Читать книгу A Student's Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 10 - Shawn O'Bryhim - Страница 12

The meter of English poetry is determined by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables:

Ón the Moúntains óf the Praírie,

Ón the greát Red Pípe-stone Quárry …

The meter of Latin poetry, by contrast, is determined by the arrangement of long and short syllables.

1 A syllable can be long by nature or long by position:A syllable that is long by nature contains a long vowel (lēgis) or a diphthong (arae).A syllable that is long by position contains a short vowel followed by two consonants (such groups include the sounds rendered by the letters “x” and “z,” namely “ks” and “ds”). These two consonants can occur in the same word (āttrāctam) or at the end of one word and the beginning of the next (fortēm virum). Note that “ch,” “ph,” and “th” do not count as two consonants because they represent the Greek letters χ, φ, and θ (Pērsĕphŏnēn). Moreover, an “h” at the beginning of the word does not make a vowel long by position (dĕŭs horum).

2 A short syllable contains a short vowel that has not been made long by position (e.g. tŏt aves).

3 A vowel followed by a consonant cluster consisting of a mute (b, c, d, f, g, p, t) and a liquid (l, r) can be counted either as a long or as a short syllable. For example, the word volucris appears twice at Metamorphoses 13.607. In the first instance, “u” is short; it is long in the second.

ēt prīmō sĭmĭlīs vŏlŭcrī, mōx vēră vŏlūcrīs.

Elision occurs when a word that ends in a vowel or in the case ending “-um,” “-am,” or “-em” is followed by a word that begins with a vowel or an “h.” When this happens, the vowel or the “-um,” “-am,” or “-em” drops out (omnem hominem).

The meter of Ovid’s Metamorphoses is the meter of Greek and Latin epic: dactylic hexameter. It consists of six feet, which can contain dactyls (– ˘˘) or spondees (– –). A spondee may occur in any of the first four feet, the fifth foot is normally a dactyl, and the final foot is scanned as a spondee regardless of the quantity of the last syllable.

In contrast to Vergil, Ovid uses more dactyls than spondees (a ratio of 20 to 12), which allows his lines to move more rapidly than Vergil’s, whose cadence is generally graver. This befits Ovid’s tone, which is often playful and humorous. He also employs elision much less frequently than Vergil.