No More Learning

The suggestion that the protosyllabic accent survived as a conscious
archaism in saturnian verse right down to the time of the Scipios is, I
think, at any rate worth considering. It carries us into speculations
far wider than the particular problem with which it is immediately
concerned. For if the protosyllabic law did actually survive in this way
we can the more easily explain the swift and decisive victory which the
Hellenizing Latin poetry won over the old native verse. What was
conquered was an archaism, something purely artificial. The conquering
force was not merely Hellenism but Hellenism _plus_ a complete and
radical change in Latin speech.

If anyone cares to analyse the extant remains of saturnian verse in the
light of this suggestion, I would formulate three rules which can, I
think, be deduced:

1. Each line has five feet, and each foot contains one accented syllable
_plus_ either one or two unaccented syllables. [19] The first foot,
however, _may_ consist of a monosyllable.

2. The third foot must consist of a trisyllabic word or
'word-group'[20]: save that occasionally the second and third feet
together may be formed of a quadrisyllabic (or pentasyllabic) word with
secondary accent.

3. The first and second, and again the fourth and fifth, feet may be
either disyllabic or trisyllabic: but (_a_) two trisyllables may not
follow one another in the first two feet, and (_b_) if the fifth foot
(usually trisyllabic) is a disyllable the fourth must be trisyllabic.

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.