Learning Latin: Scansion One

Wikipedia

Unlike much poetry written since the birth of free verse, all Latin poetry adheres to specific metrical rules.  The most commonly used verse line, is the dactylic hexameter, the line used for epic poems.  This metrical line has six segments, each of which must be either a spondee (long-long; – -) or a dactyl (long-short-short; – u u).

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When the Roman poet composed, he had to consider style, grammar, and metrics.  Grammar is assumed, metrics appreciated, and style distinguishes the good from the great poet. 

Consider  the following lines from two Latin poets:

Virgil, Aeneid 2.49

Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.

   -    u    u /  -   u  u  / -  u  u / -   - / -  u  u / -  -  

In this very famous line. in which the Trojan prophet, Laocoon, says, about the wooden horse, ”Whatever it is, I fear Greeks and the gifts they bear”, simplicity reigns.  Here we have two verbs in the simple, present tense and the most basic of grammatical constructions. The prophet sees truth with clarity and the Latin words express this.  Simplicity here is not a defect, but a benefit: it perfectly mirrors the message of the speaker.  Within the parameters of these considerations, the poet has used syntax in a way that appeals to the expectations of the reader, and he has “made meter”.  He has used the words in a grammatically correct and stylistically viable fashion while at the same time following all the rules that apply to such poetry.

Some of the necessary rules that Virgil, Dante’s master, has employed:

1. Six segmentsof dactyls and spondees

2. The two consonant rule: Every syllable that has a naturally short vowel becomes “long” when two consonants follow that vowel.

3. Natural long: Every vowel that occurs in the word as a long syllable must be respected as such.

Now consider the following line by Ovid:

Sic deus et virgo est hic spe celer, illa timore.

-     u  u/ -     -/     -      -/   -      u  u/-  u  u/ -  -

In this line from Metamorphoses I,  Apollo is pursuing the nymph Daphne, who rejects his advances.  The line says: “Thus the god and the virgin race on, the one with hope, the other due to fear.”  This line moves along quickly, as do the two runners, and the syncopation caused by elision heightens the sense of celerity.  This line introduces two more rules for scansion:

4. Elision: Whenever two vowels from different words abut, a blend may occur which yields a single syllable.

5. Caesura: Nearly every line of dactylic hexameter poetry has a natural pause in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th foot.  This mini-break most often occurs in the third metrical foot (it must always occur within a metrical foot).  The fact that the expected pause is pushed back in this line to the 4th foot heightens the rushed feeling that the poem describes.  Indeed, Apollo and Daphne are crashing headlong to the climax of the race.

Though these concepts pose difficulties for Moderns, it is well to note that the greatest of the free verse Modernists, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, knew Latin and Greek well.  These poets contradict the lie that the free verse poet need only be guided by feeling and that he is divorced from the literary tradition.