Metrical anomaly

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lucas20
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Metrical anomaly

Post by lucas20 »

Hey guys, good afternoon, can you scan this hexametre verse for me ? "munera sunt lauri et suae rubens hyacinthus". I scan munera/sunt lau/ri et su/ae ru/bens hya/cinthus. But i think it's wrong because the auctor demand us to find the metrical anomalie and i don't find it.

mwh
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by mwh »

It's suave, not suae. (What do you think it means?)

Hint: where do you think the caesura is?

lucas20
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by lucas20 »

mwh wrote: Wed Nov 25, 2020 8:05 pm It's suave, not suae. (What do you think it means?)

Hint: where do you think the caesura is?
Oh, Suave, yes, sorry. So we have a vowel lengthened at a main caesura ( after suave). Thanks mwh.

mwh
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by mwh »

No. -ve is short.

lucas20
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by lucas20 »

mwh wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 1:10 am No. -ve is short.
Oh, it's true because the final syllable of a word ending in a naturally short vowel plus a single consonant that is lengthened. So i think we have a hiatus in the caesura. Munera/ sunt lau/ ri et su/ave ru/bens hyac/inthus.

lucas20
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by lucas20 »

lucas20 wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 3:46 am
mwh wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 1:10 am No. -ve is short.
Oh, true because it's the final syllable of a word ending in a naturally short vowel plus a single consonant that is lengthened. So i think we have a hiatus in the caesura. Munera/ sunt lau/ ri et su/ave ru/bens hyac/inthus.

mwh
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by mwh »

Yes that’s it. When in doubt always go for the caesura.

Aulus
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by Aulus »

I agree there's a hiatus there for that reason, but isn't that last parse nevertheless wrong, because |rī || et su| isn't a valid foot?

I think the answer is rather:
mūnera | sunt lau|rī || et | suāve ru|bēns hy̆ă|cinthus

Suāvis is one of the few stems with the /sʷ/ phoneme, the other important one being suādeō. Basically suāvis is supposed to have two syllables, as if swā-vis. Although maybe this is what you guys intended to begin with? Even if so, here's some more examples, for anyone reading this thread...

Ipse sed | in prā|tīs ari|ēs iam | suāve ru|bentī (Vergil, Eclogae 4.43)
suāvis et | in ter|rā ... (Lucretius, Dē Rērum Nātūrae 3.173)
saepe lĕ|vī som|num suā|dēbit i|nīre su|surrō (Vergil, Eclogae 1.55)
nōn dăre | suspec|tum'st: || pudor | est quī | suādĕat | illinc (Ovid, Metamorphōsēs 1.618)

mwh
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by mwh »

Yes. I saw that the OP had finally recognized that the anomaly was the hiatus, and I didn’t notice he’d retained his impossible foot-by-foot scansion, which breaks down before we even reach suave.

The sooner people get beyond this deadening and laborious procedure and just learn to read metrically, the better. It's not hard.

Aulus
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by Aulus »

mwh wrote: Mon Dec 21, 2020 9:11 pmThe sooner people get away from this deadening and laborious procedure and just learn to read rhythmically, the better.
Yes. I really dislike I was taught first about metre as a thing of just feet with arbitrary rules of syllable weight. As if the hexameter was just:
— u͞u | — u͞u | — u͞u | — u͞u | — uu | — x
But hexameters make so much more sense when you include the caesura, and read them rhythmically!

lucas20: The caesura is usually near the middle, right after the ictus (or occasionally ictus + light syllable). Sometimes the caesura is early in the 2nd foot, but balanced accompanied by a minor one in the 4th (vī superum, || saevae memorem || Jūnōnis ob īram). Being there, it is followed by one or two ictusless syllables, as if regaining energy for the ictus right after that (boldened below). It's actually musical!

Ab Jove prīncipium Mūsae: || Jovis omnia plēna;
ille colit terrās, || il mea carmina cūrae.
Et mē Phoebus amat; || Phoe sua semper apud mē
mūnera sunt laurī || et su̯āve rubēns hyacinthus.
https://vocaroo.com/183bPCzpW8Bb

mwh
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by mwh »

Aulus,
I’ll just say you’d do well to abandon “ictus.” The accents fall where they would in prose. They tend to clash with the metrical pattern in the first half of the verse and coincide with it towards the end.. Bashing the beat is ruinous.

lucas20
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by lucas20 »

Hey Aulus, thanks for your support man. I didnt' know of this property of sound 'Su' (Sw).

lucas20
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Re: Metrical anomaly

Post by lucas20 »

mwh wrote: Mon Dec 21, 2020 9:11 pm Yes. I saw that the OP had finally recognized that the anomaly was the hiatus, and I didn’t notice he’d retained his impossible foot-by-foot scansion, which breaks down before we even reach suave.

The sooner people get beyond this deadening and laborious procedure and just learn to read metrically, the better. It's not hard.
Yes, i was having difficult with scansion because I start to study this now ( the book when i learnt the latin grammar dont' have good explanations and exercises of scansion). But now that i learnt to find the longs and shorts vowels I realize that it's better go right to poems than stay doing exercises of scansion without context. I'm actually reading Catullus, scanning and reading it aloud, and also memorizing. I found this site on internet, where there are the scansion and the pronunciation of the poems. So I hear it and after I pronounce it myself.I guess that’s how you learn to read metrically. http://rudy.negenborn.net/catullus/text2/sc1.htm

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