Metres of Roman comedy

The works of other Latin playwrights such as Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius, and Caecilius Statius are now lost except for a few lines quoted in other authors.

The metres of Roman comedy tend to be more irregular than those of the classical period, but there is an opportunity to hear in them the rhythms of normal Latin speech.

Cicero wrote of the senarius: "But the senarii of comic poets, because of their similarity to ordinary speech, are often so degraded that sometimes it's almost impossible to discern metre and verse in them.

The schemata in this section are the basic patterns, and do not take into account the variations which may occur, for example the substitution of two short syllables for a long one.

[10] Four of Plautus's plays (Cistellaria, Stichus, Epidicus, and Persa) open directly with music, omitting the customary expository speech in unaccompanied iambic senarii.

[15][16] On one side, supporting the idea of an ictus or beat, are scholars such as W. Sidney Allen,[17] Lionel Pearson,[18] and from an earlier generation E.H. Sturtevant and Wallace Lindsay.

"[20] However, many scholars, such as Paul Maas, Cesare Questa, and Wolfgang de Melo argue that there was no beat or "ictus"; in their view, rhythm is "simply the regulated sequence of short and long syllables".

[23] One fact which is generally agreed on is that in iambic and trochaic metres, there is usually a fairly strong agreement between where the ictus is assumed to be and the accent of the words.

Because it seems that the poets made an effort to place the accent mostly on the long elements, it is argued by Lindsay that occasionally it may be possible to detect from this how Latin was pronounced.

[28] In his book on metres, Terentianus Maurus explains: "For the iambus itself remains in six places, and for that reason the name senarius is given; but a beat is made three times, hence it is called a trimeter; because when scanning we join together the feet in pairs.

The chief metrical ictus of the line, in other words the syllables at which the baton of a conductor keeping time would fall, were in an Iambic Trimeter the 2nd, 4th, and 6th Arses[32] (in a Trochaic Tetrameter the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th).

Despite this statement, Lindsay, when he wished to show the ictus in a senarius, placed an accent on the 2nd, 6th, and 10th positions, for example:[33] Richard Bentley in the 17th/18th century followed the same practice.

[35] An example is the following iambic septenarius (Terence Phormio 820), where the three elisions (s(um), ses(e), fratr(i)), the brevis breviāns (utŭt), and the pronunciation of meae as one syllable by synizesis make the rhythm of the line difficult for the untrained reader unless the ictus is marked at least every other foot: But though such markings may help students with scansion and the rhythm with which the line should be read, it is not generally thought that the accent was heard on those syllables if there was a clash between the ictus and the natural accent of the word.

[21] Examples of the first, where an anceps element is resolved, are Iovĭs iússū, volŏ scīre, minŭs qu(am) ūllus, volŭptās mea, suăm mātrem, háud mală (e)st múlier.

[56] Fattori (2021), however, disputes this and points out some cases where the shortened syllable is apparently accented, for example, sed ŭxōr scelesta (Plaut.

[57] Iambic shortening is also occasionally found in the fragments of Early Latin tragedy and in Ennius's hexameters in a passage quoted by Apuleius (Apol.

[58] But apart from in certain common words such as bene, male, ego, mihi, tibi, sibi, ubi, ibi, nisi, quasi, modo, and nescio, it is not usually found in poetry of the classical period.

Quite commonly in Plautus the two adjacent vowels in words such as eōsdem, ni(h)il, eum, eō, huius, eius, cuius, mi(h)ī, meās, tuom were merged into one syllable by a process known as synizesis.

Vowels which later became shortened before -t or -r retained their length in Plautus, e.g. amāt, habitāt, vidēt, cavēt, audīt, velīt, habēt, fīt, dūcōr, loquōr, labōr, mātēr, etc.

[137] An example is the following extract from Terence's Andria (35-39) spoken by the old man Simo to his freedman Sosia: The character of this metre is different from the iambic senarius or trochaic septenarius.

This second kind of iambic octonarius, which has a break after the 9th element, is very similar to a trochaic septenarius but with an extra syllable at the beginning, and in some passages (such as Terence, Phormio 465–504) the metre switches back and forth between tr7 and ia8.

"[146] In the first type, when the break is in the middle of the line, there may be a hiatus or a brevis in longo (a short syllable standing for a long element) at that point, as in the word ingerĕ in the first of the two lines below: The iambic octonarius was apparently often used in Roman tragedy for messenger speeches,[148] and in Plautus it is also used by slave messengers, as in this account of the preparations of a battle in the Amphitruo (203–210) sung by the slave Sosia.

There is usually a diaeresis in the centre of the line, and there may sometimes also be a hiatus (lack of elision) or brevis in longo (a short syllable made long by position) at this point.

According to an ancient metrical theory, the Greek version of this metre (trochaic tetrameter catalectic) was composed of an iambic trimeter with a cretic foot (– u –) added at the beginning.

According to the ancient grammarian Marius Victorinus, it is characteristic of anapaestic poetry that there is usually a word-break at the end of every metron or dipody; in Seneca's plays this is always the case.

For those scholars who believe there was no ictus in ancient poetry, this presents no problem; the fact that each metron usually ends with a word-break automatically means that the stress will be heard on the early part of the feet.

As Lindsay[161] puts it, "It seems difficult to believe that the same poet, who in other metres so successfully reconciles accent with ictus, should tolerate lines like: Other Roman writers who wrote anapaests, such as Seneca and Boethius, also regularly placed the word-accent on the beginning of each foot.

[163] The German classicist Marcus Deufert claims that the style of writing in these lines is different from the usual anapaests, in that it is more regular and there are more long syllables.

He draws the conclusion that the lines from Miles Gloriosus were recited in the same way as trochaic septenarii, while other anapaestic passages (which usually contain an admixture of other metres) were sung.

In the following passage from the Bacchides (1131–1140a) the courtesan Bacchis and her sister mock the two old men Philoxenus and Nicobulus who have knocked on their door, calling them "sheep": The tenth and twelfth lines above illustrate the "syncopated" bacchiac rhythm, where one syllable is omitted from the foot.