Saturnian (poetry)

Quintus Ennius is the poet who is generally credited with introducing the Greek hexameter in Latin, and dramatic meters seem to have been well on their way to domestic adoption in the works of his approximate contemporary Plautus.

These Greek verse forms were considered more sophisticated than the native tradition; Horace called the Saturnian horridus.

Cicero regretted the loss in his Brutus: However, it has been noted that later poets like Ennius (by extension Virgil, who follows him in both time and technique) preserve something of the Saturnian aesthetic in hexameter verse.

(4) Livius Andronicus, Odissia fragment 1 (5) Naevius, Bellum Poenicum fragments 2–4 (6) Epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus Despite the obscurity of the principles of Saturnian versification in Latin, scholars have nonetheless attempted to extend analysis to other languages of ancient Italy related to Latin.

This has permitted comparison with meters from related Indo-European poetic traditions outside Italic, such as Celtic, and a few scholars have tried to trace the verse back to Proto-Indo-European.

Ultimately, owing to the difficulties of describing and analyzing the Saturnian without taking its history into account, attempts at reconstruction have not won acceptance.