Asclepiad IV. consists of four line stanzas, 3 a +y, Od. 1. 6, 15,
24, 33, 2. 12, 3. 10, 16, 4. 5, 12.
V. consists of four line stanzas, 2 a+d+y, Od. 1. 5,
14, 21, 23, 3. 7, 13, 4. 13.
§ 2. The Alcaic stanza is found in 37 Odes :—
1. 9, 16, 17, 26, 27, 29, 31, 34, 35, 37.
2. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, II, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20. 3. I, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 17, 21, 23, 26, 29.
It is obvious that we have here variations of two movements; verse ẞ repeats and amplifies the movement of the first half of a, verse y repeats the dactylic movement of the second half, putting the trochees after instead of before it. This considera- tion proves that although to the ear the movement of ẞ and of the first half of a is iambic, it was in idea a sequence of trochees preceded by an unemphatic syllable or anacrusis.' The anacrusis is as often short as long in the fragments of Alcaeus and Sappho. In Horace it is occasionally short, but more rarely in ẞ than in a, and never in either in Book iv.
Alcaeus had admitted a spondee in the place of the second trochee. Horace made the spondee imperative, see on Od. 3. 5. 17, 3. 23. 18.
The division of the two halves of the line is marked by a caesura, which is only violated twice, in Od. 1. 37. 14 'Men- temque lymphatam Mareotico,' and 4. 14. 17 'Spectandus in certamine Martio.' There are two other instances where a preposition at the beginning of a composite word gives a quasi-caesura, 1. 16. 21 'Hostile aratrum exercitus insolens,' 1. 37. 5 Antehac nefas depromere Caecubum.' Horace seems to have paid great attention to the rhythm of verse ß, excluding, and more carefully in his later poems, all conjunctions of words
which did not by their accent counteract that natural sameness of movement which we find undisguised in Alcaeus, λaipos δὲ πᾶν ζάδηλον ἤδη, etc. No quadrisyllabic ending or beginning is found in Book iv except of the forms of 'Nomen beati qui Deorum' and 'Consulque non unius anni.' Verses of the form of 'Gaudes, apricos necte flores' (1. 26. 7) are found only in 1. 16, 26, 29, 35, and 2. 1, 3, 13, 14, 19. Hunc Lesbio sacrare plectro' in 1. 26. II is unique. It was the occurrence of these two verses in 1. 26, and of the verse 'Alcaeé plectro dura navis' in 2. 13, that called Lachmann's attention to the wrong date assigned by Franke, on Justinus' authority, to the quarrel of Phraates and Tiridates, and consequently to these Odes, which thus became specimens of Horace's later instead of his earlier handi- work, see Introd. to Books i-iii, § 8.
There is no synaphea between the verses of the stanza, but Horace twice allows an elision of a hypermetric syllable at the end of the third verse, 2. 3. 27 and 3. 29. 35. There is an analogous licence taken in the Asclepiad metre in 4. 1. 35, and Virgil allows it in the hexameter, Georg. I. 295, etc.
§ 3. The Sapphic stanza is found in twenty-five Odes :- I. 2, 10, 12, 20, 22, 25, 30, 32, 38;
2. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 16;
3. 8, 11, 14, 18, 20, 22, 27;
4. 2, 6, II;
and in the Carm. Sec.
It employs two kinds of verse, the lesser Sapphic, which is repeated three times—
The materials of the rhythm in this are the same as in the Alcaic. It is a sequence of trochees and dactyls. This is obscured in Horace, (1) by his excluding the trochee absolutely from the second place, where it is often found in Sappho, and in her first Latin imitator, Catullus, αἰ δὲ μὴ φιλεῖ ταχέως φιλάσει, 'Pauca nuntiate meae puellae'; (2) by his eschewing the break
before the dactyl, φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖσιν, ‘Ille mi par esse deo videtur.' The lengthening of the short syllable in 2. 6. 14, ‘Angulus ridet, ubi non Hymetto,' is perhaps a trace of the feeling that, as the first syllable of the dactyl, it had the metrical accent upon it.
The caesura falls commonly, in the first three Books, after the fifth syllable, 'Iam satis terris,' though it is found, from time to time, after the sixth, 'Quem virum aut heroa.' In the Carm. Sec. and the Fourth Book, Horace returns in this point to the use of Catullus and the Greek, and employs the second caesura frequently. In either the three Sapphic Odes of Book Four together, or in the Carm. Sec. alone, there are twice as many instances of it as in the twenty-one Odes of the earlier Books.
There is no synaphea, but hypermetric syllables are occa- sionally elided at the end of all the first three verses of the stanza (2. 2. 18, 2. 16. 34, 4. 2. 22, 23, C. S. 47). By Sappho the Adonic was treated as if it scanned continuously with the verse before, and this use is preserved in Horace to some extent, a word being at times divided between them (1. 2. 19, I. 25. 11, 2. 16. 7). On the other hand, we find a hiatus at times, as in I. 2. 47 'Neve te nostris vitiis iniquum Ocior aura.'
§ 4. Iambic metres.
Of these two occur in Horace :-
(1) The common Senarius or Iambic Trimeter (for the name see Ars Poet. 252) in Epod. 17.
(2) Couplets of the Senarius and an Iambic Dimeter in Epod. 1-10.
Horace does not observe the law of the Greek Tragic Sena- rius in respect of a short syllable before a final cretic; see e.g. Epod. 1. 27 and 29.
Three instances occur of an apparent anapaest in the fifth place Epod. 2. 35 'laqueo,' 5. 79 'inferius,' 11. 23 'mulier- culam'; but Meineke rightly explained them as instances of synizesis, or using e and i as semivowels, after the analogy of 'aurea' in Virg. Aen. 1. 698, and of 'consilium' and 'prin- cipium' in Od. 3. 4. 41 and 3. 6. 6.
§ 5. These metres account for 97 out of the 104 Odes (in- cluding the Carm. Sec.), and 11 out of 17 Epodes.
Of the remaining metres, one or at the most two or three specimens exist, which are to be viewed rather, as Mr. Munro remarks, as experiments.
5. Alcmanium, Od. 1. 7 and 28, and Epod. 12.
It is in couplets consisting of the common Dactylic Hex- ameter and a Dactylic Tetrameter.
6. The couplets named from Archilochus. Archilochium imum, Od. 4. 7.
The common Dactylic Hexameter, followed by a Dactylic Trimeter Catalectic (half of an Elegiac Pentameter) :-
Archilochium IIum, Epod. 13.
The Dactylic Hexameter, followed by an asynartete 1 verse called Iambelegus, being composed of a Dimeter Iambic + half the Elegiac Pentameter :-
A common Iambic Trimeter, followed by a verse, also asynartete, called Elegiambus, composed of the same elements as the Iambelegus combined in a different order.
Archilochium IVtum, Od. 1. 4.
(a) A verse called Archilochius Major, consisting of a Dactylic Tetrameter+three trochees. It is not in Horace asynartete, for the fourth dactyl is always perfect, and no hiatus is found; but there is a strict caesura between the two parts of the verse.
(B) An Iambic Trimeter Catalectic.
1 åσvváρTηтоs, the term used for a verse of which the two parts are imperfectly joined together, where the last syllable of the first half is independent in scansion of the first syllable of the second half, e. g. Epod. 13, 8, 10, and 11. 6, 14. In this last case there is an actual hiatus.
7. Two couplets called Pythiambic, from the name Пútos, given to the Hexameter as the metre of the Delphic oracles.
(1) The Dactylic Hexameter, followed by an Iambic Dimeter, Epod. 14, 15.
(2) The Dactylic Hexameter, followed by an Iambic Trimeter, Epod. 16.
The Iambic verse in this metre consists entirely of pure Iambics.
8. A couplet known as the Greater Sapphic, from the likeness of the rhythm of both verses to the Common Sapphic verse. The first line (which goes by the name of Aristophanes) is a Sapphic without the initial trochees. The second is a Sap- phic, with a choriambus inserted before the dactyl :—
It occurs in Od. 1. 8.
9. Hipponacteum, Od. 2. 18.
A couplet consisting of a Trochaic Dimeter Catalectic, fol- lowed by an Iambic Trimeter Catalectic :-
10. Ionicus a minore, Od. 3. 12.
This is composed entirely of the foot called 'Ionicus a minore' :-
The metre is described by Hephaestion, who takes as his type an Ode of Alcaeus, of which the first line, which he quotes, seems as if it may have been the original of Horace's Ode (see Introd. to Od. 3. 12). It is not, he says, as it may easily be taken to be, an unbroken succession of similar feet, but broken into periods of ten feet each. Bentley pointed out that Horace's Ode consists of forty feet, i.e. four such periods, and held that the arrangement in lines, which many editors debate, was merely a necessity of the writer or printer, and not to be elevated into a law of the metre.
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