Latin poetry was a major part of
Latin literatureLatin literature, the body of written works in the Latin language, remains an enduring legacy of the culture of ancient Rome. The Romans produced many works of poetry, comedy, tragedy, satire, history, and rhetoric, drawing heavily on the traditions of other cultures and particularly on the more...
during the height of the
Latin languageLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
. During Latin literature's Golden Age, most of the great literature was written in the form of
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, including works by
VirgilPublius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works—the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the Aeneid—although several minor poems are also attributed to him.The son of a farmer, Virgil came to be...
,
CatullusGaius Valerius Catullus was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art. Catullus invented the "angry love poem."-Biography:...
, and
HoraceThis article is about the Roman poet Horace. For other uses, see Horace .Quintus Horatius Flaccus, , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:Born in the small town of Venusia in the border region between Apulia and Lucania...
.
A number of
metersIn poetry, the meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse meter, or a certain set of meters alternating in a particular order. Prosody is a more general linguistic term, that includes poetical meter but also the rhythmic aspects of...
are used in Classical Latin poetry, almost all inspired by Greek originals; the most common is
dactylic hexameterDactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin, and was consequently considered to be the Grand Style of classical poetry...
, followed by elegiac couplets and
hendecasyllabics. Many Roman poets were particularly inspired by the Hellenistic style of poetry practised at
AlexandriaAlexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports...
.
Heavy and light syllables
Classical Latin poetry differs from English poetry in that Latin meter is based upon vowel length rather than stress. In Latin, syllables are either
heavy (long) or light (short)In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical poetry, both Greek and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line....
.
A light syllable has a short vowel followed by one or zero consonants. All other syllables are called heavy.
For the effects of the above rule, the digraphs ch, qu, th, and ph, and the gv in sangvis, etc., count as one consonant. The double consonants x, z, and intervocalic i, always count as two.
The groups called
muta cum liquida, namely the groups of stop ([p,b,t,d,c,g]) plus
liquidLiquid consonants, or liquids, are trills, taps, or approximant consonants that are not classified as semivowels because they do not correspond phonetically to specific vowels .The class of liquids can be divided into lateral liquids and rhotics...
([r,l]), can be counted as one consonant or two at the discretion of the poet. But they always count as one when they start a word.
Heavy syllables are classified into two types. The
long by nature have a
nucleusIn phonetics and phonology, the nucleus is the central part of the syllable, most commonly a vowel. In addition to a nucleus, a syllable may begin with an onset and end with a coda, but in most languages the only part of a syllable that is mandatory is the nucleus...
consisting of a long vowel or a diphthong, followed by zero or more consonants. And the
long by position have a short vowel followed by two or more consonants.
The consonants in the next word do count toward making a syllable long by position.
Elision
When a word ends in a vowel or diphthong, optionally followed by "m", and the next word begins with a vowel, diphthong, or the letter "h", the vowel plus m of the first word does not count metrically.
As for instance,
monstrvm horrendvm ingens is scanned as if it were
monstrorrendingens: it has just five heavy syllables, not seven.
At the discretion of the poet, the words can be kept separate. This poetic license is called
hiatus. As an example:
fémineó ululátú would usually be scanned as if it were
fémine'ululátú, in seven sylables HSSSSHH, but a poet can choose to pronounce
fémineó // ululátú with a pause, so that the words scan as eight syllables HSSH SSHH.
This forced pause may (or may not) lengthen the final short vowel of the first word.
Hiatus is much more infrequent than joining.
Caesura
A
caesurathumb|100px|An example of a caesura in modern western music notation.In meter, caesura is a term to denote an audible pause that breaks up a line of verse. In most cases, caesura is indicated by punctuation marks which cause a pause in speech: a comma, a semicolon, a full stop, a dash, etc...
occurs anytime a word ends in the middle of the foot; however, the caesura is typically metrically significant when it occurs near the middle of the line and correlates with a break of sense in the line, such as a punctuation mark. The caesura divides the line in two and allows the poet to vary the basic metrical pattern he is working with. When a caesura correlates with a sense break, a person speaking the poetry should make a slight pause at the caesura.
(info about strong, weak caesuras, etc, to be added)
Guide to symbols used
- - indicates a heavy syllable
- u indicates a light syllable
- ^ indicates a syllable anceps
In Greek and Latin meter, an anceps syllable is a syllable in a metrical line which can be either short or long. An anceps syllable may be called "free" or "irrational" depending on the type of meter being discussed....
, which may be either heavy or light
- | indicates the end of a foot (when it is directly above a letter, assume that it is before the letter)
- || indicates a caesura
thumb|100px|An example of a caesura in modern western music notation.In meter, caesura is a term to denote an audible pause that breaks up a line of verse. In most cases, caesura is indicated by punctuation marks which cause a pause in speech: a comma, a semicolon, a full stop, a dash, etc...
- (parentheses) show that a vowel is dropped due to elision
- _ indicates that an elided syllable is connected to the next syllable
Dactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameterDactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin, and was consequently considered to be the Grand Style of classical poetry...
was used for many of Latin's greatest poems. Influenced by
HomerHomer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey...
's
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
epics, dactylic hexameter was considered the best meter for weighty and important matters, so it is used in Virgil's
AeneidThe Aeneid is a Latin epic poem written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is written in dactylic hexameter...
,
Ennius'sQuintus Ennius was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent. Although only fragments of his works survive, his influence in Latin literature was significant.-Biography:Ennius was born at Rudiae, a Messapian...
Annals, and
Lucretius'sTitus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem on Epicureanism De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe"....
On The Nature of Things. Dactylic hexameter is composed of six feet per line. Each foot is either a dactyl (heavy-light-light) or a spondee (heavy-heavy). The fifth foot is almost always a dactyl. The sixth foot consists of a heavy syllable followed by a syllable anceps; this line ending is perhaps the most notable feature of the meter. Typically, the dactylic hexameter's caesura comes in the third or fourth foot.
Also, dactylic hexameter often has a
bucolic dieraesis. A dieraesis is a pause that happens when the end of a word coincides with the end of a metrical foot; a bucolic dieraesis is a dieraesis between the fourth and fifth feet of a line.
- u u|- u u|-|| -| - -| - u u |- ^
Arma virumque canō, Trōiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs,
- u u|- -|- u u|- || -|- u u| - ^
Ītaliam, fātō profugus, Lāvīnaque vēnit
- u u| - -| - ||-| - -| - u u |- ^
lītora, mult(um)_ill(e)_et terrīs iactātus et altō
- u u|- -| - u u|- ||-|- u u |- ^
vī superum saevae memorem Iūnōnis ob īram;
Note the multiple elisions in line 3. Also note the caesuras throughout and the bucolic dieraesis in line 1.
(Virgil's
AeneidThe Aeneid is a Latin epic poem written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is written in dactylic hexameter...
, Book I, lines 1-4)
Elegiac couplet
In elegiac couplet, lines are grouped into couplets (pairs of two). The first line of each couplet is standard dactylic hexameter. The second is a modified dactylic pentameter line: two feet + a heavy syllable (a half-foot), then two more feet, then another heavy syllable. Essentially the pentameter line is two and a half feet plus two and a half feet. The division between each half-line in pentameter is usually a caesura.
- - | - - |-||- | - u u | - u u| - ^
Multās per gentēs et multa per aequora vectus
- u u | - u u|- || - u u |- u u|-
adveni(o)_hās miserās, frāter, ad īnferiās
- -| - -|-||-|- - | - u u| - ^
ut tē postrēmō dōnārem mūnere mortis
- -|- u u| -||- u u|- u u|-
et mūtam nequiquam adloquerer cinerem,
Note the elision in line 2 and the hiatus in line 4; also note the caesuras throughout and the bucolic diaraesis in line 1.
(Catullus 101, lines 1-4)
Examples of other meters to be added.
Post-classical poetry
The above versification, based in heavy and light syllables, was applied only to learned poetry, made by Latin poets of the classical period in imitation of Greek models. The metrics of popular songs, popular poetry, military marches and so on was based on accents.
After the classical period, the pronunciation of Latin changed and the distinction between long and short vowels was lost in the popular language. Some authors continued writing verse in the classical meters, but this way of pronouncing long and short vowels was not natural to them; they used it only in poetry. Popular poetry, including the bulk of Christian Latin poetry, continued to be written in accentual meters (sometimes incorporating rhyme, which was never systematically used in classical verse) just like modern European languages. This accentual Latin verse was called
sequentiaA sequence is a chant sung or recited during the Mass, before the proclamation of the Gospel. By the time of the Council of Trent there were sequences for many feasts in the Church's year....
, especially when used for a Christian sacred subject.