whether the Hittite versions are themselves metrical. If they are, the versifica-
tion seems to be based on a general balance between syntactic cola, as in
Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Hebrew verse, and not on any measurement by
syllables.^86
For syllabic verse we must look elsewhere. Watkins has adduced a plausible
example in an Old Hittite funeral song, perhaps as old as the seventeenth
century , where three lines of 4 | 4 or 5 | 4 are each followed by a five-
syllable refrain.^87 He has also drawn attention to certain Luwian fragments,
quoted in Hittite ritual texts, which certainly look like verse: they show signs
of alliteration, rhyme, and poetic word-order. One is what he has sensation-
ally interpreted as the first line of an epic lay about Troy:
ahh-ata-ta a ̄la ̄ti awenta Wı ̄lusa ̄ti,rendered as ‘When they came from steep Wilusa’. This can be seen as a two-
colon line, 7 | 7 (or, assuming an elision, 6 | 7), with distraction of epithet and
noun so as to give rhyming endings to the hemistichs. A parallel line in
another fragment shows the words differently arranged so as to keep a similar
length of cola: a ̄la ̄ti-ta ahha zı ̄tis awı ̄ta[?Wı ̄lusa ̄ti], ‘When the man came from
steep [?Wilusa]’. Another piece divides easily into 7 | 7 | 7 | 11 (= 7 | 4), where
thefirst two heptasyllables are the same and the third rhymes with them.^88
From the fourth century we have a small body of verse inscriptions
in Lydian, notable for their consistent use of a kind of rhyme: throughout
each poem the last syllable of every line contains the same vowel. In one case
the lines are arranged in three-line stanzas. The line is normally of twelve
syllables, but sometimes eleven, with a regular caesura before the fifth or sixth
syllable from the end. It can be analysed in terms of four trisyllabic ‘feet’, in
each of which the last syllable is accented. An accented syllable may also stand
in the first position in the line, less often in the fourth, and occasionally in the
seventh.^89 It is difficult to relate this pattern in any persuasive way to what we
have found elsewhere. But the fact that the metre shows constraints based
on the syllable-count and on syllabic weight does bring this Lydian verse into
some connection with other Indo-European systems, even if the relationship
cannot be more closely defined.
(^86) Such was the conclusion of H. G. Güterbock, who attempted a metrical transcription
of the Song of Ullikummi:JCS 5 (1951), 141–4. Cf. I. McNeill, Anat. St. 13 (1963), 237–42;
S. P. B. Durnford, ibid. 21 (1971), 69–75; West (1997), 103; H. C. Melchert in Mír Curad, 483–94.
(^87) KBo 3. 40 =BoTU 14 α 13 ′–15′; H. Eichner, Denkschriften der Österreichischen Akademie
236 (1993), 100–6; Watkins (1994), 418 f.; (1995), 248. The nine-syllable lines can be reduced to
eight syllables if kata arnut is read with crasis or elision, kat’arnut (Eichner, 104).
(^88) Watkins (1994), 714; (1995), 146 f., 150; for others see Eichner (as n. 87), 112 f.
(^89) M. L. West, Kadmos 11 (1972), 165–75; 13 (1975), 133–6; H. Eichner, ZVS 99 (1986),
203–19; id., Die Sprache 32 (1986), 7–21; id. (as n. 87), 114–27; cf. Gusmani (1975).
- Poet and Poesy 57