××××|×∪––×|×××××′×||
–– a seven-syllable colon, usually with caesura after the fourth syllable, in
syzygy with a six-syllable colon of which the penultimate syllable is stressed
(and most often long). There are many irregularities in the number of syl-
lables, most of which can be explained by special rules or put down to faulty
transmission, but this description may be taken as the basis for discussion.
In the extant material, the oldest of which dates from the third century
, the accentual rules of classical Latin apply.^75 At an earlier period the
stress had fallen on the initial syllable of every word. At that time the caesura
after four syllables would have entailed a stress on the fifth, and the verse
would have had the form
×××××′××|×××××′×||The pattern is strikingly analogous to the type of acatalectic + catalectic
pairing typical of Graeco-Aryan quantitative verse:
×××∪−∪−|×××∪−−||We have already suggested that in Avestan, with stress having come to be a
significant factor in versification, the original cadence... ∪−− || was
replaced by... ××′× ||. If a parallel development occurred in proto-Italic, the
Saturnian can be satisfactorily explained as the continuation of a prototype of
the form ^^G | ^^G
^^ ||.
Another verse found in the early Latin material, in the Arval and Saliar
hymns and in certain traditional charms, is an octosyllable with medial
caesura and penultimate stress: diuom deo supplicate;nouom uetus uinum
bibo. This cannot be equated with the ordinary Graeco-Aryan G verse, but it
could correspond to the Vedic trochaic ga ̄yatrı ̄ type.
Attempts have been made since the nineteenth century to identify and
analyse verse in other Italic dialects such as Oscan, Paelignian, Faliscan, and
South Picene. Some of these analyses appear wholly arbitrary; others seem
possible but too uncertain to assist the argument, and I pass over them here.^76
We move north to the Celtic lands. Here the oldest extant verses are
perhaps to be found in a Gaulish curse-tablet from Chamalières, dating from
thefirst century of our era. The text begins: andedíon uediíumi diíiuion
risunartiu Mapon Arueriíatin, ‘by virtue of the Lower Gods I invoke Mapon
(^75) Except that words scanning ∪∪∪× were presumably still stressed on the first syllable,
as in Plautus and Terence.
(^76) See F. Bücheler, ‘Altitalisches Weihgedicht’,Rh. Mus. 33 (1878), 271–90; ‘Altitalische
Grabschrift’, ibid. 35 (1880), 494 f.; P. Poccetti, ‘Eine Spur des saturnischen Verses im
Oskischen’,Glotta 61 (1983), 207–17; H. Eichner, Die Sprache 34 (1988/90), 198–206; Watkins
(1995), 126–34; P. M. Freeman, JIES 26 (1998), 77–9.
52 1. Poet and Poesy