Antipast Foot

Antipast is a metrical foot used in metered poetry. It consists of a short syllable, two long syllables and a short syllable ˘ ¯ ¯ ˘. English poetry uses Qualitative meter where syllables are usually categorized as being stressed or unstressed, rather than long or short as is the case in Quantitative meter of Greek and Roman poetry. In Qualitative meter, the combination of the iambic foot ᵕ ̷  and the trochaic foot  ̷  ᵕ forms an Antipast foot. Book I, Verse 1 “Paradise Lost” by John Milton provides an example of the Antipast foot as shown below.

Choriamb Foot

Choriamb is a metron in Greek and Latin poetry consisting of four syllables in a pattern of long-short-short-long ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ that is a trochee ¯ ˘ alternating with an iamb ˘ ¯. In English poetry, choriamb is sometimes used to describe four syllables which follow a pattern of stressed-unstressed-unstressed-stressed  ̷ ˘ ˘ ̷ . In English poetry, the choriamb is often found in the first four syllables in standard iambic pentameter verses. The following verses 6, 9 and 10 found in stanza 2 of the Homostrophic ode written by John Keats’, “Ode to Autumn” provide examples as shown below:

According to prosody, it is not uncommon for poets to vary their Iambic Pentameter, while maintaining the iamb as the dominant foot. However, convention allows that these variations must always contain only five feet. The second foot is almost always an iamb. The first foot is the one most likely to change by the use of the inversion technique. This technique counteracts the metronomic effect by substituting for an iamb another type of foot whose stress is different. So it is not unusual to see any of these (trochee, spondee, dactyl, anapest or pyrrhic) appearing in Iambic Pentameter verses. The inversion mostly tends to fall on a trochee. Another common departure from the standard Iambic Pentameter is the addition of a final unstressed syllable which creates a feminine ending or what is referred to as a weak ending.

Homostrophic Ode consists of a number of stanzas alike in structure. The poet is free to decide on the structure of the basis stanza, with respect to the:-
- number of verses in the stanza
- verse length
- rhyme scheme
in accordance with the demands of the content.
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American spelling: meter, anapest
British spelling: metre, anapaest

Molossus Foot

Molossus is a metrical foot used in metered poetry. It consists of three long syllables ( ̵̵̵̵̵        ̵̵̵̵̵        ̵̵̵̵̵  ).  In English poetry, syllables are usually categorized as being stressed or unstressed, rather than long or short as is the case in quantitative meter of Greek and Roman poetry. The molossus is very rare in English poetry, but can usually be created by using an adjective-adjective-noun combination. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “Break, Break, Break” (in memory of Arthur Hallam) shows a molossus in verses 1 and 2 of the first stanza as shown below:

The poem “Freak Storm Smash” is loaded with the molossus foot as shown in the partial scan below:

Tribrach Foot

This trisyllable foot consists of three short vowels ( ᵕ ᵕ ᵕ ) or three unstressed syllables ( ᵕ ᵕ ᵕ ) in metered poetry. The appearance of the Tribrach in English poetry is rare, as it tends to resolve into two disyllabic feet, depending upon the foot that surrounds it.

Examples of the Tribrach foot are shown in verses  (1, 7, 24 and 28) from Robert Lee Frost’s poem “An Old Man’s Winter Night” . Frost was an American poet. He died at age 89 in 1963. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. He received four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry. His works tended to mirror rural life in New England during the early twentieth century, wherewith he used those themes to examine complex social and philosophical ideas.

An Old Man’s Winter Night

1    All out of doors looked darkly in at him
7    That brought him to that creaking room was age.
24  Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
28  It's this he does it of a winter night.

Here is the scan of the poem "Walk Through Trees" showing where the tribrach foot occurs in these three quatrains with tetrameter verses rhyming abab as shown below:

Quantitative Meter Bedfellows - Part One

Quantitative Meter likes to measure the time it takes to talk with syllables. Naturally, any talk with syllables required the obvious bunkering down with vowels. Why you asked! The syllable is always in bed with a vowel. They cannot resist each other. They are like Siamese twins, identical to say the least but with minor precularities. The vowel asserts her independence though by telling her soul-mate whether her stay is long or short. This jiving does have significance in Latin and how might that be?

In Latin a word has as many syllables as it has vowels or diphthongs. Dividing a word into syllables is called syllabication. Let see how this impacts Latin poetry. Latin words are divided into syllables along a few basic rules as shown below:

- Two contiguous vowels or a vowel and a dphthong are separated. For example: dea, de-a ; deae, de-ae

- A single consonant between two vowels goes with the second vowel. For example: amicus, a-mi-cus

- When two or more consonants stand between two vowels, generally only the last consonant goes with the second vowel. For example: mittō,  mit-tō; servāre, ser-vā-re; consūmptus, con-sūmp-tus

- A stop (p, b, t, d, c, g) plus a liquid (l, r) generally count as a single consonant and go with the following vowel. For example: patrem pa-trem; castra, cas-tra

- Counted as single consonants are the qu and the aspirates ch, ph, th which should never be separated in syllabication. For example: architectus, ar chi tec tus; Loquācem lo-quā-cem

Every syllable in any vocal language must have a vowel. Every word must hav a vowel. Well of course, the number of syllables in a word dictates how many vowels will appear in the word. For example: disyllables have two syllables and two vowels; trisyllables have three syllables and three vowels; tetrasyllables have four syllables and four vowels and obviously a word with five syllabes would have five vowels and so on and so forth.

In Latin a syllable is long by "nature" if it contains a long vowel or a diphthong, a syllable is long by "positio" if it contains a short vowel followed by two or more consonants or by X which is a double consonant:Ks. Otherwise a syllable is short, again. Check out these examples shown below:

- Syllables long by nature: laudō lau dō; Rōma, Rō ma; amīcus, a mī cus
- Syllables long by position: servat, ser-vat; sapientia, sa-pi-en-ti-a; axis, ax-is (ak sis)
- Examples with long syllables underlined, whether long by nature or long by position: lau-dā-te,
mo-ne-ō, sae-pe, cōn-ser-vā-tis, pu-el-lā-rum

Syllable quality plays out even in the English Language where some syllables take longer to pronounce than others, but we don't as a rule think about this so much. How often do you stop to think how in the word 'enough' (e-nough) with its very short first syllable and the longer second syllable.  In Classical Latin this observation is very important because syllable quality impacts significantly on Latin poetry; and of immediate importance, syllable quality determined the position of a word's stress accent.

Words in Latin, like those in English, were pronounced with extra emphasis on one syllable (or more in the case of long words); the placement of this 'stress accent' these strict and simple rules apply:

- In a word of two syllables the accent always falls on the first syllale:  sérvo, sér-vo; sáepe, sáe-pe; níhil, ní-hil

In words of three or more syllable, the accent falls on the next to last syllable (the penultimate), if the syllable is long. For example: servare, ser-vāˊ-re; conservat, cōn-sér-vat; fortuna, for-tūˊ-na Otherwise the accent falls on the syllable before the "antepenultimate. For example: moneo, mó-ne-o; patria, pá-tri-á; pecunia, pe-cū-niˊ-a; volucris, vó-lu-cris.  Please note that accent marks are hardly included when writing Latin because the rules for accentuation are very regular.

Next Topic: Classical Latin Vowels and Diphthongs
(Soon to come)

Classical Latin Alphabet and its Impact on Quantitative Meter

Quantitative meter is about the alternation of “long syllables” and “short syllables”. Since a syllable must contain a vowel, it is the vowel that is the focus for determining the length or shortness of the syllable. In discussing this let’s put into perspective the composition of the Classical Latin alphabet and how it equates with the English alphabet. As can be deduced from Charts 9a, 9b the classical Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet is made up of twenty-three letters representing vowels, consonants, and diphthongs sounds; whereas, the English alphabet has twenty-six letters made up of vowels, consonants, double consonants and diphthongs sounds as well. The Latin alphabet gave us the English alphabet. However, missing from the Classical Latin alphabet during its early stages of development were the letters J, U, W.

Classical Latin Alphabet

 

While some letters were missing new letters were introduced or existing letters were repositioned. So what does this shifting landscape as it were tells us about Classical Latin?

Many interesting features of Classical Latin from a genealogical perspective are found as you will see. GN in Classical Latin produces the nasalized “ng” (ngay) sound as in the English word “hangnail”. Magnus is the Latin example of this principle. One could say this is a double-consonant in the making.

The letter H was drafted into Latin from another language. The H with the sound of (hā) was a breathing sound as in English, only less harshly pronounced as in these Latin examples: hic (hik), haec (hike).

Interestingly enough, the letter ‘I’ served as both a vowel and consonant. Consonantal ‘I’ makes the sound (e) appears regularly in English derivatives as a ‘J’ a letter added to the alphabet in the Middle Ages as for example: maior = major, Iūlius = Julius. Note however, when the ‘I’ comes between two vowels within a word it serves in double capacity: as the vowel ‘I’ forming a diphthong with the preceding vowel, and as the consonant like English Y as seen for example in: reiectus ( rei yectus) maior ( mai yor), cuius ( cui yus.) Otherwise it is usually a vowel.

The letters J did not exist. It appeared in the 16th Century AC. It was made by a French guy called Pierre de la Rameé. J was introduced to replace consonant ‘I’ as in this Latin word IESVS. Consonantal ‘I’ regularly appears in English derivatives as a J, a letter added to the alphabet in the Middle Ages as shown in the following examples: maior = major, Iūlius = Julius.

The letter K is very rarely used in Classical Latin, notice that in Charts 9a, 9b the C (cē), K (cā) and Q (cū) carry the K-sound in Latin.

In Latin the M usually had the sound it has in English, pronounced with the lips closed as in this example /monet/. There is some evidence, however, that in at least certain instances final /M/, that is, M at the end of a word, following a vowel, was pronounced with the lips open, producing a nasalization of the preceding vowel as in these two examples: tum, etiam.

The letter Q is pronounced as in English but is always followed by consonantal U as in QU, the combination having the sound KW (koo) as sound in these two examples: quid, quoque. QU is not a double-consonant in Classical Latin; it is treated as a single consonant.

In Latin the R is always rolled. However, as an English speaker I find great difficulty in creating the rolling sound for the R but I haven’t given up trying.

In Classical Latin the S sound was always voiceless as in the English word, see, never voiced as in the English word ease. These three Latin examples illustrate this rule: sed, posuissēs, mīssistis.

In Classical Latin, the letter T always had the sound of the English letter T as in tired, never ‘SH’ as in nation or ‘CH’ as in mention. These three Latin words are examples of this rule: taciturnitās, nātiōnem, mentiōnem.

Pierre de la Rameé is credited for introducing as well the letter ‘U’ into Classical Latin. ‘U’ is a variant of ‘V’, and ‘W’ was introduced as a ‘double -V’ to make a distinction between the sounds of ‘V’ and ‘W’ in the English language, though unnecessary in Latin. In Latin, the ‘U’ sound was written with the letter ‘V’for example, IVLIVS (Julius).

Puzzling as it may be, the ‘W’ was never integrated in the classical Latin alphabet. The letter ‘W’ was originally a ‘double V’ (VV) and it was first used by those scribes writing in Old English during the 7th century AD, however, the Runic letter Wynn (Ƿ) was more commonly used to write the (W) sound. After the Norman Conquest, the letter W became more popular and had replaced Wynn by 1300.

In Classical Latin the X has two letters (ks) so the X is recognized as a double-consonant.

The letters Y (ÿ) and Z were borrowed from the Greek Alphabet, and used only in Greek words. The letter ÿ comes from the Greek upsilon and the Romans called it "ÿ Graeca." The letter Z comes from the Greek Zeta and the Romans called it "Zeta," with a long zz sound. Z has two letters (ds) so it is a double-consonant.

A double-consonant is formed when two consonants coming together in a word to create a different sound. In Classical Latin, the ‘rr’ in the “currant” was pronounced as two separate r’s like the two r’s in this English sentence (The cur ran.); likewise the ‘tt’ (taytay) in the Latin word “admittent” sounded like the two t’s in the English sentence (Admit ten.) The Romans pronounced double-consonants as two separate consonants.

In Classical Latin these pair of letters: CH /kha/, PH /payha/, and TH /tha/ do not count as double consonants. They are treated as single letters as follows:

CH = CHI pronounced as /ke/ as in Archilochus
PHI pronounced as /p/ as in philosophia
THETA pronounced as /tayta) as in theatrum

The Romans quite appropriately pronounced double consonants as two separate consonants.

Next Topic: Quantitative Meter Bedfellows
(Soon to come)

The Quantitative Meter

Quantitative meter is not about the alternation of heavily stress syllables or lightly stress syllables, as is the case with Qualitative meter, but rather on measuring the length of time required to pronounce syllables from the basic rhythmic units. Since a syllable must contain a vowel, it is the vowel which is the focus for determining the length or shortness of syllable. In scanning quantitative meter written poems, this symbol ( - ) is used to show where the long vowel syllables occur, and this symbol ( ̌ ) to show where the short vowel syllables appear.

Vowels in quantitative meter can be long or short by “nature” or by “position”. Nature and position are determining factors for vowel quality. When the quality of vowels is determined by nature, this is to say that the Romans pronounced them as such, having learned to distinguish their sound during the course of acquiring Latin. “Position quality” vowels are created when vowels that are naturally short become long when followed by two consonants.

Quantitative meter in classical Greek and Latin poetry measures the length and shortness of vowel syllables, and is the heart of the dactylic hexameter, which defines the epic poetry of the Greeks and Romans. Homer’s era epics were more sung than recited to the accompaniment of the lyre. This was not practiced by Virgil who preferred the spoken word. Virgil’s epic poem Aeneid is written in dactylic hexameter. The dactyl has a rhythmic shape in the form of a long syllable (-) and two short syllables ( ̌  ̌ ). In recitation, the dactyl usually sounds like “dum-diddy” with the “dum” equal to the (-) and the “diddy to ( ̌  ̌ ). The dactyl (- ̌  ̌ ) is the basic metron of the dactylic hexameter. The metron (pl. metra) refers to the rhythmic unit that can be repeated in a verse or series of verse. The thesis (-) is the first half of the dactylic foot or metron and the arsis ( ̌  ̌ ) is the second half of the dactylic foot or metron. The hexameter which is the shortened term for dactylic hexameter is a verse of poetry consisting of six metra in a row. The dactylic hexameter is the meter of epic poetry of the Greeks and Romans as mentioned before.

In the classical style of the Greeks and Romans it is impossible to conceive of an epic poem not composed in dactylic hexameter. The proof of the pudding is found in this example taken from Aeneid Book I, lines 1-7 by Latin poet Virgil (the English translation is provided).

Aeneid Book 1, lines 1-7 by Latin poet Virgil

1 Arma vi rumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
2 Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
3 Litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
4 Vi superum saevae memorem lunonis ob iram;
5 multa quoque et bello passus, dum onderet urbem,
6 inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum,
7 Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae.

The translation of Aeneid Book 1, lines 1-7 from Latin to English

1 I sing of arms and a man, who first came from the shores of Troy
2 To Italy, and Lavina shores exile by fate
3 Having been tossed about much both on lands and the deep
4 By the might of those above on account of the unforgotten anger of harsh Juno
5 And also having suffered much in war; until he should found a city,
6 And carrying the gods to Latium from whence came the Latin Race,
7 And the Alban fathers, and the walls of high Rome.

Quantitative meter is all about the alternation of “long syllables” and “short syllables”. Since a syllable must contain a vowel, it is the vowel that is the focus for determining the length or shortness of the syllable. The long vowels in Latin are shown with this symbol (- )and short vowels by this symbol ( ˇ )

Long vowel sounds in Latin are: ā ē ī ō ū as in these words: părātă; cēna; festīnat; labōrat; cūr.

Short vowel sounds in Latin are: ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ as in these words: părātă; fĕstīnat; ĭntrat; mŏx; ambŭlat.

Click on this link to hear the vowel sounds

Diphthongs consists of two vowel sounds pronounced as one. The common diphthongs found in Latin are ae au ei eu oe ui as in these words: laeta; laudat; deinde; heu; coepit; cui

Click on this link to hear the diphthong sounds



Vocabulary:

ambŭlat (he, she or it walks)
cēna (dinner)
coepit (he, she or it is beginning)
cui (to whom)
cūr (why)
deinde ( then)
festīnat (he, she or it is hurrying)
heu (sigh)
ĭntrat (he, she or it is entering)
labōrat (he, she or it is working)
laeta (happy)
laudat (he, she or it praises)
mŏx (soon)
părātă (prepared)

Next Topic: Classical Latin Alphabet