Synchysis is a rhetorical technique wherein words are intentionally scattered to create bewilderment, or for some other purpose.
It is described by the website Silva Rhetoricae as "Hyperbaton or anastrophe taken to an obscuring extreme, either accidentally or purposefully.
"[4] It is doubtful, however, whether it could be correct to describe effects in Latin poetry, which was very carefully written, as accidental.
), part of a hymn to a goddess: The meaning is "thee, (the mistress) of the countryside, the poor farmer beseeches with anxious prayer, thee, the mistress of the ocean, whoever provokes the Carpathian sea in a Tyrrhenian boat (beseeches)", dominam being understood with ruris as well as aequoris.
Often, through failure to spot the synchysis, ruris is taken with colonus, and the verse is incorrectly translated as "the poor farmer of the countryside".