200 Aitstin Morris Harmon, 



sp;_'Ct and in the disuse of IV Sedulius differs slij^htly from Ammianus, 

 he is in essential agreement with him in his attitude toward quan- 

 tity, for he too disregards quantity under accent, and observes 

 quantity by position in unaccented syllables. Failure rightly to 

 appreciate this fact has materially lessened the value of Candel's 

 work upon Sedulius.^ Yet he himself noted that Sedulius in I ;' 

 and II ;' freely allows the syllable before the caesura to be long by 

 nature, but does not allow it to make position.^ And there is 

 another obvious peculiarity of the same sort (not noted by Candel) 

 in the clausula i<j r\j rsj \ r\j r^ i<j r^, where he objects to positional 

 lengthening, though not to natural lengthening of the second 

 syllable in the last word. This is of course a refinement on the 

 practice of Ammianus, and a closer approximation to the ditrochaic 

 close of the metrical form 3. In regard to Sedulius' neglect of 

 quantity under accent I will only point out that in I cV the final dis- 

 sjdlable has its penult short in 24 per cent of the cases, and that an- 

 tepenultimate words have their accented syllable short in 44 per 

 cent of the cases in which they end form II and 40 per cent of 

 the cases in which they begin form Ill-ratios which correspond to 

 those we found in Ammianus in like words and determined to be normal. 

 These considerations point clearly to neglect of quantity under accent, 

 and to neglect of vowel-length. Ammianus, miles et Graecus, prob- 

 ably could not have written accurate metrical clausulae had he 

 wished to ; but Sedulius could, as his Paschale Carmen shows. He 

 did not, because he was writing for auditors who would not have 

 appreciated their rhythm.^ 



' de ciausulis a Scdnl/o . . . adhibitis, Tolosae, 1U04. 



* Op. cit. p. 84. 



^ In this brief sketch of the origin of the accentual clausula I ad- 

 here essentially to the view of Meyer, which was combatted not long 

 since by Schlicher {Origin of KhytJimical Vcrsr in Late Latin^ Chicago 

 1900). Schlicher denies that there was any appreciable loss of quantity 

 in Latin except in final syllables, and applies to the accentual clausula 

 an ingenious theory similar to that which he contrived for accentual 

 verse, to the effect that the thesis of the cretic clausula is indifferent, 

 and that in the endeavor to j)ut the uncertain final syllable of a Avord 

 into this thesis, coincidence of accent and ictus was brought about. But 

 a vital objection to this theory, as De Jonge has pointed out, lies in 

 the fact that the thesis of the cretic is not undetermined. Even 

 Ammianus means to make it short, for that is his object in avoiding 

 position there. And in the face of the evidence from Ammianus I fancy 

 he would hardly care to maintain his advocacy of the permanence of a 

 sense for quantity in Latin. Neglect of quantity in Ammianus is a 



