Thursday, October 16, 2014

 

Asyndeton Filling Hexameters in Corippus

Thanks very much to Ethan Osten for drawing my attention to Corippus, Iohannis 1.44-46:
quis lacrimas, clades, praedas, incendia, mortes,
insidias, gemitus, tormentum, vincula, raptus
explicet aut miseros possit numerare dolores?
Line 45 is an example of a hexameter consisting entirely of nouns in asyndeton (raptus is of course an accusative plural fourth declension noun here, not a participle). Similar examples (with different parts of speech), also from Corippus' Iohannis, include:

4.222 (where adulter is an adjective, not a noun):
perfídus, infelix, atrox, insulsus, adulter
4.586:
magnanimus, mitis, sapiens, fortissimus, insons
6.163:
ardet, anhelat, hiat, pallet, rubet, aestuat, alget
Two more examples, these from Corippus' In Laudem Iustini Minoris:

3.74:
saltatus, risus, discursus, gaudia, plausus
4.44:
aesculus, alnus, acer, terebinthus, populus, ornus
Related posts:

# posted by Michael Gilleland @ 5:47 AM


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