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AUTHOR: 
 
 STURTEVANT, E. H. 
 
 TITLE: 
 
 COINCIDENCE OF AC 
 CENT AND ICTUS IN... 
 
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 100 i Sturtevant, E. H. 
 
 245 14 The coincidence of accent and ictus in the Roman dactylic poetsi^hCmicr 
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E. H. Sturtevant 
 
 374 
 
 THE COINCIDENCE OF ACCENT AND ICTUS IN THE 
 
 ROMAN DACTYLIC POETS 
 
 By E. H. Sturtevant 
 
 In Classical Philology, XIV, 234-44, 1 have applied a new criterion 
 to the old problem whether the prevaiUng harmony of accent and 
 ictus in Plautus and Terence was accidental or intentional. I 
 determined statistically the tendency of the verse-structure to 
 produce harmony in words of the several rhythmic types, and with 
 this I compared the actual usage of the poets. The comparison 
 showed that there was an effort so to place words in the Ime that 
 
 harmony would result. 
 
 There is a similar problem as to the Roman dactylic poets. 
 It is clear that there is usually harmony of accent and ictus in the 
 last two feet of the dactylic hexameter and that clash of accent and 
 ictus is more common than harmony in the first four feet, but scholars 
 are still disagreed as to whether this state of affairs is altogether a 
 result of the Latin system of accentuation and the structure of 
 dactyUc verse, or whether the poets paid attention to accent in con- 
 structing their lines. In case we accept the second alternative there 
 is the further problem whether their efforts were devoted solely to 
 the securing of harmony in the last two feet of the line or whether 
 they desh-ed clash of accent and ictus in the first four feet. 
 
 The dactylic poets had far less choice in the matter than the 
 dramatic poets; in iambic and trochaic verse the ictus can be placed 
 on any syllable of almost any word {ferunt or ferunt, nisdo or nescio), 
 but most words can be got into dactyUc verse with just one incidence 
 of the ictus {ferunt, rdscio). In fact the dactylic poets had free 
 choice only in the case of words composed wholly of long syllables. 
 For the rest their only recourse was to avoid such words as ferunt 
 in case they desired harmony of accent and ictus, and to choose 
 them in case they wanted accent and ictus to rest upon different 
 
 1 For a brief history of the discussion see Lucian MfiUer. De Re Meiri^ ^'''r'Z 
 Latinorum\ pp. 233-37. MttUer fails to mention a suggestive paper by Humphreys 
 in Trans. Am. Phil. Assoc, IX, 39-58. 
 [Classical Philoloot XIV, October, 1919] 373 
 
 syllables. It should be easy to determine whether they did as a 
 matter of fact choose words which require harmony in preference 
 to those which require clash, or whether their choice varied between 
 the different parts of the verse. 
 
 To secure a standard of comparison I have counted the words 
 of the several rhythmic types containing two, three, four, or five 
 syllables in several prose passages, namely, Caesar B.G. i. 7, Cicero 
 Cat, i. 1-7, Manil 47-49, Cluent. 51, Caelius ap. Cic. Fam, viii. 1, 
 Livy xxi. 23, 35. I have similarly recorded the rhythmic character 
 of from 2300 to 2500 words of each of four dactylic poets, Ennius, 
 Catullus, Lucretius, and Vergil. Tables I, II, III, and IV give the 
 detailed results in the form of percentages. Here and throughout 
 this paper words are reckoned with that part of the verse in which 
 their accented syllable falls, except that a dissyllable whose ultima 
 receives the fifth ictus is counted as belonging to the fifth foot. 
 Words with the rhythm w ^ and with the rhythms w - and ^ ^ s 
 with elision of the ultima are all included under the heading "Require 
 clash of accent and ictus,'^ although no ictus at all rests upon them. 
 To have taken into account this variation within the types - « 
 and w ^ s would have made the tables too complicated for con- 
 venience, and so I have preferred to make the necessary correction 
 below (p. 379) in the supplementary discussion. The desire to keep 
 the tables reasonably simple has also led me to include trochaic 
 words with the spondees as permitting either clash or harmony. 
 Trochaic words ending in a consonant had to be included because 
 they are spondaic when an initial consonant follows, and it seemed 
 unsatisfactory to separate forma and mitte from formam and mittit, 
 I assume that such a word as armaque was regularly accented on the 
 antepenult.^ 
 
 For convenience of comparison the figures in the several blocks 
 have been added together, and they are presented in compact form 
 in Table IV. The percentage of monosyllables has been appended; 
 but even so the figures in each line of the table aggregate only 99 or 
 a little more. The remainder is accounted for by the words of more 
 than five syllables and by the decimals beyond the fourth place 
 which have been neglected in computation. 
 
 » See Shipley, Class. Phil., VIII. 23 flf. 
 
375 Accent and Ictus in Roman Dactylic Poets 
 
 E. H. Sturtevant 
 
 376 
 
 N 
 
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 ^ fH 1-H 1— t VH 
 
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 23 
 
 cooo:3Jt* 
 
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 C0C<l<O<N O 
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 lO'^kOQOCO 
 
 C0'n'r*4C0C^ 
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377 
 
 Accent and Ictus in Roman Daottlic Poets 
 
 E. H. Stitrtevant 
 
 378 
 
 
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 TABLE IV 
 
 00 (Nt^-^ 
 
 M 
 
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 ^ t^ lO »o 
 
 COC^CO^ 
 
 >l 
 
 »-i gsi-' 00 
 
 GO CO «0 00 
 
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 00 
 
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 3 3-r3 
 
 q ;s o (M 
 
 S 08 d « 
 
 Prose 
 
 Complete 
 lines 
 
 Ennius . . 
 Catullus . 
 Lucretius. 
 Vergil.. . . 
 
 
 5.9 
 
 eS 
 
 o 
 
 1^ 
 
 I 
 
 Feet 1-4 I 
 
 Ennius. . . 
 
 Catullus . 
 
 Lucretius. 
 
 ^Vergil.. . . 
 
 fEnnius. . . 
 
 Vergil. 
 
 25.44 
 
 19.12 
 14.06 
 19.71 
 19.01 
 
 23.27 
 20.83 
 25.09 
 25.21 
 
 10.49 
 1.6 
 8.73 
 5.09 
 
 S «^ A •** 
 •5 go? 
 
 ilp 
 
 27.87 
 
 41.6 
 45.92 
 37.33 
 41.67 
 
 42.02 
 45.05 
 34.66 
 39.46 
 
 40.74 
 47.9 
 42.79 
 46.54 
 
 — 1<a3 
 
 •2 5 00 
 
 19.57 
 
 18.24 
 16.64 
 21 
 19.3 
 
 24.11 
 24.38 
 30 
 28.06 
 
 6.24 
 
 .41 
 
 2.67 
 
 .77 
 
 gig 
 
 18.29 
 
 20.64 
 22.16 
 20.9 
 19.49 
 
 10.24 
 9.68 
 9.3 
 6.66 
 
 41.83 
 49.36 
 44.68 
 46.54 
 
 The avoidance of monosyllables in the last two feet of the hex- 
 ameter by Ennius' successors has long been a commonplace; our 
 table shows that Ennius himself used in these feet only about 29 per 
 cent as many monosyllables as might have been expected (10.49 
 instead of 25.44 per cent). An examination of the hexameter 
 cadences listed by Humphreys, op. cit, p. 43, shows that the use of 
 monosyllables tends to produce clash of accent and ictus, at least 
 in this part of the verse; it is very hkely indeed that the reason why 
 the later poets avoided such line-ends as Ennius' Diana Venus Mars, 
 cum nmgnis dis, and ristituit rem was their desire not to do violence to 
 the accent. But that some other influence was at work is indicated 
 by the small number of monosyllables in the earher part of the Une. 
 Since, as we shall see, other rhythmic types which are avoided in 
 the last two feet are as a rule considerably more common in the 
 first four feet than in prose, we should expect to find the percentage 
 of monosyllables in the first four feet higher than the 25.44 per 
 cent which represents prose usage. On the contrary all the poets 
 examined show a lower percentage than this, and the lowest of all 
 appears in Catullus, who most rigidly avoids monosyllables in the 
 
379 
 
 Accent and Ictus in Roman Dactylic Poets 
 
 E. H. Sturtevant 
 
 380 
 
 fifth and sixth feet. What this further motive was which led to the 
 avoidance of monosyllables I am not now prepared to say; and it 
 would be unsafe to base an argument upon the statistics in the second 
 column of Table IV until that factor has been identified. 
 
 The third column of Table IV shows that polysyllables whose 
 penult and all preceding syllables are long were greatly favored by 
 the dactylic poets, and that after Ennius they were particularly 
 favored in the last two feet. As already noted, these are the words 
 which admit either harmony or clash of accent and ictus. It is 
 therefore likely that poets sometimes preferred, let us say, portant 
 to ferunt in order to avoid the clash which the latter word would 
 involve. Nevertheless there was another motive which led to the 
 use of these words; they would fit into any position in the line, save 
 only the second half of the fifth foot, provided they had the number 
 of syllables required. The use of words composed of long syllables 
 faciUtated composition whatever attitude the poets took toward 
 accent, and therefore we cannot base an argument upon the great 
 frequency with which such words occur. We shall presently have 
 to consider the actual incidence of the ictus upon them. 
 
 The fourth column shows that in the last two feet of the hne 
 the poets avoided the use of polysyllables which require clash of 
 accent and ictus. As noted above (p. 374) our figures require a cor- 
 rection at this point; a large proportion of the words of the types ^ ^ 
 and ^ ^ X employed in the last two feet carry no ictus, and con- 
 sequently involve no real clash at all; for example, isque pium Sx se, 
 te neque posse, aui etiam ipse haec. Consequently the avoidance of 
 . i and w ^ ^ is even more rigid than the tables indicate; the dactylic 
 poets, especially after Ennius, generally avoided placing in the last 
 two feet words whose rhythm required clash of accent and ictus. 
 
 The fifth column of Table IV shows that the poets correspondingly 
 favored words requiring harmony of accent and ictus in the last two 
 feet of the hexameter. The difference between the 18 per cent of 
 such words employed in prose and the 42 to 49 per cent employed 
 in these two feet is even greater than the excess just observed in the 
 poets^ use of words composed of long syllables. Here again the 
 tendency is clearly marked in Ennius' usage and is carried farther 
 by his successors. 
 
 If a word of a particular rhythm was to be avoided in the last 
 part of the line the poet might either use a synonym of different 
 rhythm or recast his sentence so as to place the objectionable word 
 earlier in the line. Our tables indicate that both methods were 
 employed. For, while the third block of Table IV, which represents 
 the usage in the first four feet of the line, shows much larger figures 
 in the fourth column than in the fifth, the difference is not nearly 
 so great as in the fourth block, which represents the usage in the 
 last two feet. Consequently in hexameter verse as a whole the words 
 which require clash are a little less common and those which require 
 harmony are a little more common than they are in prose. 
 
 It remains to determine whether or not the dactylic poets tried 
 to place the ictus on the penult of words whose penult and all pre- 
 ceding syllables are long, that is, of those words which alone permit 
 either clash or harmony of accent and ictus. Our standard of com- 
 parison here must be the tendency of hexameter verse to place the 
 ictus on the penult rather than the antepenult of such words. To 
 determine this tendency statistically I have "scanned'' 200 or more 
 verses of each of four dactyUc poets, as follows: 
 
 Aen. i. 1' ' ^ 
 
 Then I have picked out all possible combinations of a long syllable 
 and a following syllable of either quantity, and have recorded the 
 incidence of the ictus. In the above line syllable-groups with the 
 rhythm - ^ occur with ictus on the penult six times and with ictus 
 on the ultima twice. In 320 lines of the Aeneid they occur with 
 ictus on the penult 1920 times and with ictus on the ultima 233 
 times; that is, the ictus falls on the penult in 73 per cent of the occur- 
 rences; the structure of Vergil's hexameter tends to put the ictus 
 on the penult of syllable-groups (or of words) with the rhythm - ^ 
 73 per cent of the time. 
 
 For the second term of the comparison I have counted the 
 incidence of the ictus upon words whose rhythm is - s in about 
 400 lines each of the same dactylic poets. In this computation I 
 have ignored the words with elided ultima which carry no ictus. 
 In the first 400 lines of the Aeneid words of the type - a have the 
 ictus on the ultima 258 times and on the penult 466 times or 64 per 
 
381 Accent and Ictus in Roman Dactylic Poets 
 
 cent of all occurrences. While the structure of the verse tended to 
 place the ictus on the penult of these words 73 per cent of the time, 
 Vergil allowed it to stand there only 64 per cent of the time. 
 
 Our problem, however, is chiefly a matter of the last two feet. 
 I have therefore divided the line as above (see p. 374) ; each word has 
 been assigned to that part of the verse in which its accented syllable 
 stands, except that a dissyllable upon whose ultima the fifth ictus 
 rests has been reckoned as belonging to the last part of the verse. 
 Counting syllable-groups and words as before, I find that the struc- 
 ture of the fifth and sixth feet tends to place the ictus on the penult 
 of words of the rhythm - « 73 per cent of the time, and that Vergil 
 actually placed it there 100 per cent of the time. A similar calcula- 
 tion for the first four feet indicates a tendency for the ictus to rest 
 upon the penult 73 per cent of the time, whereas Vergil actually 
 placed it there only 39 per cent of the time. 
 
 Table V gives the results of similar calculations for words of 
 
 the three types - x , - - * , x , and for the four poets, Ennius, 
 
 Catullus, Lucretius, and Vergil. At the head of each block is an 
 indication of the rhythmic group to be treated. The Roman numerals 
 indicate the incidence of the ictus; I stands for the ultima, II for 
 the penult, and III for the antepenult. In case a word has ictus on 
 two syllables, only the ictus on penult or antepenult is recorded in 
 our count. In each block the column which corresponds to the 
 accent is printed in heavy-faced type. The third, sixth, ninth, and 
 twelfth number in each heavy-faced column is the difference between 
 the unhampered tendency of the verse-structure and the poet's 
 
 actual usage. 
 
 The table shows that the dactylic poets tried to put the ictus 
 on the penult of spondaic words in the last two feet of the verse, and 
 that the tendency became stronger after Ennius. There was even 
 greater regularity in placing the ictus on the penult of words of the 
 
 rhythms - - ^ and « , but this appears to be chiefly due to 
 
 the structure of the verse. If, however, we had reckoned to the 
 
 fifth foot syllable-groups and words of the rhythms and 
 
 whose ultima has the fifth ictus it would appear that the poets took 
 great pains to avoid clash of accent and ictus in these words. Accord- 
 ing to Humphreys, op. cit, p. 52, the fifth ictus rests upon the 
 
 I 
 
 
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 >l 
 
 )l 
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 >i 
 I 
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 >l 
 I 
 
 E. H. Sturtevant 
 
 382 
 
 JO 
 
 s 
 
 »o 
 
 too lO 
 
 let- c« 
 
 lOCO 
 
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 <0 
 
 00 "5 
 
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 ^•5 M 
 
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 8 ^ 
 
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 eOr-l 00 
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 oe« e« 
 
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383 
 
 Accent and Ictus in Roman Dactylic Poets 
 
 E. H. Sturtevant 
 
 384 
 
 ultima^of a dissyllable or polysyllable in only 5.2 per cent of Ennius' 
 verses, and only four-tenths of one per cent of the time in Lucretius 
 and Vergil. My count gives 1.73 per cent for Catullus. This 
 increasing avoidance of line-ends such as ignis mare fSrrum, mortaUs 
 perhibShant, amatorim quod amid, Tuditand colUga must have been 
 due to the effort to make accent and ictus rest upon the same 
 
 syllable. 
 
 Table V shows further a very striking tendency to favor ictus 
 of the ultima of spondaic words in the first four feet. This tendency 
 is no doubt partly due to the restriction of words of the rhythms 
 . X and ^ ^ * to this part of the verse; for a spondaic word standmg 
 next to one of them must ordinarily have the ictus on the ultima; for 
 example, Tyrids olim, currus fuit, mihi causds memord. But words 
 beginning with one or two short syllables are too few to account for 
 so great an excess of spondees with accented ultima as we actually 
 find. Besides many a line could easily be shifted so as to put the 
 ictus on the penult instead of the ultima of a spondaic word. The 
 following lines of the first book of the Aeneid might have run: 
 
 1 Arma virumque can6 qui Tr6iae primus ab 6ris, 
 50 Tdlia s^cum fldmmat6 dea c6rde voWtans 
 
 instead of tdlia fldmmato secum, 
 
 104 R^mi frdngunttir; turn pr6ra av^rtit et lindis 
 
 instead of frdnguntur remi, 
 
 159 £st locus In sec4ssul6ngo: insula p6rtum 
 
 instead of ist in sicessu longo locus, 
 
 167 Dtilces intus aqu^ viv6que sedilia s^xo 
 
 instead of intus aquae dulces. 
 
 Similar easy shifts would avoid a clash of accent and ictus in 
 a spondaic word in lines 8, 32, 35, 53, 64, 68, 69, 72. There may 
 be objections to these specific changes; but if such alterations are 
 so easy, Vergil could undoubtedly have found many which were 
 free from objection if he had desired. It seems necessary to conclude 
 that the dactyhc poets preferred frequent clash of accent and ictus 
 in the first four feet, at least in the case of spondaic words. 
 
 Some will criticize my discussion of the first four feet (particularly 
 some of the suggested rearrangements of Vergilian lines) because no 
 account has been taken of the caesura. I have two lines of defense 
 against such an attack. It is Ukely that the position and character 
 of the caesura was dependent on considerations of accent (compare 
 Lucian Muller, op. cit., p. 200). For example, the Roman prefer- 
 ence for the masculine caesura was probably due to a desire for con- 
 flict between accent and ictus at that point in the verse. Even if 
 there should prove to have been some other cause for this deviation 
 from Greek usage, that other cause, not the position of the caesura, 
 would have to be taken into account in our investigation. 
 
 In the second place, if I had taken account of the caesura it 
 would not materiaUy have changed the complexion of the figures. 
 The alterations would have been confined to Table VI, and there 
 would have affected only the first six columns. I have made the 
 calculations for the first four feet in Vergil, with these results: 
 
 
 — 
 
 X 
 
 ^B m 
 
 m, ^ 
 
 
 — s 
 
 
 I 
 
 u 
 
 II 
 
 III 
 
 u 
 
 ni 
 
 Syllable-groups 
 Words 
 
 32 
 61 
 
 68 
 
 89 
 
 -29 
 
 39 
 
 46 
 
 7 
 
 61 
 54 
 
 42 
 81 
 31 
 
 58 
 19 
 
 All of the above remarks apply to these figures as well as to those 
 given in Table V. 
 
 It is quite clear, then, that the dactylic poets tried to secure 
 harmony of accent and ictus in the last two feet of the verse; and 
 this effort was stronger, or at least more successful, with the later 
 poets than with Ennius. It seems likely that Ennius, like Plautus 
 and Terence, would have preferred harmony of accent and ictus 
 throughout the verse; but since that was impossible in the hexam- 
 eter he gained much the same effect by preserving fairly regular 
 harmony in the last two feet. Ennius seems thereupon to have made 
 a virtue of necessity and to have employed clash of accent and ictus 
 m the first four feet to help give his language that air of aloofness 
 from ordinary speech which he regarded as essential to heroic verse. 
 
385 
 
 Accent and Ictus in Roman Dactylic Poets 
 
 The later dactylic poets seem to have confined this device to spondaic 
 words, but in this limited field they employed it even more than 
 
 Ennius had done.^ 
 
 If the dactylic poets cared to secure harmony of accent and ictus 
 in the last two feet of the line, or if they aimed at any particular 
 relation of accent and ictus in any part of the line, it follows that 
 both accent and ictus involved stress. The Latin accent, in classical 
 times as well as in the early period, was in part a stress accent. 
 
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 » Possibly the reason why Latin poets could employ f amUiar prosaic phrases was 
 that a clash between accent and ictus removed them from their commonplace asso- 
 ciations At any rate VergU has such a clash in the phrase (Aen. i. 207) : rebUs servdte 
 secHndis, and Horace in (Carm. i. 14. 2)0 quid agUf {Carm. iii. 5. 42) capitis mindr, etc.