No More Learning

This is the famous Saturnian metre, which remained
the metre of all Latin poetry until the coming of the Greeks. Each verse
falls into two halves corresponding to the forward swing and the recoil
of the dance. Each half-verse exhibits three rhythmical beats answering
to the beat of a three-step dance. The verse is in the main accentual.
But the accent is hieratic. The hieratic accent is discovered chiefly in
the first half of the verse: where the natural accent of a disyllabic
word is neglected and the stress falls constantly on the final
syllable. [2] This hieratic accent in primitive Latin poetry is
important, since it was their familiar use of it which made it easy for
the Romans to adapt the metres of Greece.

The first poets, then, are the priests. But behind the priests are the
people--moved by the same religious beliefs and fears, but inclined, as
happens everywhere, to make of their 'holy day' a 'holiday'. And hence a
different species of poetry, known to us chiefly in connexion with the
harvest-home and with marriage ceremonial--the so-called Fescennine
poetry. This poetry is dictated by much the same needs as that of the
priests. It is a charm against _fascinum_, 'the evil eye': and hence the
name Fescennine. The principal constituent element in this Fescennine
poetry was obscene mockery. This obscenity was magical. But just as it
takes two to make a quarrel, so the obscene mockery of the Fescennine
verses required two principals.
And here, in the improvisations of the
harvest-home, we must seek the origins of two important species of Latin
poetry--drama and satire.

There was magic in the house as well as in the fields. Disease and Death
demanded, in every household, incantations. We still possess fragments
of Saturnian verse which were employed as charms against disease. Magic
dirges (_neniae_) were chanted before the house where a dead man lay.
They were chanted by a _praefica_, a professional 'wise woman', who
placated the dead man by reiterated praise of him. These chants probably
mingled traditional formulae with improvisation appropriate to
particular circumstances. The office of the _praefica_ survived into a
late period. But with the growth of Rationalism it very early came into
disrepute and contempt. Shorter lived but more in honour was an
institution known to us only from casually preserved references to it in
Cato and Varro. This was the _Song in Praise of Famous Men_ which was
sung at banquets. Originally it was sung by a choir of carefully
selected boys (_pueri modesti_), and no doubt its purpose was to
propitiate the shades of the dead. At a later period the boy choristers
disappear, and the _Song_ is sung by individual banqueters. The ceremony
becomes less religious in character, and exists to minister to the
vanity of great families and to foster patriotism. In Cato's time the
tradition of it survived only as a memory from a very distant past. Its
early extinction must be explained by the wider use among the Romans of
written memorials.