CHAPTER III.

SATURNIAN METRE—OPINIONS RESPECTING ITS ORIGIN—EARLY EXAMPLES OF THIS METRE—SATURNIAN BALLADS IN LIVY—STRUCTURE OF THE VERSE—INSTANCES OF RHYTHMICAL POETRY.

The origin and progress of the Roman language have now been briefly traced, by the help of existing monuments, from the earliest dawn of its existence, when the fusion of its discordant elements was so incomplete as to be scarcely intelligible, to the period when even in the unadorned form of public records it began to assume a classical shape. But such an analysis will not be complete without some account of the verse in which the earliest national poetry was composed.

The oldest measure used by the Latin poets was the Saturnian. According to Hermann,[73] there is no doubt that it was derived from the Etruscans, and that long before the fountains of Greek literature were opened; the strains of the Italian bards flowed in this metre, until Ennius introduced the heroic hexameter. The grammarian Diomedes[74] attributed the invention of it to Nævius, and seems to imply that the Roman poet derived the idea from the Greeks, for his theory is, that he formed the verse by adding a syllable to the Iambic trimeter. Terentianus Maurus, as well as Atilius, professed to find verses of this kind in the tragedies of Euripides and the odes of Callimachus, and Servius and Censorinus attempted to analyze the Saturnian according to the strict rules of Greek prosody; but they were obliged to permit every conceivable license, and to make Roman rudeness an excuse for a violation of those rules which they themselves had arbitrarily imposed. The opinion of Bentley was, that it was a Greek metre introduced into Italy by Nævius.[75] The only argument in favour of the latter theory is the fact that the Saturnian is found amongst the verses of Archilochus; but many circumstances, which shall hereafter be pointed out, combine to make it far more probable that the use of it by the Greek poet is an accidental coincidence, than that the old Roman bards copied it from him.

Whatever be its history, there can be no doubt that, if it did not originate in Italy, its rhythm in very early times recommended itself to the Italian ear, and became the recognised vehicle of their national poetry. A rude resemblance of it is discernible in the Eugubine tables; it had obtained a more advanced degree of perfection in the Arvalian chants, and the _axamenta_[76] or Salian hymns. Examples of it are found in fragments of Roman laws, which Livy[77] refers to the reign of Tullus Hostilius, and Cicero[78] to that of Tarquinius Priscus. The epitaphs of the Scipios are in fact Saturnian næniæ. Ennius, whose era was sufficiently early for him to know that Nævius, instead of being the inventor of a new verse, or the introducer of a Greek one, followed the example of his predecessors, finds fault with the antiquated rudeness of his Saturnians.

Scripsere alii rem Versibus quos olim Fauni Vatesque canebant Quom neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat, Nec dicti studiosus erat.

Some in such verses wrote, As sung the Fauns and Bards in olden times, When none had scaled the Muses’ rocky heights Or studied graceful diction.

Had the Saturnian been introduced from Greece, Ennius would not have denied to it the inspiration of the Muses, or have doubted that its birthplace was on the rocky peaks of Parnassus, nor would his ear, attuned to the varied melody of Greek poetry, have been unconscious of its simple and natural rhythm, and have entirely rejected it for the more ponderous and grandiloquent hexameter. The truth is, the taste which was formed by the study of Greek letters created a prejudice against the old national verse. As it was not Greek, it was pronounced rough and unmusical, and was exploded as old-fashioned. The well-known passage of Horace represents the prevailing feeling, although he says that the Saturnian remained long after the introduction of the hexameter, and that, even in his own day, when Virgil had brought the Latin hexameter to the highest degree of perfection, a few traces of that old long-lost poetry, which Cicero[79] wished for back again, might still be discovered:—

Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes Intulit agresti Latio. Sic horridus ille Defluxit numerus Saturnius, et grave virus Munditiæ pepulere: sed in longum tamen ævum Manserunt, hodieque manent vestigia ruris. _Ep._ II., ii. 156.

Some passages of Livy bear evident marks of having been originally portions of Saturnian ballads, although the historian has mutilated the metre by the process of translating them into more modern Latin. The prophetic warning of C. Marcius[80] has been thus restored by Hermann with but slight alteration of the words of Livy:

Amnén, Trojúgena, Cánnam fuge, ne te alienigenæ Cogánt in cámpo Díomedéi manús consérere; Sed nec credes tu mihi, donec complessis sangui Campum, miliaque multa occisa tua tetulerit Is amnis in portum magnum ex terra frugifera. Piscibus avibus ferisque quæ incolunt terras, eis Fuat esca carnis tua; ita Juppiter mihi fatus.

The oracle which tradition recorded as having been brought from Delphi respecting the waters of the Alban lake[81] was evidently embodied in a Saturnian poem, probably the composition of the same Marcius, or one of his contemporaries, such as Fabius Pictor, Cincius Alimentus, or Acilius. This lay has also been conjecturally restored by Hermann.

Romane aquam Albanam lacu cave contineri, Cave in mare immanare suopte flumine siris; Missam manu per agros rigassis, dissipatam Rivis extinxis, tum tu insistito hostium audax Muris memor, quam per tot annos circum obsides Urbem, ex ea tibi his, quæ nunc panduntur fatis, Victoriam datam; bello perfecto donum Amplum ad mea victor templa portato; sacra patria Nec curata instaurato, utique adsolitum, facito.

In later times Livius Andronicus translated the whole Odyssey into Saturnians, and Nævius wrote in the same metre a poem consisting of seven books, the subject of which was the first Punic war. Detached fragments of both these have been preserved by Aulus Gellius, Priscian, Festus, and others, which have been collected together by Hermann.[82]

The structure of the Saturnian is very simple, and its rhythmical arrangement is found in the poetry of every age and country. Macaulay[83] quotes the following Saturnians from the poem of the Cid and from the Nibelungen-Lied—

Estás nuevás a mío | Cíd erán venídas A mí lo dían; á ti | dán las órejádas. Man móhte míchel wúnder | vón Sifríde ságen Wa ích den kúnic vínde | dás sol mán mir ságen.

He adds, also, an example of a perfect Saturnian, the following line from the well known nursery song—

The quéen was ín her párlour | eáting breád and hóney.

It was the metre naturally adapted to the national mode of dancing, in which each alternate step strongly marked the time,[84] and the rhythmical beat was repeated in a series of three bars, which gave to the dance the appellation of tripudium.

The Saturnian consists of two parts, each containing three feet, which fall upon the ear with the same effect as Greek trochees. The whole is preceded by a syllable in thesis technically called an anacrusis. For example—

Sum|más o|pés qui | régum ‖ régi|ás re|frégit ‖

The metre in its original form was perfectly independent of the rules of Greek prosody; its only essential requisite was the beat or ictus on the alternate syllable or its representative. The only law to regulate the stress was that of the common popular pronunciation. In fact, stress occupied the place of quantity. Two or three syllables, which, according to the rules of prosody would be long by position, might be slurred over or pronounced rapidly in the time of one, as in the following line:—

Amném Trojúgena Cánnam | fúge ne té alienígenæ.

Thus it is clear that the principles which regulated it were those of modern versification, without any of the niceties and delicacies of Greek quantity.

The anacrusis resembles the introductory note to a musical air, and does not interfere with the essential quality of the verse, namely, the three beats twice repeated, any more than it does in English poems, in which octosyllabic lines, having the stress on the even places, are intermingled with verses of seven syllables, as in the following passage of Milton’s L’Allegro:—

Come and trip it as you go On the light fantastic toe, And in thy right hand lead with thee The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew.

It is remarkable that in the degenerate periods of Latin literature, there was a return to the same old rhythmical principles which gave birth to the Saturnian verse: ictus was again substituted for quantity, and the Greek rules of prosody were neglected for a rhythm consisting of alternate beats, which pervades most modern poetry.

The empire had become so extensive, that the taste of the people, especially of the provincials, was no longer regulated by that of the capital, and emphasis and accent became, instead of metrical quantity, the general rule of pronunciation. This was the origin of rhythmical poetry. Traces of it may be found as early as the satirical verses of Suetonius on J. Cæsar.

It is the metre of the little jeu d’esprit addressed by the emperor Hadrian to Florus—[85]

Ego nolo Florus esse Ambulare per tabernas Latitare per popinas Culices pati rotundos;

and also of the historian’s repartee—

Ego nolo Cæsar esse Ambulare per Britannos Scythicas pati pruinas.

The simple grandeur of such strains as—

Dies iræ, dies illa, Solvet sæclum in favilla, &c.

and other monkish hymns, go far to rescue the old Saturnian from the charge of ruggedness and rusticity ascribed to it by Horace and others, whose taste was formed by Greek poetry, and whose fastidious ears could not brook any harmony but that which had been consecrated to the outpourings of Greek genius.

From this species of verse, which probably prevailed among the natives of Provence (the Roman Provincia) the Troubadours derived the metre of their ballad poetry, and thence introduced it into the rest of Europe. But whatever phases the external form of ancient poetry underwent, the classical writers both of Greece and Rome eschewed rhyme. Even to a modern ear the beautiful effect of the ancient metres is entirely destroyed by it. It was a false taste and a less refined ear which could accept it as a compensation for the imperfections of prosody.

Although rhyme was introduced as an embellishment of verses framed on the principle of ictus, and not of quantity, at a very early period of Christian Latin literature, it is not quite certain when it came to be added as a new difficulty to the metres of classical antiquity. It is recorded by Gray[86] that when the children educated in the monastery of St. Gall addressed a Bishop of Constance on his first visitation with expostulatory orations, the younger ones recited the following doggerel rhymes:—

Quid tibi fecimus tale ut nobis facias male Appellamus regem quia nostram fecimus legem.

The elder and more advanced students spoke in rhyming hexameters:—

Non nobis pia spes fuerat cum sis novus hospes Ut vetus in pejus transvertere tute velis jus.