LATIN INSCRIPTION AT CIRTA. 385 



they agree throughout ; in the third they disagree in almost as many places as they well could 

 in this kind of verse. Yet led by his own delicate instinct he makes them coincide in far the 

 greater number of lines in the ode from which the last verse is quoted : 



Mamurram habere quod coniata Gallia 

 Habebat ante et ultima Britannia. 

 Et ilia nunc superbus et superfluens 

 Perambulabit omnium cubilia 

 Ut albulus Columbus aut Adoneus. 

 Eone nomine, imperator unice, 

 Fuisti in ultima occidentis insula, 



and so on. 



Decimus Laberius, the famous writer of mimes in the time of Augustus, entirely I believe 

 avoids in his extant fragments such verses as the sixth line of the Mercator of Plautus 

 quoted above, though he rather seeks than avoids such a cadence as this, 



Non me flexibilem concurv&sti ut carperes. 



Read concurvas and observe the change of rhythm with the change of accent. 



This increasing tendency (for of such tendency I feel no doubt) to make accent and ictus 

 agree would be most likely to be perceived in verses written to please the popular ear. 

 Dom Pitra in his valuable preface to the poem of Commodian (p. xxiv.) speaks of his verse 

 as written in rhythm ; then quotes Bede's definition of rhythm, ' verborum modulata com- 

 positio, non ratione metrica, sed numero syllabarum ad judicium aurium examinata, ut sunt 

 carmina vulgarium poetarura'; and then gives as a good example of this rhythm the celebrated 

 scomma, sung by Caesar's soldiers during his triumph in the usual scoffing style employed 

 to avert the envy of the Gods : 



Gallias Caesar subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem, 

 Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit Gallias; 

 Nicomedes non triumphal qui subegit Caesarem. 



He then observes that such like plebeian verses without metre were even more usual among 

 the Greeks than the Romans. In all this he is strangely mistaken. Bede who wrote 

 centuries after the downfal of quantity, means by his rhythm the accentual Church hymns, 

 such as those attributed to St Ambrose whom he quotes. In classical times of course 

 rhythm both with Greek and Latin writers meant simply the several proportions and arrange- 

 ments of long and short syllables ; definite sections of which formed the several metres 

 dactylic, iambic, etc.; and has nothing in the world to do with accent. Caesar's veterans 

 were incapable of perpetrating a false quantity. Their verses are in as strict accordance 

 with the laws of prosody as the Aeneid. Yet in every instance with a single exception in 

 the first line accent and ictus are in agreement. In this specimen we have trochees in all 

 the odd places ; but from other examples of the same kind we know that, as in the comic 

 metres, every foot except the last might be a spondee. Observe this other scomma sung by 

 Caesar's soldiers: 



Urbani, servate uxores moechum calvum adducimus. 

 Here accent and ictus are in opposition in the first two feet, but in the middle and end aVe 



49 — 2 



