The Roman Poets of the Republic, 3rd editionSellar, W. Y. (William Young)
History
The Roman Poets of the Republic, 3rd edition
Sellar, W. Y. (William Young)
Latin poetry -- History and criticism
Illuc sis vide
Quem ad modum astitit severo fronte curans, cogitans.
Pectus digitis pultat: cor credo evocaturust foras.
Ecce avortit: nisam laevo in femine habet laevam manum.
Dextera digitis rationem conputat: fervit femur
Dexterum, ita vehementer icit: quod agat, aegre suppetit.
Concrepuit digitis: laborat, crebro conmutat status.
Eccere autem capite nutat; non placet quod repperit.
Quidquid est, incoctum non expromet, bene coctum dabit.
Ecce autem aedificat: columnam mento suffigit suo.
Apage, non placet profecto mihi illaec aedificatio:
Nam os columnatum poetae esse indaudivi barbaro,
Quoi bini custodes semper totis horis occubant.
Euge, euscheme hercle astitit et dulice et comoedice[85].
Many other scenes must have lent themselves to this representation of
feeling by lively gesture, accompanied sometimes by some kind of
mimic dance: of this kind, for instance, is the vigorous recitative
of Ballio on his first appearance on the stage, the scene in which
Ergasilus tells Hegio of the return of his son, the appearance
of Pseudolus when well drunken after celebrating his triumph over
Ballio,--
Quid hoc? sicine hoc fit? pedes, statin an non?
An id voltis ut me hinc jacentem aliqui tollat? etc.[86]
His temptation was to exaggerate in this, as in other elements of
the dramatist's art; and this is what is probably meant by the word
_percurrat_ in the criticism of Horace, which has been already
quoted. But this tendency to exaggerate is merely the defect of his
superabundant share of the vigorous Italian qualities.
It is characteristic of the liveliness of Plautus' temperament,
that the lyrical and recitative parts of his plays occupy a place
altogether out of proportion to that occupied by the unimpassioned
monologue or dialogue expressed in senarian iambics. The 'Cantica,' or
purely lyrical monologues, are much more frequent and much longer in
his comedies than in those of Terence. They were sung to a musical
accompaniment, and were composed chiefly in bacchiac, anapaestic, or
cretic metres, rapidly interchanging with trochaic lines. The bacchiac
metre is employed in passages expressive of some sedate or laboured
thought, as, for instance, the opening part of the 'Canticum' of
Lysiteles in the Trinummus,--
Multas res simitu in meo corde vorso,
Multum in cogitando dolorem indipiscor.
Egomet me coquo et macero et defatigo.
The anapaestic metre was less suited to Latin, and is rarely met with
either in the comic poets, or in the fragments of the tragedians. On
the other hand, cretic and trochaic metres, from their affinity to
the old Saturnian, came most easily to the early dramatists, and are
largely employed by Plautus to express lively emotion. As an instance
of the first we may take the following song of a lover, addressed to
the bolts which barred his mistress's door,--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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