Saturday, August 15, 2020

 

Volturnalem Palatualem Furinalem

Johannes Vahlen, ed., Ennianae Poesis Reliquiae (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1854), p. 20 = Ennius, Annals 125-126 (II.iii):
Volturnalem Palatualem Furrinalem
Floralemque Falacrem et Pomonalem fecit
Hic idem.
E.H. Warmington, ed., Remains of Early Latin, Vol. I: Ennius and Caecilius (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), pp. 44-45 = Ennius, Annals 127-129 (II.iii):
Volturnalem Palatualem Furinalem
Floralemque Falacrem et Pomonalem fecit
hic idem.

He [Numa Pompilius] likewise established the priests of Volturnus, of Palatua, of Furina, of Flora, of Falacer, and of Pomona.
Otto Skutsch, The Annals of Q. Ennius. Edited with Introduction and Commentary (1985; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), p. 80 = Ennius, Annals 116-118 (II.iii):
                                     Volturnalem
Palatualem Furinalem Floralemque
Falacrem<que> et Pomonalem fecit hic idem

116 sqq. uersus dist. Lachm.
If Palatualem is scanned as a quadrisyllable, with a long first syllable and consonantal u, then we have (in either arrangement of the lines) a hexameter consisting of just twelve syllables (six spondees). See G.B.A. Fletcher, "Catulliana," Latomus 26.1 (January-March, 1967) 104-106 (at 106):
116.3 qui te lenirem nobis neu conarere. Fordyce, like F. Vollmer, Römische Metrik, p. 11 in Gercke-Norden, Einl. in die Altertumswissenschaft, repeats the statement by Baehrens and Thomas that this is the only hexameter consisting entirely of spondees to be found outside Ennius. Iuuencus 4.233 is another.
The list of Ennian spondaic hexameters in Béla Adamik, "Zur Prosodie, Metrik und Interpretation von Catullus Carmen 116," Wiener Studien 127 (2014) 151-164 (at 158), doesn't include this one.

Also, if we adopt the arrangement of Vahlen and Warmington, then Volturnalem Palatualem Fur(r)inalem is also a hexameter consisting entirely of adjectives in asyndeton. For similar hexameter lines in Greek and Latin see:



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