LATIN SCANSION PART I : IDENTIFICATION OF
SYLLABLES
Dactylic
Hexameter Verse
Called hexameter because each line consists of six feet. Each
foot is either a dactyl (one long syllable followed by two short
syllables, represented as ¯¯ v v ) or a
spondee (two long syllables, represented as ¯¯
¯¯ ). The fifth is (almost) always a dactyl, the sixth
is always a spondee. The first four feet may be either a dactyl
or a spondee in each case.
__
__
__ __
¯¯ v v / ¯¯
v v / ¯¯
v v / ¯¯
v v / ¯¯
v v / ¯¯
¯¯
To determine the quantities of syllables you have first got to
establish what they are, by dividing them from one another.
Latin Syllable Division
In Latin, the syllable division stands
1) between two vowels belonging to different syllables. me /
a, e / unt, tu /ae
2) before a single consonant. no /
bis, fe / mi / na, lu / pus
3) after the first of several consonants. quan / tum, men /
sa, dig / na
Simplicity itself – except that all this goes to the ear, not the eye,
so you need some additional notes.
On 1): Two things help to determine whether two vowels standing
beside each other belong to separate syllables. First, use your
ear. If you hear two syllables in the word mea, you have to
divide it up accordingly. Secondly, note that the regular
diphthongs in Latin – cases where two vowels are pronounced together
and so belong to the same syllable – are ae, au, oe, and ou.
Patterns other than these are probably vowels that need to be assigned
to separate syllables.
On 2): Several notes. The letter h is not treated as a
consonant. It isn’t treated as anything except a way of
pronouncing the vowel it stands before. You might as well cross
it out with your pencil before you syllabify a word. Also, qu is
treated as a single consonant. Qui is therefore one syllable, and
so on – your ear will help with this. Also, x is treated as
cs. You therefore divide, in most cases, down the middle of the
x. dixi was heard as dic / si. Similarly, z is treated as
ds – but you won’t see it except in words transliterated from Greek, as
it wasn’t a natural Latin sound. And note that while the ancients
drew both the vowel u and the related consonant in the same shape,
modern editors usually give the vowel as u and the related consonant as
v. But the ancients also wrote the vowel i and the related
consonant in the same shape – and modern editors normally do,
too. So i before a vowel is usually the consonant.
On 3): Consonant clusters. The basic idea is to divide
before as many consonants as can be pronounced together at the
beginning of a syllable – or a word. You know it’s dic / si
rather than di / xi because xi is unpronounceable in Latin, as in
English. But you have a choice between pat / rem – what the
general rule would suggest – and pa / trem – which is also
pronounceable. Or between cus / tos and cu / stos. In
practice, I find that the poets tend to divide before a stop and a
liquid – fra / trem, du / plex, li / bris and so on, anything where l
or r stands after b, p, t or the like. But I think that s
is
usually divided from a following consonant – cas / ta, hos / pes, mis /
cu / it.
Finally, note that, in verse, the entire line is syllabified as if it
were one word. You have to ignore the spaces between words –
again, the syllabification goes to the ear, not the eye, and of course
we don’t leave spaces between words in voicing an utterance. So
for example the first line of the Aeneid,
which is this . . .
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
. . . would be
syllabified like this:
Ar / ma / vi / rum / que / ca / no / Tro / iae / qui / pri / mu / sa /
bo / ris
Elision
Elision is the absence, to the ear, of what appears to the eye to be a
syllable. Rather like contractions in English, except that the
elision is not written out the way it’s pronounced, like our
contractions. It has to be inferred.
Elision occurs when:
1. a word begins with a vowel, or h before a vowel, and
2. the word before it ends with a vowel, or m after a vowel.
In these circumstances, you must x out – literally or metaphorically –
the final vowel, or vowel plus m, at the end of the first word.
Examples:
Femina illa in syllables = fe mi nil la
Femina
hanc
= fe mi nanc (fe mi nhanc, if you prefer)
Hominem illum = ho mi nil lum
Illum hominem = il lo mi nem (or il lho mi nem)
LATIN SCANSION PART II : QUANTITIES OF
SYLLABLES
A syllable is long if it ends in 1) a consonant, 2) a diphthong, or 3)
a long vowel.
A syllable is short in every other case – ie, if it ends with a short
vowel.
Remember that syllable quantities in a given line must come out to the
six feet of the dactylic hexameter . . .
¯¯ v v / ¯¯
v v / ¯¯
v v / ¯¯
v v / ¯¯
v v / ¯¯
¯¯
. . . where only the last five syllables (= last two feet) are
fixed (exceptions amount to less than 1% and I won’t be asking you to
deal with any such thing), while the first four feet may be in each
case either a dactyl ( ¯¯ v v) or a
spondee(¯¯ ¯¯ ).
Most students find it best, in the early stages of coping, to
begin with the last five syllables of the
line, then return to the beginning of the line and put a long mark over
every syllable that is long for sure (ending in a consonant, a
diphthong, or, if you can tell, a long vowel), then fill in the open
syllables with whatever quantities will cause them to end up with six
feet in the line.
Some hints and obiter notanda:
1) The pattern long-short-long cannot occur in this line, so if you can
tell that one syllable is long, and the next but one is long, too, then
the one in between is bound to be long.
2) Obviously, some other patterns are impossible in this line,
too – you can’t have more than two short syllables in a row.
3) The last syllable in a line is long by position, because you hear a
brief pause on the way to pronouncing the next line. I always
just scan it long; you have the choice of doing that or scanning it
long if it’s naturally long or short if it’s naturally short – or some
people put an x over it to show that it may be either long or short by
nature.
4) Speakers of English are as good at picking up stress accent as they
are poor at discerning quantities of vowels, so you may want to bear in
mind that, if the next to last syllable gets the accent, it’s long,
while if the accent falls on the third syllable from the end, the next
to last syllable is short. If you’re pretty sure that the
pronunciation is po pu lus,
rather than po pu lus, then
the syllable pu is short. If you’re pretty sure it’s a ni mo sa, rather than a ni mo sa, then the syllable mo is
long.
Here is how the first line of the Aeneid, syllabified above, would look
with syllables marked for quantity, and divided into dactyls or
spondees.
¯¯ v
v / ¯¯
v
v / ¯¯ ¯¯ / ¯¯
¯¯
/ ¯¯
v
v / ¯¯
¯¯
Ar / ma / vi / rum / que / ca / no / Tro / iae / qui / pri / mu / sa /
bo / ris