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Nuances in Plautine Metre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

F. W. Hall
Affiliation:
St. John's College, Oxford.

Extract

Readers of Phaedrus will have noticed that the rhythm of III. Ep. 34, Palam muttire plebeio piaculum est is unique. Nowhere else does he admit a molossus-word before the final metron of the iambic senarius, and he only admits it here because he is quoting a line from the Telephus of Ennius. Since a scholar whose opinion deserves respect proposes to introduce this rhythm into a reconstruction of a fragment of Laberius it seems worth while to examine its history in order to see how and why it was used, before it was finally banned. For Seneca, like Phaedrus, banns it entirely. The question has already been considered by Klotz, Grundzüge Altrömischer Metrik, pp. 324 sqq.; W. M. Lindsay, Captiui (large edition), p. 66; Havet, Métrique, 276 (though the treatment there is too short to be satisfactory); and by T. Hingst in his inaugural dissertation De Spondeis et Anapaestis in antepaenultimo pede uersuum generis duplicis Latinorum, Leipzig, 1904.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1921

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