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Low-Level Metric

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

Classical Association branches hold yearly Latin reading competitions: J.A.C.T. sponsors records of eminent scholars reading Latin in the way that their learning and sensibility direct them. They recognize that, with the knowledge of Latin speech rhythm for ever lost, they run the risk of disturbing Virgil's ashes and rousing unseemly laughter in Hades' realm; but, ungrateful to the late Professor Beare for his agnostic warning, they read up accurately and hope for the best.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1967

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References

page 170 note 1 Beare, W., Latin Verse and European Song (London, 1957).Google Scholar

page 170 note 2 Niedermann, M., Précis de phonétique historique du latin (Paris, 1953), 171 ff.Google Scholar

page 170 note 3 There is a good facsimile of this part of it in Roberts, C. H., Greek Literary Hands 350 b.c.-a.d. 400 (Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar, No. 5a. The papyrus is briefly discussed by F. D. Harvey in a very interesting article on ‘Literacy in the Athenian Democracy’, REG lxxix (1966), 622–3.

page 170 note 4 e.g. Niedermann, M., op. cit. 173, § (6).Google Scholar

page 171 note 1 But the long-out-of-print Prosodia Latina by J. P. Postgate and Introduction to the Latin Hexameter by G. C. Cooper give the beginner all that he needs (and perhaps rather more). Selections from Lucretius, ed. Benfield, & Reeves, (London, 1967)Google Scholar, which has good sense on metre, assumes optimistically that their reader will know how to divide words into syllables.

page 172 note 1 Hardie, W. R., Res Metrica (Oxford, 1920), ch. 1.Google Scholar

page 172 note 2 Both Hardie and Beare used the term ‘the caesura’, and wrote of uneven division of the line; but it is not clear that either felt himself able to identify the main caesura in every hexameter. Winbolt, S. E., Latin Hexameter Verse (London 1903), 74Google Scholar, lists four types of principal caesura.

page 173 note 1 Cooper, G. C., op. cit., 21.Google Scholar

page 173 note 2 Translator's Preface to Maas, P., Greek Metre (Oxford, 1962), viii.Google Scholar