Chapter 27 of 29 · 3927 words · ~20 min read

Part 27

THE crackling embers on the hearth are dead; The indoor note of industry is still; The latch is fast; upon the window-sill The small birds wait not for their daily bread; The voiceless flowers--how quietly they shed Their nightly odours; and the household ill Murmurs continuous dulcet sounds that fill The vacant expectation, and the dread Of listening night. And haply now She sleeps; For all the garrulous noises of the air Are hushed in peace; the soft dew silent weeps, Like hopeless lovers for a maid so fair:-- Oh! that I were the happy dream that creeps To her soft heart, to find my image there.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

Side by side with these sonnets may be placed Thomas Warton's _Ode_--a fine poem, too little known:--

ON this my pensive pillow, gentle Sleep, Descend in all thy downy plumage drest, Wipe with thy wings these eyes that wake to weep, And place thy crown of poppies on my breast. O steep my senses in Oblivion's balm, And soothe my throbbing pulse with lenient hand, This tempest of my boiling blood becalm-- Despair grows mild, Sleep, in thy mild command.

Yet ah! in vain, familiar with the gloom, And sadly toiling through the tedious night, I seek sweet slumber while that virgin bloom For ever hovering haunts my unhappy sight. Nor would the dawning day my sorrows charm: Black midnight and the blaze of noon alike To me appear, while with uplifted arm Death stands prepared, but still delays, to strike.

T. WARTON.

_287_

AH! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite, Friend and associate of this clay! To what unknown region borne Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay, But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.

BYRON.

Byron's version is a weak piece of youthful work. I add here Pope's _Dying Christian to his Soul_, a noble poem suggested by that of Hadrian, and emphasizing powerfully the contrast between pagan and Christian sentiment:--

VITAL spark of heavenly flame! Quit, oh quit this mortal frame! Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life!

Hark, they whisper; angels say, 'Sister spirit, come away!' What is this absorbs me quite? Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirit, draws my breath? Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

The world recedes; it disappears! Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears With sounds seraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O Grave, where is thy victory? O Death, where is thy sting?

POPE.

_368_

HAPPY the man who his whole time doth bound Within the enclosure of his little ground. Happy the man whom the same humble place, The hereditary cottage of his race, From his first rising infancy has known, And by degrees sees gently bending down With natural propension to that earth Which both preserved his life and gave him birth. Him no false distant lights by Fortune set Could ever into foolish wanderings get. He never dangers either saw or feared; The dreadful storms at sea he never heard, He never heard the shrill allarms of war, Or the worse noises of the lawyers' Bar. No change of consuls marks to him the year; The change of seasons is his calender. The cold and heat Winter and Summer shows, Autumn by fruits, and Spring by flowers he knows. He measures time by landmarks, and has found For the whole day the Dial of his ground. A neighbouring wood born with himself he sees, And loves his old contemporary trees. He's only heard of near Verona's name, And knows it, like the Indies, but by fame: Does with a like concernment notice take Of the Red Sea and of Benacus Lake. Thus health and strength he to a third age enjoys, And sees a long posterity of boys. About the spacious world let others roam, The Voyage Life is longest made at home.

COWLEY.

I append the version of a poet who was accounted in his time 'the best translator since Pope'.

BLEST who, content with what the country yields, Lives in his own hereditary fields; Who can with pleasure his past life behold, Whose roof paternal saw him young and old; And, as he tells his long adventures o'er, A stick supports him where he crawled before; Who ne'er was tempted from his farm to fly, And drink new streams beneath a foreign sky: No merchant, he, solicitous of gain, Dreads not the storms that lash the sounding main: Nor soldier, fears the summons to the war, Nor the hoarse clamours of the noisy bar. Unskilled in business, to the world unknown, He ne'er beheld the next contiguous town. Yet nobler objects to his view are given, Fair flowery fields and star-embellished heaven. He marks no change of consuls, but computes Alternate consuls by alternate fruits; Maturing autumns store of apples bring, And flowerets are the luxury of spring. His farm that catches first the sun's bright ray Sees the last lustre of his beams decay: The passing hours erected columns show, And are his landmarks and his dials too. Yon spreading oak a little twig he knew, And the whole grove in his remembrance grew. Verona's walls remote as India seem, Benacus is th' Arabian Gulph to him. Yet health three ages lengthens out his span, And grandsons hail the vigorous old man. Let others vainly sail from shore to shore-- Their joys are fewer and their labours more.

F. FAWKES.

NOTE UPON THE SATURNIAN METRE

This metre is illustrated by Nos. 1-4 (?), 5-6, 8, 10, 12-13 in this selection. Three views have been taken of its character.

1. It was at one time supposed to be purely quantitative. This view had the support of Bentley, who in the _Phalaris_ (226-8) identified the Saturnian with a metre of Archilochus.[11] 'There's no difference at all', he says blithely. In more recent times the quantitative theory, in one form or another, has numbered among its adherents scholars of repute: e.g. Ritschl, Lucian Mueller, Christ, Havet. To-day it may be said to be a dead superstition. Its place has been taken by what may be called the 'semi-quantitative' theory.

2. The 'semi-quantitative' theory was popularized in this country by H. Nettleship[12] and J. Wordsworth[13]. It enjoyed the vogue which commonly attends a compromise; and it still has its adherents, as, for example, E.V. Arnold[14] (who follows the Plautine scholar F. Leo). But the more it is examined the more it tends, I think, to melt into a 'pure-accentual' theory. 'It allows the shortening of a long syllable when unaccented (_devictis_)', says Nettleship[15]. Surely to say that _devictis_ is 'allowed' for _devictis_ is to abandon the cause outright. But it is considerations of a more general character which seem likely to render untenable both the 'quantitative' and the 'semi-quantitative' theories. The recent researches of Sievers[16] and others into the earliest metrical forms tend to shew that this metre is an 'Indo-European' heritage, and that it must be judged in the light of its Eastern and Germanic cognates.

3. The best opinion, therefore, in recent years has been strongly on the side of the view which makes the principle of the Saturnian metre purely accentual. At the moment this view may, in fact, be said to hold the field. Unhappily those who agree in regarding the metre as purely accentual agree in little else. We may distinguish two schools:

(a) There is, first, what I may perhaps be allowed to call the Queen-and-Parlour school. 'There cannot be a more perfect Saturnian line', says Macaulay, 'than one which is sung in every English nursery--

The queen was in her parlour eating bread and honey'.

Place beside this English line the Latin line which has come to be regarded as the typical Saturnian--

dabunt malum Metelli Naeuio poetae.

If we accent these five words as Naevius and the Metelli would in ordinary speech have accented them, we shall have to place our accents thus:--

dábunt málum Metélli Naéuio poétae;

since by what is known as the Law of the Penultimate the accent in Latin always falls on the penultimate syllable save in those words of three (or more) syllables which have a short penultimate and take the accent consequently on the ante-penultimate syllable. But those who accommodate the Latin saturnian to the rhythm of 'The queen was in her parlour ...' have to postulate an anomalous accentuation:--

dabúnt malúm Metélli | Naéuió poétae.

The Saturnian line is, they hold, a verse falling into two cola, each colon containing three accented (and an undefined number of unaccented) syllables--word-accent and verse-accent (i. e. metrical _ictus_) corresponding necessarily only at the last accented syllable in each colon (as Metélli ... poétae above).

Now here there are at least four serious difficulties:

1. While the principle of the verse is accentual half the words in any given line may be accented as they were never accented anywhere else.

2. Sometimes verse-accent and word-accent do not correspond even at the last accent in a colon. There is, for example, no better authenticated Saturnian than

Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus:

and it is incredible that at any period in the history of the Latin language the word-accent ever fell on the middle syllable of _Lucius_[17].

3. The incidence of word-accent is left unfixed save so far as the incidence of verse-accent enables us to fix it. But the incidence of the verse-accent is itself hopelessly uncertain. In a very large percentage of saturnian lines we abandon the natural word-accent and have at the same time no possible means of determining upon what syllable of what word we are to put the verse-accent.

dabúnt malúm Metélli Naéuió poétae

is simple enough: but when we come to

sin illos deserant fortissimos uiros magnum stuprum populo fieri per gentes

dedet Tempestatibus aide meretod

we come, to speak frankly, to chaos.

4. A large number of well-attested saturnians yield only two accents in the second _colon_.

(b) Beside the 'Queen-and-Parlour' theory there is what I may call the Normal Accent Theory. It originated with two papers by W.M. Lindsay in the _American Journal of Philology_ vol. xiv--papers which furnish a more thorough and penetrating treatment of the whole subject than is to be found anywhere else. Lindsay's view is in substance this:

1. The saturnian line falls into two _cola_ of which the first (_a_) contains _three_, the second (_b_) _two_ accented syllables.

2. _a_ contains seven syllables in all, _b_ contains six (occasionally five), save when -- takes the place of one accented syllable.

3. The accent is always the normal Latin accent, according to the Law of the Penultimate.

(A tetrasyllabic word has two accents when it stands at the beginning of a line, and a pentasyllabic word always.)

4. Each line begins with an accented syllable.

These are the essential rules. In addition Lindsay has been at pains to determine carefully the accentuation of 'word-groups'. Each word in a Latin sentence has not necessarily an accent of its own. Thus _apud uos_ is accented _apúd-uos_; so again _in-grémium_, _quei-númquam_, _ís hic-sítus_. No part of Lindsay's papers throws so much light on the scansion of the saturnian verses as that which deals with these word-groups: but it is impossible here to deal with the subject in detail. I will give here the first two Scipio Epitaphs (5. _i_, _ii_) as they are scanned and accented by Lindsay:--

_i._

_ii._

But is it certain, after all, that the accent-law in Saturnian verse _is_ the Law of the Penultimate? There was, as is well known, a period in the history of the Latin language when this Law did not obtain, but all Latin words were alike accented on the first syllable. When this period ended we cannot precisely determine. But, as Lindsay himself points out, the influence of the old protosyllabic accentuation was not quite dead even in the time of Plautus.[18] Now the saturnian verse undoubtedly reaches back to a very remote antiquity: even of our extant specimens some are very likely as old as the eighth century. It is probable enough, therefore, that the accent-law known at any rate to the first saturnian poets was the old protosyllabic law. And when we remember the hieratic character of the earliest poetry, when we take into account the conservatism of any priestly ritual or rule, may we not suppose it possible that saturnian verse retained the ancient law of accentuation long after the Law of the Penultimate had asserted itself in ordinary speech and in other forms of literature? Accented, as Lindsay accents it, according to the Law of the Penultimate, the saturnian loses the lilt and swing which it has under the old 'Queen-and-Parlour' system.

dábunt málum Metélli Naéuio poétae

is not a music to pray to or dance to or die to. A much easier and more lively movement would be

dábunt málum Mételli Naéuio póetae,

that is, the movement given by the old protosyllabic accentuation.

The suggestion that the protosyllabic accent survived as a conscious archaism in saturnian verse right down to the time of the Scipios is, I think, at any rate worth considering. It carries us into speculations far wider than the particular problem with which it is immediately concerned. For if the protosyllabic law did actually survive in this way we can the more easily explain the swift and decisive victory which the Hellenizing Latin poetry won over the old native verse. What was conquered was an archaism, something purely artificial. The conquering force was not merely Hellenism but Hellenism _plus_ a complete and radical change in Latin speech.

If anyone cares to analyse the extant remains of saturnian verse in the light of this suggestion, I would formulate three rules which can, I think, be deduced:

1. Each line has five feet, and each foot contains one accented syllable _plus_ either one or two unaccented syllables.[19] The first foot, however, _may_ consist of a monosyllable.

2. The third foot must consist of a trisyllabic word or 'word-group'[20]: save that occasionally the second and third feet together may be formed of a quadrisyllabic (or pentasyllabic) word with secondary accent.

3. The first and second, and again the fourth and fifth, feet may be either disyllabic or trisyllabic: but (_a_) two trisyllables may not follow one another in the first two feet, and (_b_) if the fifth foot (usually trisyllabic) is a disyllable the fourth must be trisyllabic.

The normal type is

/ / / / / -- -- | -- -- | -- -- -- || -- -- | -- -- -- / || -- -- --

A common variation in the first two feet is either / / / / -- -- -- | -- --, or -- -- | -- -- --. A somewhat rare variation / / / in the last two is -- -- -- | -- --. In the first foot -- sometimes / / replaces -- -- (or -- -- --), no doubt owing to the greater stress at the opening of the verse.

Some exceptions (or apparent exceptions) to these rules will no doubt be found. But the rules cover most of the extant examples of saturnian verse: and it must be remembered that the text of our fragments is often not at all certain. The system outlined has, however, the merit--which it shares with Lindsay--that it dispenses with most of the alterations of the text in which other systems involve us.

THE HYMN OF THE ARVAL BROTHERHOOD.

I have given the text of this celebrated piece according to what may be called the Vulgate; and in the sub-title, in the Glossary and in my Introduction p. 1 I have followed the ordinary interpretation. I may perhaps be allowed here to suggest a different view of the poem.

It begins with an appeal to the Lares. These are apparently the Lares Consitivi, gods of sowing. Then comes an appeal to Marmar, then to Mars. Then the Semones are invoked, who, like the Lares, are gods of sowing. There follows a final appeal to Marmar.

It is pretty clear that the Mars, Marmar, or Marmor, invoked in such iteration is not the war-god, but Mars in his more ancient character of a god of agriculture. But if this be so, what are we to make of lines 7-9,

satur fu, fere Mars: limen sali: sta berber,

'Be thou glutted, fierce Mars, leap the threshold, stay thy scourge',--or, as Buecheler takes it, 'stand, wild god'? This sort of language is appropriate enough to Mars as god of war, but utterly inappropriate to the farmer's god[21].

Now it so happens that for

satur fu, fere Mars: limen sali, sta berber

the monumental stone to which we owe this inscription offers at one point

satur fu, fere Mars limen saii sia berber.

Now, when we remember the Lares Consitivi and the Semones, does it not look very much as though _satur_ stood for _sator_, as though _fere_ were a blunder for _sere_, as though _saii_ were the vocative of Saius, 'sower' (cf. Seia a goddess of sowing, and Greek {saô sêthô}), as though _sia_ were the imperative of the verb _sio_ (moisten)[22], and as though, finally, _berber_ were to be connected with the Greek {borborys} and meant 'loam'? (I would give much the same sense, 'fat soil' to _limen_: (from the root _lib-_: cf. Gk. {leibô leimôn}).)

We get, then,

sator fu: sere Mars limen Saii, sia berber,

'Be thou the sower: sower Mars, sow the soil, moisten the loam'. And this suggests what _ought_ to be the meaning of _enos iuuate_. _enos_ _ought_ to mean _harvests_, or at any rate something in that kind. And why should it not? Hesychius knew a word {enos} which he glosses by {eniautos, epeteios karpos}. See Suidas _s.v._ and Herwerden _Lexicon Suppletorium_.

The Hymn is a hymn for Seedtime. We know, however, that the festival at which it was sung fell in the month of May. The explanation of this has been hinted at by Henzen.[23] Henzen points out that the Arval Brothers entered on their duties at the Saturnalia, and that their worship is probably connected in its origin with Saturn, the god of sowing. (See Varro _L.L._ 5, 57, and _apud_ Aug. _C.D._ 7. 13 p. 290, 28, Festus _s.v._ Saturnus.) We must suppose, therefore, that at some date when the meaning of its words had been already lost this hymn was transferred from a seedtime festival to a harvest festival.

GLOSSARY OF OLD LATIN

_i._

cante: _cante_ (sometimes said to be an Athematic imper. 2 pers. plur.).

_ii._

quome: _cum_. Leucesie: (_Lucerie_?) a title of Jupiter as god of lightning. tet: _te_. tremonti: _tremunt_. quor: _cur_. Curis: 'god of spear-men' (?): Etruscan _curis_, a spear: (cf. _Iunonis Curitis_). decstumum: _dextimum_, 'on the right' (the suffix _-imus_ is not strictly a superlative suffix, but denotes position: cf. _summus_ (_sup-mus_), _finitimus_, _citimus_).

_iii._

ulod: _illo_ (?) (_ollod_) (cf. Umbrian _ulu_). oriese: _oriere_: future for imperative as in 2 _aduocapit_. isse: _ipse_ (_ipese_): the form _isse_ is merely the vulgar spelling of a later period. ueuet: _uiuit_. po melios: _optimus_ (?) ('_po_ pro _potissimum_ positum est in Saliari carmine', _Festus_). eu: _heu_ (admirantis). recum: _regum_ (as _uirco_ for _uirgo_ in the _Duenos Inscription_: and so always in early Latin until 312 B.C.).

enos: _nos_ (?) cf. {eme, emoi}. Lases: _Lares_. lue rue: _luem et ruinam_. Marmar: _Mars_. sins: _sinas_ (?). sers: _siueris_ (?). pleoris: _pluris_ (cf. {plheiôn} = {pleons} = pleios = pleor). fu: _esto_ (_fufere_ = _esto_, others: as though _fufuere_). sta berber, 'stay thy scourge' (?): sta = {hista}; berber: _uerbera_. Others interpret, 'stand, fierce one' (berber = _barbare_). semunis: _semones_, 'gods of the sown fields'. aduocapit: _aduocabitis_.

_i._

Gnaiuod: _Gnaeo_: the old abl. in -d: cf. _meretod_ in _ii_. parisuma: superlative of _par_. Taurasia Cisauna Samnio: _Taurasiam Cisaunam (in) Samnio_ (or _Samnium_). The dropping of _-m_ (cf. _oino_, _aede_ in _ii_) is, however, not in any way a peculiarity of early Latin. subigit: _subegit_. abdoucsit: _abduxit_.

_ii._

oino: _unum_. ploirime: _plurimi_. duonoro .. uiro: _bonorum .. uirum_. Scipione: _Scipionem_. Corsica Aleriaque urbe: _Corsicam Aleriamque urbem_. aide: _aedem_. meretod: _merito_.

_iii._

apice insigne: _apicem insignem_. recipit: _recepit_ (as _subigit_ in _i_).

_iv._

quei minus: _cur minus_. mactus: 'blessed', 'honoured', 'endowed'.

_i._

insece: _inseque_, imperat. from _inquam_ (_in(s)quam_): {ennepe}.

_iv._

dacrimas: _lacrimas_. noegeo: 'noegeum amiculi genus', _Festus_: {pharos}.

_v._

hemonem: _hominem_ (cf. _ne-hemo_ = _nemo_) 'son of earth' (_humus_: cf. Oscan _humuns_ = _homines_). quamde: _quam_. topper: _celeriter_: _(is)tod_ + _per_: the old explanation, _toto opere_, is false.

_vi._

inserinuntur: _inseruntur_. So in the active we find the 3 pl. pres. in _-nunt_: _danunt_ (_dant_) _prodinunt_ (_prodeunt_) _nequinunt_ (_nequeunt_). But the forms are unexplained anomalies.

_vii._

deuenies: _deueniens_ (?). ommentans: _ob-manens_ (_manto_ freq. of _maneo_).

_ii._

ipsus: _ipse_: so _ollus_ and _olle_ for _ille_.

_iii._

procat: _poscit_.

_v._

confluges: 'loca in quae diversi rivi confluunt', _Nonius_.

_vi._

anculabant: _hauriebant_ (cf. Gk. {antlein}).

_vii._

struices: 'struices antiqui dicebant exstructiones omnium rerum', _Festus_.

_viii._

nefrendem: _sine dentibus_ (_ne_ + _frendo_).

_ii._

Anchisa: _Anchises_ (_-as_): as _Aenea_ in _iv_, and in later Latin _Atrida_ &c.

_iii._

Troiad: _Troia_ (abl.).

_iv._

Aenea: _Aeneas_: so _Anchisa_ in _ii_.

_vi._

concinnat: 'concinnare est apte componere', _Festus_.

_viii._

mavolunt: _malunt_ (_mage-uolunt_).

_iii._

cedo: _dic, da_ (the demonstrative particle _-ce_ + old imperative of _dare_).

_v._

promicando: 'promicare est extendere et longe iacere', _Nonius_.

12.

nouentium: *nuentium (_annuentium_): cf. the spelling _souo_ = _suo_ in 44. So regularly in the oldest Latin. _ou_ for _u_. duonum: _donum_ (cf. Umbrian _dunu_, Oscan _dunum_: old Latin _duo_ = _do_). negumate: _negate_ (_nec autumate_).

13.

endostaurata facito: _fac ut instaurentur_.

15.

quam mox: 'quam mox significat quam cito', _Festus_.

17.

indu: Greek {endon}; as 21. _viii_, and 32 (_endo_): later the word became confused with, and then entirely supplanted by, _in_. uolup, 'pleasantly': neut. of an extinct _volupis_, used adverbially: cf. _facul_, _difficul_. suaset: (i.e. _suasset_), _suasisset_. uerbum paucum: _uerborum paucorum_.

21.

_viii._

imbricitor: _qui imbres ciet_.

23.

euitari: _uita priuari_.

24.

melior mulierum: like _melios recum_ in 1. _iii_.

25.

postilla: _postea_.

29.

accedisset: _accidisset_.

34.

faxit: _fecerit_.

41.

perproquinquam: _perpropinquam_ (cf. {pente (pempe} = quinque, {hippos} = _equus_, _Pontius_ = _Quintius_). uerruncent: _uertant_.

42.

dum .. dum: {tote men .. tote de}: cf. the use of _dum_ in _primumdum_, _agedum_, _adesdum_.

44.

souo: _suo_.

45.

clueor: _uocor_ (cf. {klytos}).

51.

_iii._

cresti: _(de)creuisti_.

54.

fuat: _sit_. fatust: _fatus est_.

INDEX OF AUTHORS AND PASSAGES

ABBREVIATIONS

_T.R._ = Ribbeck, _Tragicorum Romanorum Fragmenta_

_C.R._ = Ribbeck, _Comicorum Romanorum Fragmenta_

_P.L.M._ = Baehrens, _Poetae Latini Minores_

_F.P.R._ = Baehrens, _Fragmenta Poetarum Romanorum_

_A.L._ = Riese, _Anthologia Latina, Ed. ii_

_C.E._ = Buecheler, _Carmina Epigraphica_

The numerals in large type indicate the number of the _piece_ (not the _page_, save where _p_. is prefixed).

(In the early fragments the numerals indicate the number of the _line_ as given in the principal editions.)

Accius, L., 41-43 (_T.R._ 17, 391; 156, 234, 314, 621, 651, 203)

Albinovanus: _see_ Pedo

Alcimius, 322-324 (_A.L._ 740, 713, 715, 714)