384 Mr MUNRO, on A METRICAL 



vance of the caesura was all-important, they on the whole applied it even more strictly than 

 their masters. The ordinary caesura therefore falling in the middle of the third foot, it has 

 been argued, in opposition to Bentley's and Ritschl's notion of an intentional coincidence be- 

 tween ictus and accent in that part of the iambic senarius and trochaic septenarius, that from 

 the nature of the Latin accent this could not fail to be generally the case, and that if you read 

 Aristophanes or Euripides with the Latin accent you will find it to apply to them as much as 

 to Plautus or Terence ; and they at all events intended no coincidence between their own ictus 

 and the Latin accent. 



Take the fifth line of the Mercator of Plautus : 



Graece haec vocatur Emporos Philemonis. 

 From the nature of the accent in vocatur Emporos, it corresponds with the ictus. Yet 

 though Ritschl and Bentley have pushed their idea of an intended coincidence much too far, 

 from a somewhat mistaken notion perhaps of the true nature of the ancient accent, I cannot 

 help seeing even in Plautus and Terence an unwillingness, though probably only half conscious 

 unwillingness, to allow in certain cases ictus and accent to be in violent opposition. Take the 

 next line to what I have just quoted, 



tadem Latine Mercator Macci Titi, 



where in the word mercator accent and ictus are in direct contradiction to each other. Such 

 verses as these occur not unfrequently in Plautus, and though I think they are rarer in 

 Terence, we meet with them occasionally in him also. Now when we reflect that a spondee 

 occurs as frequently in the fourth as in any other foot of the verse ; and yet that we find 

 perhaps twenty instances where accent and ictus are in opposition in the fifth foot, as in the 

 first verse of this play, 



Duas res simul nunc agere decretumst mihi, 



for one instance similar to that just quoted, 



Eadem Latine Mercator Macci Titi, 



it would seem clear that this latter rhythm was intentionally avoided by PlautUs and Terence, 

 and that the accent alone can explain why this was done. I am likewise led to this conclusion 

 by what I am now going to shew, that this connexion between ictus and accent gradually 

 established itself much more firmly in times when quantity was yet in possession of all its 

 rights, and probably contributed much to the eventual supplanting of quantity by accent and 

 the consequent destruction of the language. 



In the exquisite pure iambic odes of Catullus ictus and accent must from the necessity 

 of the case coincide in the middle of the verse. At the beginning and end he probably neither 

 sought nor avoided such coincidence and wrote with equal satisfaction 



Senet quiete seque dedicat tibi 

 and 



Gemelle Castor et gemelle Castoris 

 and 



Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati. 



In the first of these verses accent and ictus disagree in the first and last foot ; in the second 



