Talk:Brevis in longo

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Meaning
I am dubious about the translation given of this phrase, since longo is masculine whereas syllaba is feminine.

I also wonder how you consider a short syllable to be long. The difference between doing this and merely allowing the syllable to be long or short at choice is a bit metaphysical, I think.

What is the authority here? The article needs this. Seadowns (talk) 14:24, 18 June 2018 (UTC)


 * You are quite right; I noticed that too. The original article was unsatisfactory, so I have rewritten it, and hope it will meet your approval now; although perhaps we shan't agree that a word ending in short vowel + consonant such as erit has a long final syllable. Kanjuzi (talk) 17:38, 28 December 2019 (UTC)


 * As far as Greek and Latin are concerned, I believe this is a totally useless concept which should just be discarded. All you have to do is accept that the final syllable of a line can be either short or long. As for the idea that a following pause lengthens a short syllable, consider this example from the beginning of the Metamorphoses:

In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas

corpora. Di, coeptis ...etc.

How is it that the pause after corpora does not lengthen the final syllable of the word and destroy the metre? Seadowns (talk) 14:54, 16 January 2021 (UTC)


 * That's a good point. But presumably there wasn't a pause after corpora. More puzzling are cases such as Plautus Miles 27 (see Metres of Roman comedy) where dīcere is scanned – u – even though there isn't a pause: illud dīcerē voluī, femur. Kanjuzi (talk) 15:55, 16 January 2021 (UTC)


 * The Plautine passage can be cured by emendation, I am sure. There is a hypothesis that the final syllable of a line is always long. For it to be true it is necessary to postulate that there is a heavy pause at the end of each line, even when the sense runs on to the next line briskly without any break, and that such pauses will somehow or other lengthen preceding short syllables, even those consisting of open vowels that are short by nature. Pauses within lines, however, would not lengthen preceding syllables, however strong pauses they might be, eg Persius 5.168, where there is such a pause in oratio recta, between two speakers, and the metre forbids any lengthening. Also, the doctrine does not account for the different treatment by poets of pentameters ending in vowels that are long by nature, and of those ending in vowels that are, if the doctrine is true, long by position. Furthermore, it leads to peculiarities such as at Juvenal 14.220, which ends in limina vestra, where the final vowels, though identical grammatically as neuter plurals, would have to be pronounced differently. There must be innumerable places like these. All this tangle can be avoided by dropping the hypothesis, which, incidentally, I have never heard mentioned by scholars such as WS Watt (who corrected my verses over eighteen months), my close friend RGM Nisbet, or JD Denniston (who ran a Latin verse class), or read of anywhere, eg in Housman's papers, which I have pored over. It would mean a substantial change to the article, of course. Seadowns (talk) 00:22, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In reply to your points: (1) The locus Jacobsohnianus seems well established, and no one has suggested emending it away as far as I know. (2) There is no necessity that the two -a vowels in limina vestra would be pronounced differently, just because the second one has a pause after it, though they may have been. (In Arabic poetry, as a matter of fact, short vowels in pause are lengthened and rhyme with long ones.) (3) A switch between speakers does not necessarily imply a pause; on the contrary, such places often have elision. (4) It's perfectly possible that in some cases there was a pause at the end of a line and in other cases there was enjambement with no pause. (5) brevis in longo simply means that the poet writes a short syllable where we expect a long one, e.g. at the end of an iambic metron | – – u – |. As such it seems a useful phrase, and since it has been used by well-known metricians such as Paul Maas, and a similar phenomenon occurs in other languages too, there doesn't seem to be any reason why it should be ignored. Kanjuzi (talk) 07:46, 17 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I see that I have perhaps got onto the wrong track a bit, if the definition you have just given is the proper one. It is not however, the same as the one at the opening of the article, which confines it to short syllables at the end of lines where long syllables are required. The second definition would apply in licentious places like "o pater o genitor o sanguen" or "omnia vincit amor, et nos", and obviously there can be no harm in that, it is merely a Latin name for the licence. Such places are pretty rare, and it is by no means always clear whether licence or textual corruption is present. My objection was to the first definition, since I do not believe that the last syllables of dactylics are required to be long, and the same applies to metres like Horace's lyrics, or hendecasyllabics. I will come back to this subject after further thought. As to the Plautus, it is surely rudimentary to consider whether there is a textual solution to a difficult metrical anomaly like this. It seem to me that "ut" could have fallen out before "volui". Palaeographically this would be very easy, especially as it starts with the same letter. It's shooting the fox that people want to hunt, though. (I know little about Plautus, and have forgotten Pseudolus, though I read it for exams.) Seadowns (talk) 01:42, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Another possible emendation, palaeographically even easier, is "dicerem". I found "velle" plus subjunctive in Ovid Amores II vii 11 ed Goold in the Loeb, but someone with knowledge of Plautine syntax would have to look at this. Seadowns (talk) 23:46, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Status of Topic
NB What follows refers to Greek and Latin only.

It should be made clear that this is just a theory. It depends on the doctrine that the final syllables of lines in virtually all metres are required to be long, and so, to save the theory, the vast numbers of them that consist of short open vowels, and are thus naturally short, have to be "considered" or "counted" as long. But this doctrine about the final syllables is not firm knowledge, like the rule that all dactylic hexameters have to begin with a long syllable: it is merely a theory or notion that cannot be enforced empirically against the view that the final syllables are anceps. I suggest that this should be brought out in the article, and that minor consequential amendments should be made in the separate articles on prosody. Seadowns (talk) 01:09, 24 February 2021 (UTC|).

Since there has been no comment on my remarks, I have made very brief changes to clarify that this is only a hypothesis; also in the two prosody articles. As there is no empirical way of deciding whether the hypothesis is correct, in my view it is a case where Ockham's razor should be used. Seadowns (talk) 22:08, 27 February 2021 (UTC)