Verse literature: Group 3 set text

Constructed illustrative couplet in dactylic hexameters (not a quotation): iam mare pācātum, iam ventī mūrmura pōnunt; et placidae rīdent in lītore lentius undae. Translate, scan, and say what the scansion adds that the translation alone does not give.

1. 01The translation

   'Now the sea is calm, now the winds lay aside their murmurings; and the quiet waves laugh more gently on the shore.' Note two things about the Latin that the English has to handle. pācātum has no verb with it: est is elided, which is entirely normal in verse and gives 'the sea has been calmed' or 'the sea is calm'. And rīdent is a personification - the waves laugh - which English can keep, since the metaphor is as available in English as in Latin.

2. 02Scanning line one

   iam-ma-re is a dactyl: iam is long by nature, ma and re are short vowels before single consonants. pā-cā is a spondee, both vowels long by nature. tum-iam is a spondee: tum is heavy by position, because the initial i of iam is consonantal and counts as a consonant, and iam is long by nature. ven-tī is a spondee: ven heavy by position, tī long as the nominative plural ending. mūr-mu-ra is a dactyl. pō-nunt is the sixth foot. So: dactyl, spondee, spondee, spondee, dactyl, spondee - fourteen syllables, which confirms two dactyls among the first five feet.

3. 03Scanning line two

   et-pla-ci is a dactyl: et is heavy by position before the p of placidae, and pla and ci are light. dae-rī is a spondee: dae is a diphthong, rī is long by nature. dent-in is a spondee: dent is heavy by position, and in is heavy by position because the l of lītore follows the n. lī-to-re is a dactyl. len-ti-us is a dactyl: len heavy by position, ti light because a vowel follows, us light because only the s of undae follows before a vowel. un-dae is the sixth foot. So: dactyl, spondee, spondee, dactyl, dactyl, spondee - fifteen syllables, three dactyls.

4. 04What the scansion shows

   The two lines have different rhythms and the difference is not accidental. The first line has three spondees in a row, in feet two, three and four - the heaviest possible middle - and the second line has two dactyls in a row at its end. So the couplet begins heavily and finishes lightly. That is a fact about the metre, established by counting, and it can be stated with complete confidence.

5. 05What claim the scansion licenses

   The claim has to be supported by the sense, and here it is: the first line describes a stilling - the sea calmed, the winds putting down their noise - and its spondees are consistent with settling weight; the second describes waves moving gently and repeatedly on a shore, and its closing dactyls run. So it is legitimate to say that the metrical movement of the couplet enacts the transition from a storm's end to a quiet sea. Note the reasoning: the metre alone would license nothing, because spondees are common and mean nothing in themselves. It is the coincidence of the metrical fact with the sense that makes the claim safe.

6. 06The other evidence the metre reveals

   Two further things become visible once the lines are scanned. The caesura in both lines is the ordinary strong third-foot caesura - after pācātum in the first line, where it coincides with the comma, and after rīdent in the second - so the metre is behaving conventionally, which is worth knowing precisely because it means the departures are elsewhere. And the second line is framed: placidae is the second word and undae the last, so the adjective and its noun enclose the whole line and everything in it happens inside the phrase 'the quiet waves'. That is a word-order observation, but you notice it by reading the line as a metrical unit rather than as a sequence of words.

Result: Translation, then scansion - line one dactyl, spondee, spondee, spondee, dactyl, spondee; line two dactyl, spondee, spondee, dactyl, dactyl, spondee - then the claim: the couplet moves from a heavy, spondaic first line describing a stilling to a running, dactylic close describing gentle motion, and the claim is safe because the sense supports it. Plus two observations the scansion made visible: conventional caesurae in both lines, and a phrase framing the whole of line two.

Virgil, Aeneid 1.1, printed as an examination paper would print it: arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris. Read the line as literature - voice, structure, word order and what the reader is being told - and make no comment about the metre.

1. 01The voice

   canō is first person singular present: 'I sing'. The poem opens by announcing its own performance, in the present tense, with the poet as the grammatical subject of the first sentence. That is a convention - epic poems announce their subject - but conventions are choices too, and the effect is to place a speaker between the reader and the story from the first word. Everything that follows is offered as something being sung by somebody.

2. 02The two objects

   arma virumque: two accusative objects joined by the enclitic -que, and they are not the same kind of thing. arma is a neuter plural abstraction - arms, warfare - and virum is a single man. The poem therefore announces two subjects at once, a war and a person, and puts them in that order. A reader is entitled to ask which of the two the poem turns out to be about, and the question is a live one for the whole work; announcing both in three words is how the line raises it.

3. 03What is withheld

   The man is not named. He is virum, 'the man', and then quī, 'who', and the identification is deferred. A poem that opened with a proper name would be telling the reader whose story this is; this one describes him instead, and the description that begins is a relative clause about what he did first. The withholding is a technique and it can be commented on without any knowledge of what comes next.

4. 04The word order

   Trōiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs. The genitive Trōiae stands at the head of the phrase and the noun it depends on, ōrīs, stands at the end, with quī prīmus enclosed between them. So the man and his priority are literally surrounded by Troy and its shores. That is hyperbaton used as a frame, and here the frame is doing something: the clause about the man is placed inside the phrase about the place he is leaving.

5. 05prīmus

   A predicative adjective agreeing with quī: not 'the first man' as a title, but 'who first' - who was the first to do what the sentence is about to say. It is placed immediately before the preposition and after the relative, so it is the hinge of the clause. A claim of priority is a large claim in a foundation narrative, and putting it here, unqualified and undefended, is a way of asserting it as common knowledge.

6. 06What the line has done

   In eight words the line has established a singer, announced two subjects and left their relation open, withheld the hero's name, framed the hero inside the place he is leaving, and asserted his priority. All of that is available from voice, word order and what is and is not said - which is the point of the exercise. The metre will add more, and the next section will take it up; but a candidate who can only talk about metre in a verse paper has cut their evidence in half.

Result: Six observations on eight words of Virgil, none of them metrical: the first-person announcement of performance; two objects of different kinds joined by -que; the hero named only as virum; the genitive Trōiae and the ablative ōrīs framing the relative clause; prīmus placed predicatively at the hinge; and the assertion of priority left undefended. The line is printed above exactly as the paper would print it, without macrons; the quantities are supplied here, in the discussion, because supplying them is part of the reader's work.

Using the constructed illustrative couplet from earlier in this topic (not a quotation) - iam mare pācātum, iam ventī mūrmura pōnunt; et placidae rīdent in lītore lentius undae - assess four candidate claims and decide which can be made and which must be refused.

1. 01Claim one: the spondees slow the first line

   Refuse it in that form and accept it in another. The metrical fact is true: feet two, three and four are spondees, which is a heavy middle. The bare claim that spondees slow a line is not an argument, because spondees occur in lines about every subject under the sun. The defensible version adds the sense: the line describes a sea being calmed and winds putting down their noise, and the heaviest possible middle of the line coincides with that description, so the movement of the verse is consistent with the stilling it reports. State the coincidence, not a property of spondees.

2. 02Claim two: the m sounds in mare and mūrmura imitate the murmuring of the sea

   Accept, with care. This is one of the few places where a sound claim is safe, because mūrmura is itself an onomatopoeic word - it names a sound and imitates it - and mare stands next to it in the same line. So the claim is not that m is inherently soft but that a word whose sense is a low continuous noise is reinforced by the nearby word for the sea. Note the shape of the safe argument: the onomatopoeia does the work and the alliteration supports it, not the other way round.

3. 03Claim three: the anaphora of iam emphasises the change

   Accept. iam opens the line and then opens the second clause, and the repetition is exact and audible. What it does is worth stating precisely rather than generically: iam means 'now', and repeating it twice in one line asserts that two things have changed at the same moment, so the couplet presents the calm not as a gradual process but as an arrival. That is more than 'emphasis', which is what a weak answer would say.

4. 04Claim four: the l sounds in in lītore lentius suggest the lapping of water

   Refuse, or at least demote. There is a real alliteration - lītore and lentius both begin with l, and they are adjacent - so it can be noticed. But neither word denotes a sound, and the claim that l imitates lapping is imported from English poetic criticism rather than derived from the Latin. The defensible version is much weaker and still worth a mark: the alliteration binds the place and the manner together, so that where the waves are and how they move are heard as one phrase. Bind, do not imitate.

5. 05The claim worth making instead

   The strongest observation in the couplet is not a sound effect at all but the framing of the second line: placidae is the second word and undae the last, so the phrase 'the quiet waves' encloses the entire line, and everything the line describes - the laughing, the shore, the gentleness - happens inside it. That is a word-order fact, it is checkable, and the effect follows from it directly. Framing claims are almost always safer than sound claims and are usually more interesting.

6. 06How to write the accepted claims up

   'The couplet turns on the double iam - now, and now - which presents the calm as an arrival rather than a process; the first line's three consecutive spondees fall on the description of the stilling, so the movement of the verse is consistent with what it reports; and the second line is enclosed by placidae ... undae, so that its laughter, its shore and its gentleness all occur inside the phrase for the quiet waves.' Three claims in one sentence, each with its evidence, and neither of the two refused claims among them.

Result: Two claims accepted with their reasoning made explicit - the anaphora of iam, and the coincidence of the spondaic middle with a description of stilling - one accepted only because an onomatopoeic word carries it, one refused as imported from English criticism, and one better claim substituted: the framing of the second line by placidae ... undae. The test in every case is whether the sense of the line points the same way as the sound.

Virgil, Aeneid 1.1, printed as an examination paper would print it: arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris. Scan it, parse every word, and write two analytical sentences that depend on both.

1. 01Scan: elisions and count

   No elisions: no word ends in a vowel or -m before a word beginning with a vowel or h. Syllables: ar, ma, vi, rum, que, ca, no, Tro, iae, qui, pri, mus, ab, o, ris - fifteen. Fifteen syllables means three dactyls among the first five feet.

2. 02Scan: quantities and feet

   ar is heavy by position, r plus m. ma and vi are short vowels before single consonants, so light. rum is heavy by position, m plus q. que and ca are light. no is long by nature, being the first person singular ending. Tro is heavy: the o is long and the initial i of Troiae is consonantal and counts double, so Troiae is read as Troi-iae. iae is a diphthong. qui and pri are long by nature. mus is light: only s follows before the vowel of ab. ab is light: only b follows before the vowel of oris. o is long by nature in ora, a shore. ris is the final syllable, anceps. Feet: ar-ma-vi, rum-que-ca, no-Tro, iae-qui, pri-mus-ab, o-ris. Pattern DDSSDS.

3. 03Scan: the caesura

   The third foot is no-Tro. Word-end after no? Yes - cano ends there, and a comma stands at that point in the printed text. So there is a strong penthemimeral caesura in the third foot. There is also a hephthemimeral caesura after iae, since Troiae ends at the first syllable of the fourth foot. The main caesura is the penthemimeral, and it coincides with the sense pause: the metre and the sense agree.

4. 04Parse: the main clause

   arma: neuter accusative plural, object of cano; the word exists only in the plural. virum: masculine accusative singular of vir, second object, joined by the enclitic -que. cano: first person singular present indicative active of cano, canere, cecini, cantum. So the main clause is three words and it is complete: I sing arms and a man.

5. 05Parse: the relative clause

   Troiae: genitive singular of Troia, dependent on oris. qui: nominative singular masculine, relative pronoun, gender and number from virum, case from its own clause where it is the subject. primus: nominative singular masculine, agreeing with qui, used predicatively - who first, not the first man. ab: preposition governing the ablative. oris: ablative plural of ora, orae, a shore or coast, governed by ab. The clause has no verb in this line; the sentence runs on into the next, which is enjambement of the plainest kind.

6. 06Sentence one: metre and sense together

   'The line divides at a strong third-foot caesura which coincides with the only punctuation - arma virumque cano, then Troiae qui primus ab oris - so that the announcement of the subject is metrically as well as syntactically complete before the description of the hero begins, and the two halves of the line therefore read as two separate acts: naming the theme, and then beginning the story.' Metrical fact, syntactic fact, effect drawn from their coincidence.

7. 07Sentence two: word order and grammar together

   'The relative clause is framed by Troiae at its start and oris at its close - a genitive and the ablative it depends on, separated by four words - so that qui primus, the man and his priority, stand enclosed within the phrase for the shores of Troy; and since the clause has no verb in this line at all, the sentence is left hanging across the line-end, with the hero surrounded by the place he is leaving and not yet permitted to leave it.' Word-order fact, grammatical fact, and an effect that could not have been claimed from either alone.

Result: Scansion DDSSDS with a strong penthemimeral caesura coinciding with the sense pause, and a hephthemimeral after Troiae. Full parse: two accusative objects and a first-person verb in the main clause; a genitive, a relative pronoun with a predicative adjective, and an ablative plural after ab in the relative clause, which has no verb in this line. Two analytical sentences, each resting on both operations at once.

Constructed illustrative couplet (not a quotation), treated as lines 1 to 2 of a printed passage: iam mare pācātum, iam ventī mūrmura pōnunt; et placidae rīdent in lītore lentius undae. The question: 'How does the poet convey the return of calm in these lines? (15)'. Plan a balanced answer and write two of the points.

1. 01The claim

   'The poet presents the calm not as a gradual easing but as something that has already arrived, and then lets the second line settle into it - so the couplet moves from announcement to atmosphere.' One sentence, arguable, and it predicts the shape: the first line does one thing and the second does another.

2. 02The four points, with their evidence types marked

   Point one, marked L: the double iam and the ellipse of est, which make the calm an accomplished fact rather than a process. Point two, marked M: the three consecutive spondees in the middle of line one, coinciding with the description of stilling. Point three, marked W: the framing of line two by placidae and undae. Point four, marked L again, with grammar: the personification in rīdent and the comparative lentius, which introduce a living, continuing motion after the stillness of line one. One M, one W, two L - the proportion the plan requires.

3. 03Point one, written out

   'The calm is presented as already achieved. The line opens iam mare pācātum (1) - now the sea is calmed - with the verb est left out altogether, so that the state is asserted without any process being described; and iam is then repeated at the head of the second clause, so that two changes are declared to have happened at the same moment. The ellipse and the anaphora together make the couplet begin at the end of the storm rather than during its ending.'

4. 04Point two, written out

   'The movement of the first line supports this. Feet two, three and four are all spondees - pā-cā, tum iam, ven-tī - the heaviest possible middle, and they fall precisely on the words that describe the sea calmed and the winds putting down their noise (1). Since the sense of those words is of weight coming to rest, the metre and the meaning point the same way, and the line settles audibly as well as semantically. The observation would license nothing if the line were describing a chase; it is the coincidence that makes it evidence.'

5. 05How points three and four would go

   Point three: placidae stands second in line two and undae last (2), so the phrase for the quiet waves encloses the whole line, and the laughing, the shore and the gentleness all take place inside it - a containment that answers the openness of the first line's two declarations. Point four: rīdent personifies the waves, and lentius, a comparative adverb, says that they move more gently than before, so the second line reintroduces motion, but graded motion, measured against the storm that has just ended.

6. 06The close

   'The couplet therefore does two different things in two lines. The first announces, in a heavy and largely spondaic movement, that the storm is over; the second, enclosed within a single phrase and running out in two dactyls, describes what being over feels like. The calm is not argued for; it is declared and then inhabited.' Two sentences, returning to the claim, using the question's own word - calm - and drawing the four points together.

Result: A plan with one metrical point, one word-order point and two literary points; two fully written points, each with a claim, a quotation with a line number, a translation or gloss, and an effect argued from the coincidence of metre and sense; and a close that answers the question in its own terms. The whole would be about four hundred words and twenty minutes.