No More Learning

The normal type is

─́─ ── │ ─́─ ── │ ─́─ ── ── ││ ─́─ ──    │ ─́─ ── ──
                         ││ ─́─ ── ──

A common variation in the first two feet is either
─́─ ── ── │ ─́─ ──, or ─́─ ── │ ─́─ ── ──. A somewhat rare variation
in the last two is ─́─ ── ── │ ─́─ ──. In the first foot ─́─ sometimes
replaces ─́─ ── (or ─́─ ── ──), no doubt owing to the greater stress
at the opening of the verse.

Some exceptions (or apparent exceptions) to these rules will no doubt be
found. But the rules cover most of the extant examples of saturnian
verse: and it must be remembered that the text of our fragments is often
not at all certain. The system outlined has, however, the merit--which
it shares with Lindsay--that it dispenses with most of the alterations
of the text in which other systems involve us.


THE HYMN OF THE ARVAL BROTHERHOOD.

I have given the text of this celebrated piece according to what may be
called the Vulgate; and in the sub-title, in the Glossary and in my
Introduction p. 1 I have followed the ordinary interpretation. I may
perhaps be allowed here to suggest a different view of the poem.

It begins with an appeal to the Lares. These are apparently the Lares
Consitivi, gods of sowing. Then comes an appeal to Marmar, then to Mars.
Then the Semones are invoked, who, like the Lares, are gods of sowing.
There follows a final appeal to Marmar.
It is pretty clear that the Mars, Marmar, or Marmor, invoked in such
iteration is not the war-god, but Mars in his more ancient character of
a god of agriculture. But if this be so, what are we to make of lines
7-9,

satur fu, fere Mars: limen sali: sta berber,

'Be thou glutted, fierce Mars, leap the threshold, stay thy
scourge',--or, as Buecheler takes it, 'stand, wild god'? This sort of
language is appropriate enough to Mars as god of war, but utterly
inappropriate to the farmer's god[21].

Now it so happens that for

satur fu, fere Mars: limen sali, sta berber

the monumental stone to which we owe this inscription offers at one
point

satur fu, fere Mars limen saii sia berber.

Now, when we remember the Lares Consitivi and the Semones, does it not
look very much as though _satur_ stood for _sator_, as though _fere_
were a blunder for _sere_, as though _saii_ were the vocative of Saius,
'sower' (cf. Seia a goddess of sowing, and Greek σάω σήθω), as though
_sia_ were the imperative of the verb _sio_ (moisten)[22], and as
though, finally, _berber_ were to be connected with the Greek βόρβορυς
and meant 'loam'? (I would give much the same sense, 'fat soil' to
_limen_: (from the root _lib-_: cf. Gk. λείβω λειμών). )

We get, then,

sator fu: sere Mars limen Saii, sia berber,

'Be thou the sower: sower Mars, sow the soil, moisten the loam'. And
this suggests what _ought_ to be the meaning of _enos iuuate_. _enos_
_ought_ to mean _harvests_, or at any rate something in that kind. And
why should it not? Hesychius knew a word ἔνος which he glosses by
ἐνιαυτός, ἐπέτειος καρπός. See Suidas _s. v.