Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

DRAMA
The noisy prolixity of the older style is such that there is no scope for fleeting
and ironic retrospective verbal allusion as there is in Terence (e.g. Ter.
H.T. 919/70; An. 586/503; Ad. 934/107). Terence's achievement is the more
remarkable, as his medium is fashioned by numerous small adjustments, some
in this direction, some in that, within a traditional and homogeneous stagelanguage
which had been developed for different purposes.
Terence preserves this homogeneity and even emphasizes it, so that slaves
do not speak with an accent different from that of their betters. Rhythm is still
used as a component of the meaning of a verse (e.g. Pho. 429^, An. 767, Eun.
190), but generally Terence seeks to make his medium more Menandrian by
under-emphasizing its movement. This is achieved in a number of ways; there
is a significant overall reduction in clash of ictus and accent, and such clashes
are distributed more evenly inside the verse than in Plautus; enjambement of
sense from line to line and change of speaker are exploited more freely and
variously. Some forms archaic already for Plautus, e.g. -erunt as a line-end,
are given up in the diction of the plays, but others, e.g. the line-end type
. . . nullu sum, are relatively commoner in Terence, and, what is significant and
characteristic, are exploited with greater internal variety. Consequently the
texture of his verse is more complex than his predecessors'.
SIMO |bi tum fflius
cum illfs qui am^rant Chrysidem una aderat frequens;
curabat yna funus; trfstis interim;
nonnumquam c6nlacrumabat. placuit tum id mihi;
sic cogitabam: 'hie paruae consuetiidinis 110
causa hiiius mortem fert 1 tam familiariter:
quid si fpse amasset? quid hie mihi faciet parri?'
haec ego putabam esse omnia humani Ingeni
mansuetfque animi offfcia. quid multis m6ror?
egomet quoque eius causa in funus pr6deo, 115
nfl suspicans eriam mali. SOSIA. Hem quid id est? SIMO scies:
ecfertur; firms, interea inter miilieres
1 Only verbs are freely admitted as monosyllabic forms at line-end not involving elision in Plautus
and Terence; so Ter. H.T. 461 . . .omnes sollicitos hibui — atque haec lina ngx! 'I distributed all
{my wines) —and that was just one night!' is intentionally and effectively anomalous in this (and
its hiatus), expressing Chremes' horror at Bacchis' effects on his cellar. It follows that full coincidence
of ictus and accent in the last place was strongly avoided, and that monosyllabic verb-forms were
sentence-enclitic, as once all verb-forms in Latin had been, acquiring an accent only at sentencehead.
In the above presentation word-accents have been also omitted in certain verb-collocations
where dramatic emphasis suggests that the phrase-accent was stronger than the word-accent which,
at least in later Latin, would be the verb's prerogative — una aderat frequens^ sic cogitabam^ si ipse
amasset, quid hie mihi faciet pdtr]y nil suspicans etiam mail, ijnam aspicio actulescentulam, sorprem ess*,
aiunt CArfsitlis, perhaps quid multis morpry praeter ceterasfuisast, ad sepulchrum uenimus, in ignem
imppsitast. The phenomenon is so common that an interesting question arises as to the accentual
status of verb-forms in general in pre-Classical Latin; was the old rule about verbal accent still
operative to the extent that verbs tended to stand, as it were, in the accentual shade?
124
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