LATIN INSCRIPTION AT CIRTA. 393 



Take again this line of Lucretius, 



Priva cub&ntia prdna supina atque ibsona tScta. 

 Here unquestionably sound is meant to echo sense: and the rhythm appears to be modelled 

 on Homer's 



iroWa 2' avavTa Karavra irapaiiTa re Bo^^ia t' tjKBov, 



where in the first four feet oddly enough accent and ictus are in flagrant contradiction. 

 Again if the verse of Lucretius be read in the following manner: although I do not mean to 

 say that he intended it to be so read : 



Prava — cubantia prona — supina atque absona, 



the rhythm is by no means unpleasing, not nearly so much so as that of many verses where 

 the coincidence in question does not exist. Or substitute this verse, 



Procumbentia semisupina atque absona tecta. 



In this case the rhythmical movement is much more disagreeable, yet coincidence is less com- 

 plete between ictus and accent. Again the many Latin words which have no accent, and the 

 necessarily frequent occurrence of whole feet formed out of the unaccentuated parts of accen- 

 tuated words would afford a strong argument that accent has no direct influence upon rhythm ; 

 for Cicero and other ancients lay it down as contrary to the very nature of things for one word 

 to have more than one accent. 



Rhythm we have now seen was in Latin as in Greek quite independent of accent which 

 had no direct influence on it whatsoever. But as quantity on which it rested was divided into 

 various portions by caesura, pause and due arrangement of words, it well might be that in 

 consequence of the limited range of the Latin accent it might gradually obtain a certain indi- 

 rect influence over some parts of the hexameter, as of the iambic or trochaic : habit being 

 all-powerful in this as in more important matters. I wish therefore now to shew that there 

 was this tendency, a feeling in favour of an association of accent and ictus, and in particular 

 cases a studied endeavour to avoid such. Lucretius obeys of course the genius of the hexameter 

 in his management of the caesura. But his favourite movement at the end of the verse is to 

 have not only the two, but the three last feet arranged in such a manner as to produce in 

 general a coincidence between accent and ictus. Take the first forty-three verses of his poem, 

 a highly elaborated passage, and you will find more than half the number to have cadences 

 like these, quae terras frugiferentis, not terras quae; exortum lumina solis, tibi suavis daedala 

 tellus, not suavis tibi; tibi rident aequora ponti, diffusa lumine caelum, genitabilis aura 

 favoni, and so on. This produces a grand and stately, but somewhat monotonous effect. 

 Catullus carries this peculiarity even farther than Lucretius, and with his usual grace ; but the 

 result is the same. Virgil and his followers, and before him the author of the Dirae whose two 

 short poems are chiefly noticeable, because they seem to have been to some extent taken by 

 Virgil as a model, manifestly wish to avoid as a rule this cloying monotony, Virgil says 

 Trojae qui primus, not qui Trojae; labentem caelo quae ducitis annum, not quae caelo labentem. 

 Not but that he employs this cadence, and frequently too, to produce a solemn and majestic 

 effect. We have not to read far in the jEneid to find Albanique patres atque altae moenia 

 Romae, Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem, Ilium expirantem transjixo pector 



50—2 



