UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF LATIN No. 8 sr Tp Professor of Latin at the University of Virginia Copyright 1915 BY Thomas FitzHugh Engtish * * ^ *° lecher/- A 2. (* . 'i t. "K A I j ■$ ^ f SI © #1 € 9 90 A The Origin of Verse * 0 v9 The search for origins is the basal impulse of scientific think- — ing. Our reflective life begins with the consciousness of the inner soul as the origin and cause of the outer voluntary act. This dualism of cause and effect becomes the fixed norm of all our thinking. Our application of the principle of cause and effect to the outer world is a conclusion by analogy from our inner ex¬ perience of causality. Hence the fundamental dualism of our world-view: energy and matter, life and the organism, soul and body, God and the universe. The great thinkers of Greece, those world-paragons of spir¬ itual normality, inaugurated the philosophy and science of In- doeuropean man with such inquiry into origins. Aristotle, who rounded out the dome of classic thought, gives definite expres¬ sion to the importance of this quest in a characteristic utterance in the Sophistici Elenchi: “The most important stage in every¬ thing is the origin. Hence too it is the hardest to see, for it is as insignificant in outer appearance as it is mighty in its potential¬ ity. But when once discovered, subsequent addition and ampli¬ fication becomes easier.” One of the sublimest and most spiritual of those Greek the¬ ories of origin, with which the history of Occidental thought be¬ gins, was the philosophy of Pythagoras of Samos in the sixth century before Christ. Pythagoras found in number the funda¬ mental secret of the divine world-order, the origin of all things. A principle so beautiful and so thoroughly Hellenic could not fail of its influence upon Plato, and through Plato upon his pupil Aristotle, who makes a profound application of it in explaining the nature of rhythm in prose and verse. According to Aristotle, rhythm is a familiar ordered count applied to the scheme of speech. The context in the Rhetoric implies a simple duplica- tional or tripudic count, that is a one-two: one-two, or one-two- three, numbering of the rhythmical elements of speech. The ^Reprinted from the University of Virginia Alumni Bulletin for January, 1915. 43284 4 Thomas FitzHuch purpose of this paper is to show the astonishing applicability of this simple count principle to explain the origin of Indoeuropean verse; that is, to show that Indoeuropean verse had its origin in such a simple counting of words by twos and threes, giving rise to the two original types of short verse, the verse of four words and the verse of three. I shall illustrate my doctrine from the two most important and at the same time the two most obscure bodies of early Indo¬ european verse, Old-Latin and Old-Irish. The mighty Italico- Keltic stock occupied in ancient times a large part of Europe. While the Italic branch was confined to the limits of Italy, the Kelts were spread through western and southern Europe. Both peoples stand out among the nations of antiquity as peculiarly tenacious of habit and custom. Hence it is no surprise to the scholar to find them preserving down the ages and well into the dawn of history the simple original verse- of the Indoeuropean home. And yet no one can resist the feeling of startled surprise at finding the same verse among the early Irish Christians in the Tar north which was in regular use among the Italic stocks before the invasion of Greek poetry and art,—in a word, to find the old Latin Saturnian of prehistoric times at home among the Kelts of Ireland down to the close of the first Christian millen- * nium. Hence it is not infrequent to find the Irish poet passing from his own Keltic Saturnian to its Latin equivalent within the limits of the same couplet. A striking example is furnished by Colman’s Hymn in the old Irish Liber Hymnorum: vv. 21 ff. Regem regum rogamus : : in nostris sermonibus anacht Noe a luchtlach : : diluvi temporibus (We ask the king of kings : : in our prayers, who protected Noah with his crew : : in the times of deluge.) Melchisedech rex Salem : : incerto de semine ronsoerat a airnigthe : : ab omni formidine. (Melchisedech king of Salem : : of uncertain seed may his prayers save us : : from every fear.) I have marked the four main counts or ictuses in each short verse, so as to enable the reader of this paper to catch the rhythm of the double-word count. We must also note that a single word The Origin of Verse 5 may involve the double count; e. g. rogdmus and sermonibus in the first couplet. When this occurs, the main counts of course at¬ tach to the most audible or heavily stressed parts of the word. Such words are therefore measures or double feet, whereas a word involving but a single count is a single foot, two being there¬ fore necessary to make a measure. It is clear that a verse, in which the foot and the measure, or double foot, are represented by the simple word or an equiva¬ lent word-group, bears the stamp of primitive and original an¬ tiquity,—an antiquity more primitive and original than that of any known Indoeuropean type. It evidently antedates in its origin all that elaboration of rhythmic structure which may and usually does accompany written verse. Ancient Sanskrit, Aves- tan, and Greek verse, for example, comes before us from the first as a more highly evolved type, and one which in each case has been developed in more or less obvious relation to written speech. In Old-Latin and Old-Irish verse, on the other hand, we have the native and original rhythm of the spoken word. These earliest Latin and Keltic monuments, therefore, carry us nearer than any others to the morning of Indoeuropean rhythmic utterance, and promise to reveal to us, if we can interpret them aright, the long-sought origin of verse, from which all other Indoeuropean types may be naturally derived, but which is itself derivable from none. Let us try then to uncover the secret that lurks beneath these seemingly barbarous and rhythmless crea¬ tions of our prehistoric and early-Christian brethren, and see if we cannot find a simple principle of rhythm characterizing them all, and enabling us to understand and appreciate, as never be¬ fore, their simple, childlike art. Let us examine typical examples from every part of the Latin and Keltic prehistoric field: we shall find everywhere the word-foot tetrapody and its equivalent tripody as the origin of Indoeuropean verse. In exhibiting the rhythm we shall separate the feet by a colon, the measures by a single bar, and two short verses in one line by a double bar; in this connection the foot implies one main rhythmic count, the measure two, and the short verse four or its catalectic equivalent three. The ancient Latin town of Prseneste, modern Palestrina, has furnished us our oldest piece of Latin, which happens to be in 6 Tiiomas FitzHugh the form of the crudest possible verse, inscribed on a golden brooch and*expressed in words and letters of the most ancient character. The mode of writing is from right to left, which further evidences the primitive antiquity of the little ornament. It may well belong to the general period at which the Latins first acquired the art of writing from Greek settlers in Campania. The primitive inscription reads as follows: Manios : med | fhefhaked: Numasioi. (Manios made me for Numasios.) It is a prehistoric Indoeuropean short verse or dimeter, consist¬ ing of two measures, and each measure of two words. It is obvious that we have here a phenomenon of verse that antedates what we know as the verse-foot with its thesis and arsis and its regular beat of ictus. The rhythm involved is not a count ap¬ plied to certain syllables, as in all verse with which we are ac¬ customed to deal, but to the integral words, which are sounded in contrasted pairs. The archaeological finds from Prseneste are peculiarly rich in such rhythmical inscriptions, especially on temple vases, bronze mirrors, and jewel-boxes, and the interesting thing about them is that they often illustrate the little two-word tripudic measure as well as the longer three-word and four-word tripudic dimeter or short verse. The temple vases hold such two-word measures as dedications to the particular deities to whose shrines they be¬ longed : Laverrrai : poculum (Laverna’s vase). The backs of Prsenestine bronze mirrors often have figures of deities with accompanying tripody or tetrapody: Venos : Diovem | Prosepr.ai (Venus (wins) Jove for Proserpine). A Pramestine jewel-box bears on its lid the following distich: Dindia : Macolnia | filial : dedit. Novios : Plautios | med Romai : fecid. (Dindia Macolnia gave (me) to her daughter. Novios Plautios made me at Rome). The Origin of Verse 7 The second verse exhibits a new feature: two words med Romai are taken together as a single word-foot, corresponding rhythmically to filial in the first verse. The only inscriptions we have in Old-Irish are early Christian and without intrinsic interest, but the same tripudic measure and double measure are everywhere in evidence as in early Latin, and despite their prosaic purport we cannot resist the impression of the duplicational word-count in their make up: Lie : Luguaedon | macci : Menueh (The stone of Luguaed son of Menb). But the evidence becomes overwhelming the moment we examine Old-Irish poetry proper, where every conceivable type of the tripudic word-count greets us at well nigh every turn: (a) Nida : dir | dermait || dala : cach-rig j romdai = two three word dimeters. (b) Enna : Labraid | luad : caich, comarc : Bresail | buain : blaith. (c) Nuadu : Necht I ni : damair : anflaith = a two-word followed by a three-word measure. But it is always in connection with religion that rhythmic speech finds its most spontaneous inspiration, with the early Romans in the worship of Mars, with the Irish Kelts from the sixth to the ninth century after Christ in prayers and hymns to Christian saints and martyrs. Among the Romans the war-god was the earliest focus of sacred song and rhythmic prayer, and it was in this connection among them that tripudic rhythm in song and war-dance assumed magical and religious significance. One of these fragments preserved to us down the ages from the hymns of the priesthood of the Salii, or Leapers, begins appar¬ ently with a song of praise to Jove the Sky-God: Divom : Iovem | patrem : canite Divom : deo | supplicate. (Sing of Jove, father of gods. Bend the knee to the god of gods.) This little fragment is very precious, because it pictures to us in the simplest way the first step in the evolution of verse. In the = two four word dimeters. 8 Thomas FitzHugh first line we have the original four-word dimeter, in the second a three-word dimeter, in which the last word supplicate repre¬ sents two rhythmical counts, one on each acutely stressed syllable, and is therefore a word-measure and equal to two word-feet. This is the first step in the evolution of the verse-foot out of the word-foot. It is moreover the last step in the evolution of pre¬ historic verse. For on these two simple principles, the principle of the word-foot and the principle of the word-measure, the en¬ tire mass of Old-Latin and Old-Keltic verse is readily explained. The origin of verse may therefore be defined as a dimeter or double measure, in which the measure may be either represented by a pair of rhythmically contrasted words or by the two rhyth¬ mically contrasted parts of one and the same word. This is the origin of verse, and it only remains for us to test our conclusions by applying them to typical examples taken from the wide range of phenomena at our disposal. The most interesting of all prehistoric monuments of Indo- european rhythm, and one which has not only revealed to us the origin of verse, but which has also provided a wholly new and at the same time an irrefragably solid foundation for the science of Indoeuropean accent, rhythm, and meter, is the famous Car¬ men Fratrum Arvalium, or Magical Chant of the Brothers of the Fields. This venerable old chant was found recorded on a marble slab, which was unearthed in 1778 on the Vatican hill in Rome, when the foundations were being dug for the Sacristy of St. Peters. It may now be seen in the corridor of the Sacristy not far from the spot where it was found. My special attention was first attracted to it by a lithographic copy of the monument in our Hertz Library (Plan XXXVI A in Ritschl’s Priscce Latinitatis Monumenta ). The slab is oblong in shape and has lost a fragment from the left end. The inscription follows the lines of the stone, being written throughout as prose with noth¬ ing to indicate its rhythmical nature or its external shape. But there were several clues to begin with. In the first place, the introduction states that the doors of the temple were closed, and that then the priests girt up their robes, and taking in hand the scrolls sang through the prayer, and danced in tripudic rhythm to the words. In the second place, each verse of the chant is written out three times, and the whole is concluded with five The Origin oe Verse 9 repetitions of the sacred cult-word Triumpe, one for each verse. And finally, the central petition in the prayer begs the god Mars to stay his spear. Thus the evidence seemed to point in the di¬ rection of some magical cryptograph, and upon comparing the relative lengths of the verses and arranging them symmetrically in the center of a scroll it became gradually apparent, that in truth the whole was assuming the outline of an inverted spear: Enos : Lases | iuvate Enos Eases iuvate Enos Eases iuvate Neve : luem | ruem : Marmar | sinas : incurrere 1 in : pleoris. Neve luem ruem Marmar sinas incurrere in pleoris Neve luem ruem Marmar sina? incurrere in pleoris Satur : fu fere : Mars | [ limen : sali | sta : verber Satur fu fere Mars limen sali sta verber Satur fu fere Mars limen sali sta verber Semunis | alternei || advocabitis conctos Semunis alternei advocabitis conctos Semunis alternei advocabitis conctos Enos : Marmar ( iuvato Enos Marmar iuvato Enos Marmar iuvato Triumpe | Triumpe Triumpe Triumpe Triumpe (Help us, O Lares, and suffer not, O Mars, blight and ruin to befall too many. Have thy fill, fierce Mars, leap on the threshold, stay the spear. Call ye in turn all the Semones to our aid. Help us, O Mars. Triumpe.) The record on the marble concludes with the statement, that fol¬ lowing upon the tripudic dance a signal was given, and attend¬ ants came in and took charge of the scrolls (post tripodationem deinde signo dato publici introierunt et libellos receperunt). It would far transcend the limits of this paper to set forth in detail the important scientific bearings of this remarkable relic of prehistoric antiquity. Suffice it to say that it shows the dupli- 10 Thomas FitzHugh cational word-count to be sacred to the chief deity of the Rom¬ ans, and reveals the sacred cult-word triumpe, which means O three-step, as the glorification of the ancestral rhythm of song and dance. The same rhythm of the double and triple word- count marks the Keltic counterpart to the Carmen Arvale, the Hymn of St. Patrick a thousand years later in Ireland, where we find that the sacredness of the number three has been trans¬ ferred from the rhythm of verse and prayer to the Godhead him¬ self, and in place of the magical spear we have the magical collar or breastplate of faith. The magical efficacy of rhythm invades even the prescriptions of codified law. Among our oldest fragments of Latin are the remains of the Laws of the Kings, or Leges Regia, and of the Twelve Tables, or Leges Duodecim Tabularum. We are now able to understand why the ancients speak of them as verses, or carmina, and thus to get to the bottom of the rhythm of Latin prose, which is nothing more nor less than a free continuous tripudic word-count. Cicero tells us that in his boyhood (at the beginning of the first century before Christ) he and his fellows were required to commit the Laws of the Twelve Tables to memory “as an obligatory poem” (ut carmen necessarium). As a matter of course, all such ancient documents have come down to us in sadly mutilated and often corrupted text, but even so we can detect in what is left us unmistakable suggestions of the rhythm of the word-foot and word-measure. A couple of these fragments, one from the Leges Regise and one from the Twelve Tables, will serve to illustrate not only the rhythm of the word- count, but also the fascinating content of this ancient legislation: A. Leges Regiae: Si : parentem | puer : verberit Ast : olle | plorassit Puer : divis | parentum Sacer | esto. (If a boy should strike his father, and he should cry aloud, the boy shall be dedicate to the Manes of his parents.) B. Duodecim Tabulae: Si : nox | furtum : faxit Si : im | occisit lure : caesus | esto. (If one should commit a theft by night and one should kill him, he shall be rightly slain.) The Origin of Verse 11 Not only the earliest prescriptions of divine and human juris¬ prudence, but the lore of practical life in general, whether as maxim of thought and conduct, or as popular charm or incanta¬ tion, found instinctive expression in the tripudic word-count. Indeed, nowhere is the Roman spirit and native genius more clearly portrayed than in the entire body of these prehistoric and undatable fragments. Everywhere we recognize the practical bent of this world-compelling, world-ordering stock, who found in the ordered count of rhythm the profoundest symbol and ex¬ pression of human and divine energy, and invoked its magical efficacy in every possible relation of purposive action and thought. The dawn of Roman tradition is marked by a shadowy figure, who seems to have been known as the Seer of Mars (Martius vates), and who was reputed to have been the first to compose precepts of practical wisdom for the guidance of life. One of these wise sayings reads as follows: Postremus : dicas | primus : taceas (Be last to speak, first to keep silence.) Thus philosophy as well as religion took its first steps in tripudic rhythm, and we may be quite sure that apart from the formulae of religion and law such didactic verse constituted the bulk of Roman literary output in prehistoric times. This enables us to understand why all ancient references to this prehistoric litera¬ ture speak of it as verse (carmina). Thus Aldus Gellius speaks of a remarkable verse copied by Nigidius Figulus from ancient poetry (ex antiquo carmine) : Religentem | esse : oportet || religiosus | ne : fuas (One must be religious, in order not to become superstitious.) And Macrobius quotes what he calls an old country ditty from a volume of very ancient poetry, said to have been composed before everything written by the Latins (in libro vetustissimorum car- minum, qui ante omnia quae a Latinis scripta sunt compositus ferebatur, invenitur hoc rusticum vetus canticum) : Hiberno : pulvere | verno : luto || grandia : farra | camille : metes (With winter dust and springtime mud, large the crops you’ll reap, my lad.) Such examples as the last two show us very clearly how the Indo- 12 Thomas FitzHugh european long verse arose as a rhythmical contrast between two short verses, thus making a thoroughgoing application of the du- plicational count principle from the double word and double measure to the double verse or distich, as is so prettily illustrated in the Carmen Arvale above. The magical and supernatural virtue of the three-count is evi¬ denced especially by a number of charms or incantations, which have been handed down by Roman antiquarians. The most in¬ teresting of these is one quoted by Varro in his treatise on Agri¬ culture as efficacious against pains in the feet: Ego : tui | memini Medere | meis : pedibus Terra : pestem | teneto Salus : hie | maneto In : meis | pedibus. (I remember you. Heal my feet. Let the ground hold the pest. Let health stay here. In my feet.) This had to be chanted 3 times 3 times 3 times to accomplish the full tripudic cure (hoc ter noviens cantare iubet, terram tangere, despuere, ieiunum cantare). And finally, the magic of tripudic rhythm was invoked by Ro¬ man mothers to lull their babies to sleep. An ancient commenta¬ tor on Persius records such a tripudic lullaby: Lalla : lalla | lalla: i Aut : dormi | aut : lacte. (Lalla, lalla, lalla, go. Either sleep or take your milk.) What I have done thus far has been merely to present typical examples from the whole wide field of prehistoric tradition. These examples might be indefinitely multiplied, not only from Old-Latin, but especially from a field to which I have only briefly referred, and which is less familiar as yet to Americans, namely Old-Irish. Every line of verse from both of these Indoeuropean fields reveals the same principle of the double and triple word- count with the rhythmical summing up in the tripudic word- measure. But the triumphant confirmation of our theory of the origin of verse greets us, when we enter the portals of literary history itself both in Italy and in Ireland, where the old rhythm maintained itself with greater or less tenacity against the charm The Origin or Vrrse 13 of the Greek muse and the still more subtle change at work in the accentual system of Indoeuropean speech in general. Latin literary history begins about two hundred years before Christ with Livius Andronicus’ Odyssia and Gnaeus Naevius’ Bellum Puniciim, Irish literary history some thousand years later with the Christian Hymns of Colman, Fiacc, Ultan, Broccan, Sane- tan, and St. Patrick himself. The tripudic word-count, often re¬ fined upon by an instinctive rhythmical uniformity in the number of individual stresses in each line, furnishes the simple rhythmical key to all of these monuments of pre-Hellenistic verse, which have been made the victims in modern philology of the most bizarre constructions, now of “accentual,” now of “quantita¬ tive,” now (and worst of all) of “syllable-counting” theories. A typical example from each monument may fittingly conclude our investigation: Andronicus’ Odyssey: Virum : mihi | Camena [| insece | versutum (Sing to me, O Muse, of the versatile man) Naevius’ Punic War: Novem : Iovis j Concordes || filiae | sorores (Jove’s daughters, harmonious sisters nine) Colman’s Hymn: Sen De : donfe | fordonte || Macc : Maire | ronfeladar (God’s grace guide us, help us; Mary’s Son protect us) Fiacc’s Hymn: Genair : Patraicc | in Nemthur || iss ed : adfet | hiscelaib (Patrick was born in Nemthur: it is that he declares in story) Ultan’s Hymn: Brigit : be [ bithmaith || breo : orde | oiblech (Brigit, woman ever good, bright golden flame) Broccan’s Hymn: Ni car : Brigit | buadach : bith || siasair : suide | eoin : inailt (Triumphant Brigit loved not the world : She sat the seat of bird on cliff) 14 Thomas FitzHugh Patrick’s Hymn: atomriug | indiu niurt : tren | togairm : trindoit cretim | treodatad foisitin | oendatad in : duleman | dail. (I arise today in strong might of invoking the Trinity, through faith in the Threehood, through confession of the Oneness, of the Creator of all.) Thus our prehistoric hypothesis is beautifully verified by histori¬ cal fact. The classic Saturnian of Italy and Ireland is nothing but the artistic culmination of the prehistoric tripudium, which we saw so richly illustrated in the Carmen Arvale. The successful unravelling of this old verse has inaugurated a complete revolution in our sciences of Indoeuropean accent, rhythm, and meter. The fundamental truth revealed is the prin¬ ciple of the double accent in speech and rhythm. In the light of this new truth we have been able to show that the Roman gram¬ marians with their inordinate zeal for things Hellenic have only transmitted to us Greek rules of accent, rhythm, and meter, ac¬ commodated as best they could to the wholly alien facts of Latin speech and verse. Let us sum up in brief the results of our inquiry. Indoeuro¬ pean verse originated in a tripudic word-count, in which the sin¬ gle word might represent either foot or dipody: Old-Latin: a. Neve : luem | ruem : Marmar. b. Enos : Lases | iuvate. Old-Irish: a. Enna : Labraid j luad : caich. b. Fergein : cotreb | cutulsa. — Four word-feet. = Two word-feet -f- one word-measure. = Four word-feet. = Two word-feet -f- one word-measure. The Indoeuropean long verse originated in a union of two short verses: Old-Latin: a. Virum : mihi | Camena |] insece ] versutum. Old-Irish: a. Genair : Patraicc inNemthur || issed : adfet hiscelaib. > 7 The Origin of Verse 15 The origin of verse is therefore to be recognized in the prehistoric rhythm of the word-foot and word-measure or tripudium. This word-count continued in historical times as the rhythm of prose. The verse-foot and verse-measure or dipody of historical verse were evolved out of the word-foot and word-measure of primi¬ tive verse. In previous Bulletins (Nos. 1-7) I have shown the accentual and metrical implications of tripudic rhythm (Ander¬ son Bros., University of Virginia, 1908-1912). 3 0112 053550718 . ' . f -