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, 12-13in 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 ( dĕvictis)', says Nettleship[15]. Surely to say that dĕvictisis 'allowed' for dзvictis 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:—

dбbunt mбlum Metйlli Naйuio poйtae;

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:—

dabъnt malъm Metйlli | Naйuiу poйtae.

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 Met йlli ... po йtae 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.

dabъnt malъm Metйlli Naйuiу poйtae

is simple enough: but when we come to

sin illos deserant fortissimos uiros

magnum stuprum populo fieri per gentes

or

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 Philologyvol. 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 colaof which the first ( a) contains three, the second ( b) twoaccented syllables.

2. acontains seven syllables in all, bcontains six (occasionally five), save when ᵕᵕ 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 uosis accented apъd-uos; so again in-grйmium, quei-nъmquam, нs hic-sнtus. 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.

Cornйlius Lъcius | Scнpio Barbбtus,

Gnбiuod pбter prognбtus, | fуrtis-uir sapiйnsque,

quoмus fуrma uirtъtei | parнsuma fъit,

cуnsol, cйnsor, aidнlis | queн-fuit apъd-nos,

Tаurбsia, Cisбuna, | Sбmnio cйpit,

Sъbigit уmne Loucбnam | уpsidesque abdуucit

ii.

Hуnc уino plуirime | cosйntiunt Rуmai