948). The hexameters of elegiac poetry might be subject to the same restriction; the following are figures for elegy from Catullus to Martial.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , December 1995 , pp. 500 - 503
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1995

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References

1 Harrison, S. J., ‘Discordia taetra: the history of a hexameter-ending’, CQ 41 (1991), 138–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Winbolt, S. E., Latin Hexameter Verse (London, 1903), pp. 153–4Google Scholar, includes participles in his examples when discussing such verse-endings.

3 Supplementary to Harrison's data, the following are the examples for selected poets of discordia taetra verse-endings where the epithet is a participle or the noun is a substantival adjective or participle: Ennius, Annales 361 purpura mixta; Lucilius 487 somnia ficta; Cicero, Aratea 307 sidera fulta; Lucretius 1, 326 saxaperesa, 4, 40 naturaperempta, 5, 965 pira lecta, 5, 999 milia ducta, 5, 1451 signa polita, 6, 88 loca saepta, 6, 540 flumina tecta, 6, 1062 natura locata; Vergil, Eclogues 1, 51 flumina nota, Aeneid 6, 221 velamina nota, 1, 237 verba precantia (precantum var. 1.), 7,491 limina nota, 9, 379 divortia nota, 10, 445 iussa superba, 11, 195 munera nota, 12, 22 oppida capta, 12, 877 iussa superba; Horace, Satires 2, 8, 39 vinaria tota, Epistles 1, 2, 22 aspera multa, 1, 15, 10 deversoria nota; Lucan 3, 472 corpora pressa, 4, 566 viscera lapsa, 10, 471 foedera sancta; Statius, Thebaid 2, 96 vellera nota, 2, 583 tegmina nota (-ne -to var. 1.), 12, 333 sceptra negata. The most notable feature of these figures is their confirmation of the considerable difference noted by Harrison between the first and second half of the Aeneid; adjusting Harrison's figures gives: Eclogues 1:277, Georgics 1:547, Aeneid 1–6 1:1189, 7–12 1:245. Ovid's Metamorphoses provide no examples, unless one counts 6, 579 ‘ilia rogata’, which would bring the frequency of this verse-ending in the poem to 1:3333.

4 Catullus is cited from the edition of R. Mynors (Oxford, 1958), Tibullus and Lygdamus from that of G. Luck (Stuttgart, 1988), Propertius from that of E. A. Barber ([ed. 2] Oxford, 1960).

5 ‘obvia nescio quot pueri mihi turba minuta / venerat’; Heinsius, conjectured ‘minuti’, which Goold accepts in his Loeb, edition (Cambridge and London, 1990)Google Scholar.

6 Palmer's conjecture ‘plectri’ is accepted by many scholars.

7 I have omitted as predicative 4, 2, 53 ‘vidi ego labentis acies et tela caduca / atque hostis turpi terga dedisse fugae’. At 4, 4, 13 ‘murus erant montes: ubi nunc est Curia saepta, / bellicus ex illo fonte bibebat equus’, some take ‘saepta’ as predicative, some punctuate ‘ubi nunc est Curia, saepta (sc. erant).’

8 I use for the Amores the edition of McKeown, J. (Liverpool, 1987)Google Scholar, for the Med. Fac, Ars, and Rem. that of Kenney, E. (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar, for the Epist. heroidum that of Dörrie, H. (Berlin and New York, 1971)Google Scholar, for the Fasti that of Alton, E. H., Wormell, D. E. W. and Courtney, E. ([ed. 3] Leipzig, 1988)Google Scholar, for the Tristia that of Luck, G. (Heidelberg, 1967)Google Scholar, for the Ex Ponto that of Richmond, J. A. (Leipzig, 1990)Google Scholar, for the Ibis that of Penna, A. La (Firenze, 1957)Google Scholar.

9 The variant ‘nostri’, printed in the Loeb edition of Showerman, G. (Cambridge and London, 1977Google Scholar [ed. 2 rev. G. P. Goold]), is said in older editions to be found in many or most of the later manuscripts. It is not in Dome's apparatus, but is in at least one manuscript for which he reports ‘nostro’; see the review of his edition by Reeve, M. D., CR 24 (1974), 59Google Scholar.

10 Cydippe's betrothed ‘minus audacter blanditur et oscula rara / †accipit† (appetit sim. coni.); ‘rara’ here might be regarded as predicative.

11 ‘iam dederat Saliis a saltu nomina ducta / armaque et ad certos verba canenda modos’. Some manuscripts have ‘qui…ducunt’ for ‘a…ducta’; a parenthetic ‘a saltu nomina ducunt’ might be possible, although ‘a saltu… ducta’, standing for a relative clause, should in any case probably not count as a normal attribute.

12 In a couplet deleted by Heinsius and Bentley.

13 ‘ut sint praeconia nostra / vera’; one late manuscript has ‘vera / nostra’.

14 ‘quis Baccho vina Falerna…det?’; there is a variant ‘Falerno’.

15 The matter is complicated by the fact that one example (21, 195) is within the 210 verses transmitted only by the ed. Parmensis, which some have suspected as interpolations. If these verses are removed the frequency would be three in 680 lines, or 1:227.

16 I use for the Elegiae in Maecenatem, Kenney's, E. J. edition in the OCT of the Appendix Vergiliana (Oxford, 1966)Google Scholar, for the Consolatio ad Liviam and Nux, the second volume of Vollmer's, F.Poetae Latini Minores (Leipzig, 1923)Google Scholar, for the Halieutica, the edition of Richmond, J. A. (London, 1962)Google Scholar.

17 Cited from the edition of W. M. Lindsay ([ed. 2] Oxford, 1929).

18 ‘Tanta est’ var. l., printed in the edition of D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Stuttgart, 1990).

19 He shows more concern in the pentameter; seeHousman, A. E., Classical Papers III, (Cambridge, 1972), p. 1101Google Scholar.

20 Unlike e.g. didactic hexameters, which, with the exception of the Georgics, allow a high frequency of such verse-endings (see Harrison).