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Discordia Taetra: The History of a Hexameter-Ending*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

S. J. Harrison
S. J. Harrison
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

In Latin Hexameter Verse, his 1903 manual for composers of Latin hexameters which is still useful as a guide to Vergil's metrical and prosodic practices, S. E. Winbolt states that a hexameter ‘must not end with an adjective preceded by a noun with a similar short ending, e.g.…flumina nota’ unless the adjective is emphatic, ‘i.e. strongly distinctive, predicative or antithetical’. Whether or not his distinction between emphatic and non-emphatic adjectives in this position is wholly workable (predicative adjectives are clearly distinguishable, but it is not clear that the other types are), Winbolt here rightly detects a strong tendency in Vergil and other Latin poets towards avoiding endings of this general kind, which we can conveniently call the ‘Discordia taetra’ type after one of its earliest and best-known instances in the Annales of Ennius (225–6 Skutsch ‘postquam Discordia taetra/Belli ferratos postes portasque refregit’). The rarity of this type of line-ending is clear in Vergil; there are only 16 examples, regardless of whether the adjective is emphatic or not, in the 9890 lines of the Aeneid. Such a select and easily-defined phenomenon might prove a yardstick of some interest in the history of the Latin hexameter, for it seems to raise a number of questions to which the answers would be significant and useful. Is this type of ending avoided equally by all poets? Is there an increasing tendency to avoid it as time goes on? Is it associated with any particular genres of hexameter poetry? Do poets tend to use in it the same words or phrases as their predecessors? To discover the answers, this article will look at the ‘Discordia taetra’ phenomenon in Latin hexameter poetry, defining it as the instance where a noun ending in a short vowel (in practice, in ‘-a’) is immediately succeeded by an adjective of similar ending and in agreement at the end of the hexameter, and where such a noun is not a substantivised adjective and such an adjective is neither predicative nor a participle.

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , May 1991 , pp. 138 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 Winbolt, S. E., Latin Hexameter Verse (London, 1903), p. 153.Google Scholar

2 In similar vein, Eduard, Norden (P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis Buch VI (Leipzig, 1916), pp. 400–2Google Scholar, draws attention to the general tendency in Latin hexameter verse to avoid ‘indifferent’ or non-emphatic categories of words such as pronouns, particles, conjunctions, prepositions and auxiliary verbs at the end of the line.

3 1.72 pulcherrima Deiopea, 139 immania saxa, 201 Cyclopia saxa, 430 florea rura, 537 invia saxa, 678 maxima cura, 680 alta Cythera.

4 Some 96% of the Homeric occurrences are in the neuter plural, and some 88% of the Latin examples listed below.

5 These texts are all cited from the OCT, with the exception of Callimachus (Pfeiffer) and Aratus (Loeb). The discrepancy between the figures for the Theogony and the Works and Days would be much reduced if all the lines bracketed by West in his OCT were removed: 4 of the 14 examples cited for the Theogony would then disappear (Theogony 305, 835, 848, 955), leaving 10 in 1022 lines, a proportion of 1:102.

6 Ep. 27 Pfeiffer, 1: ‘Ησιόδον τò τ’ ἄεισμα καì ó τρόπος.

7 The one example is Arg. 1.920, which ends with ργια κεῖνα; this does not appear to be an echo of any other author – cf. Campbell, M., Echoes and Imitations of Early Epic in Apollonius Rhodius (Mnem. Suppl. 72; Leiden, 1987), p. 17Google Scholar. Likewise, Apollonius has only thirteen examples of the immania saxa type of line-ending (cf. n. 3 above) in the Argonautica, six of which are quotations of Homeric line-endings: Arg. 1.927 ( = Il. 8.369), 1.996 ( = Od. 10.219), 2.597 ( = Od. 9.248), 2.601 ( = Il. 9.241), 2.628, 2.839, 3.229 ( = Od. 11.374), 4.38, 4.422, 4.1063 ( = Hesiod, HD 330), 4.1302 ( = Od. 11.240), 4.1093. This would suggest a general aversion to writing line-ends of his own with two consecutive words ending with open α, an aversion clearly not found in Homer or Vergil (cf. n. 3 above).

8 Lucretius is cited from the OCT of C. Bailey, (2nd ed., 1922), Catullus from Sir Roger Mynors' OCT (1958).Google Scholar

9 Cited from the OCT of Sir Roger Mynors (1969).

10 Cf. Norden, op. cit. (n. 2), pp. 447–8. Norden records 7 examples of the line-ending in the whole Aeneid (9890 lines), all but one in its second half; Ennius has five examples in the 623 lines securely attributed to the Annales in Skutsch's edition.

11 Cited from the Teubner ed. of D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Stuttgart, 1985). Sat. 1.10.7 fastidia nostra occurs in a passage which most editors agree to be spurious, while Sat. 1.4.60 Discordia taetra is discounted as a straight quotation of Ennius (Ann. 225 Skutsch, see above).

12 Cited from the Teubner ed. of the Met. by Anderson, W. S. (Leipzig, 1985).Google Scholar

13 Like Apollonius (see n. 7 above), Ovid also shows an aversion to the immania saxa type of line-ending (cf. n. 3), which he has only seventeen times in the Met. (1.519, 2.438, 3.204, 4.726, 5.3, 5.669, 7.461, 7.472, 9.126, 10.4, 12.29, 12.417, 13.289 ( = Vergil, Georg. 4.1), 13.816, 14.47, 14.512, 14.569); Vergil by contrast has it six times in the first book of the Aeneid (cf. n. 3). As for Apollonius, this would suggest that Ovid had a general aversion to two consecutive words ending in open ‘a’ in agreement at the end of the line.

14 Cf. e.g. Jackson Knight, W. F. in Ovidiana, ed. Herescu, N. I. (Paris, 1958), p. 119.Google Scholar

15 Cited from the Teubner ed. of Goold, G. P. (Leipzig, 1985).Google Scholar

16 Cited from the Budé ed. of le Boeuffle, A. (Paris, 1975).Google Scholar

17 Cf. le Boeuffle, op. cit. (n. 16), pp. viii–xv, Goold, G. P., Manilius: Astronomica (Cambridge, MA/London, 1977), p. xiv.Google Scholar

18 Grattius is cited from the text of Enk, P. J. (Zutphen/London, 1918)Google Scholar, Columella 10 from that of V, V. (Upsala, 1902)Google Scholar, Persius from the OCT of W. V. Clausen, the Culex (ed. W. V. Clausen), the Ciris (ed. F. R. D. Goodyear), and the Aetna (ed. Goodyear, F. R. D.) from the OCT Appendix Vergiliana (1966).Google Scholar

19 On the neoteric style and metrical practices of the Ciris cf. Lyne, R. O. A. M., Ciris (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 15–32.Google Scholar

20 Cited from the edition of Housman, A. E. (Oxford, 1926).Google Scholar

21 Cf. Bramble, J. C. in the Cambridge History of Classical Literature II. Latin Literature, ed. Kenney, E. J. and Clausen, W. V. (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 541–2.Google Scholar

22 Statius, Thebaid is cited from the text of Hill, D. E. [Mnem. Suppl. 78] (Leiden, 1983)Google Scholar, Valerius Flaccus from the Teubner ed. of Ehlers, W.-W. (Stuttgart, 1980)Google Scholar, and Silius from the Teubner of Delz, J. (Stuttgart, 1987).Google Scholar

23 In the proportion of dactyls to spondees and of fourth-foot homodyne to heterodyne, Silius and Lucan show Vergilian practice, Statius and Valerius Ovidian - cf. Duckworth, G., TAPA 98 (1967), 142.Google Scholar

24 Cited from the OCT of W. V. Clausen (1959).

25 As implicitly stated by Juvenal in his first and programmatic satire (1.51).

26 On Vergilian diction in Juvenal cf. Gehlen, J., De Juvenale Vergilii Imitatore (Göttingen, 1886)Google Scholar and Richard, Jenkyns, Three Classical Poets (London, 1982), pp. 160–8.Google Scholar

27 Cited from the Teubner ed. of Hall, J. B. (Leipzig, 1985)Google Scholar. By ‘long hexameter works’ is meant those numbered 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 26 and 28 in Hall's edition, plus the three books of the De Raptu.

28 Cf. Eaton, A. H., The Influence of Ovid on Claudian (Washington, D.C., 1943).Google Scholar

29 Cited as follows: Aldhelm from Ehwald, R., Aldhelmi Opera (Berlin, 1919)Google Scholar, Walafridh and the Vita Sancti Galli from Dümmler, B., Poelae Latini Aevi Carolini II (Berlin, 1884)Google Scholar, Waltharius from the ed. of Strecker, K. (Berlin, 1947)Google Scholar, Ruodlieb from the ed. of Grocock, C. W. (Warminster, 1985)Google Scholar, Walter of Châtillon from Colker, M. L., Galteri de Castellione Alexandreis (Padua, 1978)Google Scholar, and Petrarch from the ed. of the Africa by Festa, N. (Florence, 1926).Google Scholar

30 On Aldhelm's technical difficulties in writing hexameters see Lepidge, M. and Rosier, J. L., Aldhelm: The Poetic Works (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 19–24.Google Scholar

31 On Walfridh's considerable talents cf. e.g. Godman, P., Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London, 1985), pp. 34–9.Google Scholar

32 For the erroneous ascription to Walafridh, on whose prose life of St. Gall it is based, cf. Dümmler, op. cit. (n. 29), p. 266.

33 Cf. the index fontium of Strecker's edition (cf. n. 29), pp. 122–51. It is possible that Waltharius should be dated to the ninth century rather than the tenth - cf. the views discussed by Godman, op. cit. (n. 31), pp. 72–8.

34 On the prosody of Ruodlieb cf. C. W. Grocock, op. cit. (n. 29), p. 23.

35 Cf. the apparatus fontium in M. L. Colker, op. cit. (n. 29).

36 For the predominantly Vergilian style of the Africa and its borrowings from Lucan see the comprehensive apparatus fontium compiled for Africa 1.1–300 by F. Friedersdorf in Jahresbericht des Sladtgymnasium zu Halle A.S. 1899, 21–41.