188 The Colometry of Latin Prose terns in early oratory. One literary historian who has spec ulated on the influence of Roman poetry on the development of rhythmical oratorical prose at Rome attributes this influ- ence to Ennius’ Annales Ennius* abandonment of the native Latin Saturnian meter for the Greek hexameter probably meant that greater attention had to be given to the quantity of syllables in Latin, and this paved the way for imita- tion of Greek prose rhythm later in the century. 27 But Ennius was hardly the first to use quantitative verse in Latin: Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Plautus, to name a few notables, had preceded him. Nor do the Annales seem so close in style to Roman oratory of any period as does the or- nate everyday speech of a dramatist such as Plautus. 7% Still, Ennius provides a convenient starting point for a discussion of the development of rhythm in Roman oratory. It has long been recognized that in ORF 8.29, from a speech whose date is disputed, Cato's phrase mare velis florere vidérés echoes a lost passage of Ennius.?° what is not often noticed is that this phrase contains an adonic or 27. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 31. 28. It is, of course, customary to refer to Plautus" language as "colloquial." Use of a single term, however, is imprecise, since the style of the cantica and long verses is significantly different from that of the senarii. See Happ, "Die Lateinische Umgangssprache und die Kunstsprache des Plautus," for a good discussion of stylistic variation in Plautus and for further bibliography on the subject. 29, Most scholars agree that the speech (or speeches) Dierum dicta~ run _de_consulatu_suo was originally delivered in 191-190 B.C. [t also seems likely that it was at some point revised, perhaps for publication as a pamphlet after Cato's censorship. See Malcovati, ORF, ad loc.; Leo, Geschichte der rémischen Literatur, 283n2; Astin, Cato the Censor, 60n30. 30. Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa 1.168. Till, La lingua di Catone, 41-42, with appendix by C, de Meo, 193-97. To my knowledge, sblendorio, in “Note sullo stile dell'oratoria catoniana,” is the first scholar interested in prose style to call attention to the metrical shape of the phrase, although she makes no association with Ennius. In fact, the hexameter rhythm of the phrase goes back one foot beyond the clavsula,Cola and the Early Hietory of Latin Proce 189 heroic clausula--that is, the rhythmical end of a dactylic hexameter, Ennian language and Ennian rhythm coincide in what seems to have been a rather picturesque digression on Cato's journey to Emporiae.>! If, as seems likely, Cato deliberately echoes Ennius here, in imagery and in rhythm, then it is reasonable to seek fur- there evidence of interest in the rhythms of contemporary poetry and of rhythm in general. The repeated use of atque in the oratorical fragments,?? and the predominance of -ere perfect verb endings’? deepen the suspicion that Cato worked to make his oratory rhythmical. Cicero's comment that Cato's oratory lacked numeri is an obstacle, but not an insurmount- able one, for Cicero is probably referring to the particular clausulae that he, with his essentially Greek theory, pre- ferred.*4 Table 5S (p. 190) lists Cato's use of certain rhythms, at colon ends and at sentence ends in the oratorical frag- ments and, for purposes of comparison, in the literary por- tions of the De agri cultura.?> only the oratorical frag- 3]. The entire expedition is discussed by Astin, Cato the Censor, 28- 50, with citation of earlier bibliography. 32. Sblendorio, "Note sullo stile dell'oratoria catoniana," provides statistics on usage of atque. Fraenkel, Leseproben, 130, suggests that Cato's otherwise unexplained preference for atque in the orations is due to considerations of rhythm. 33. Sblendorio, "Note sullo stile dell'oratoria catoniana," 8, with further bibliography. 34. Cic. Brutus 68. At Brutus 96 Cicero writes of M. Aemilius Lepi-~ dus Porcina: Hoc in oratore Latino primum mihi videtur et levitas apparu- isse illa Graecorum et verborum comprensio et iam artifex, ut ita dicam, stilus, which I take to mean the use of rhythmical clausulae preferred by Cicero, and the "periodic" style. See also Prinmer, "Der Prosarhythmus in Catos Reden.” 35. The De agri cultura, and not nineteenth-century, pre-Zielinskian, Latin prose, serves as the basis of comparison, since the latter repre- sents a completely separate stage of the language, one influenced, in one way or another, by the achievement of Cicero. Passages of the De agri cultura are praefatio 1.1-2.6, and 157.1-9.190 TABLE 5 The Colometry of Latin Prose Occurrence of Clausulae in Cato: Colon-Final and Sentence-Final Combined Rhythm Dichoree -u-* Choriamb -uu* Double spondee -- -- internal final Cretic + molossus -u- = Cretic + iamb -u-ua (hypodochmius) Cretic + spondee -u- -* Spondee + cretic -ua “cretic colon"? -uu-u= Dochmiac u--un Paeon uuue Ithyphallic -Xx-x-9 Reizianum u-u-4 anu-o Heroic -uu-% Double cretic -u- -ua Molossus + cretic soe -un Others oratory (% of total) De Agricultura (% of total) 9.6 14.4 18.8 18.6 21.6 31.2 9.3 1.5 2.7Cola and the Early History of Latin Prose 191 ments preserved by Aulus Gellius have been analyzed here, because of Gellius' relative reliability as a source of 36 and because of his demonstrable interest in 37 early Latin preserving colon boundaries in his citations. The samples are not (and cannot be) large enough to per= mit application of statistical tests. Judgment alone can determine what differences in use of clausulae are impor~ tant.°® rhe overall proportion ef double spondees is rough- ly the same in the two samples, yet there has been a dis- tinct move from use at colon end to use at sentence end in the oratorical fragments. That this change represents a deliberate attempt to weight the end of sentence seems like ly from even one example: Saepe audivi inter os atque offam multa intervenire posse; verumvero inter offam atque herbam, ibi vero 3, longum_intérvalium Est. (ORE 8.217) Other clausulae are preferred slightly in the oratorical fragments: hypodochmius (or anaclastic dochmiac), ithyphal- lic, reizianum of the shape - , and heroic. The prefer- ence for any one of these clausulae may not seem striking, yet the list itself is, for it is a list of “important 40 The hypodechmius, ithyphallic, Plautine clausulae. 36. On Gellius' reliability, see Mercklin, “Die Citiermethode und Quellenbenutzung des A, Gellivs," and Kretzschmer, De auctoribus A. Gellii_gramnaticis. 37. See above, pp. 90-98. 38. In this table, all clausulae begin with a stressed syllable. Ob- viously the same sentence or colon end can be marked in several ways. All clausula analysis is to some extent circular. I hope that the fairly strict adherence to demonstrable rules of colometry and restriction to the fragments preserved by Gellius give the table a certain validity. 39. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 50, has also commented on the effect of the preponderance of double spondees in the oratorical fragments of Cato (the "thudding ---- " and the "serious in- tensity which characterizes Cato's oratorical prose"). 40. I quote Questa, Due cant ca della Bacchides, 80,192, Phe Colemetry of Latin Prose reizianum, and heroic clausula are among those metra used in Plautine cantica to bring to a close a longer passage of dif- ferent but related meter. ‘+ The ways in which these clausulae are employed in the oratorical fragments of Cato seem especially noteworthy. As was argued above (pp. 172 f£.), it is not so much occurrence of a clausula, especially one at colon end, that is signifi- cant, as is its occurrence in a particular rhythmical context. The hypodochmius does not occur frequently, but its repetition in fragment 58 is striking: pay Quis hanc contlimeiiam . . atqye maximam conttime- idm... magna virtité praeditos The rhyme in fragment 111, quem mdrbu(s) tenet 1quendi and tamquam veternosum bibendi atque dormiend!, is emphasized by the repetition of the ithyphallic segment, as is the case in fragment 163, a recte consiilendo| atque Intellégendo. What may be regarded as a pair of heroic clausulae occur together at 193: homines defoderunt in terra diniéiatés ignemque circlimpSsticrunt: ita interfecerunt. '? The emphatic use of Plautine clausulae provides one link between Cato's oratory and the comedies of Plautus: the structure of entire Catonian phrases or sentences provides another. When Cato writes Quantum luctum| quantum gemitum| quia lacrimarum| quantum fletum factum-audivi (ORF 8.58; see above p. 186) he is echoing the practice, especially common in early Roman verse, of emphasizing successive metra (here, trochaic metra) 41. Wilamowitz, Griechische Verskunst, 396ff., identifies the heroic (adoneus), hypodochmius (anaclastic dochmius), and veizianum as true "Rarzvers" in Greek metric. Wilamowitz also noticed the importance of the hypodochmius in Plautus (Griechische Verskunst, 406). 42. The elausulae in Plautus are always preceded by diaeresis (Questa, Due cantica delle Bacchides, 89). T have not observed this rule in iden- tifying the clausulae in the orators, although it is interesting to note that in every instance of repeated clausulae, the first occurrence is marked by diaeresis.Cola and the Barly History of Latin Prose 193 through anaphora or assonance.*? piautus Ps 695, se: amorem _scis laborem scis egestatem meam, and Naevius com. 76, alii adnutat alii adnictat alium amat alium tenet, are among numerous verse examples of this phenomenon. ** The opening of Cato's speech in behalf of the Rhodians (ORF 8.163) contains a succession of syntactic cola with the shape of Plautine cretic cola: scio solere plerisque hominibus rebus secundis atgue proiixis atqué prospéris afafmum Jexce11ére atqie stparbfan atque froclam augescere atque crescere. There is a close parallel to this use of varying cretic cola in succession in Mostellaria 108ff. afque i1iud sacpe ¢it tompestas venit ConfYingit tegtias imbricésque“ibt démints Tndivigens reddére ‘aifas revolt venit imber, 1avit pariétes, perpluont 43. On coincidence of rhetorical and metrical units in early Repub- lican drama, see Jocelya, The Tragedies of Ennius, 34-35 and 370-71. Certainly the relationship between metrical and syntactic units is an important aspect of Greek dramatic lyric, but it is handled in a com pletely different way from that used by Roman poets. See A. M. Dale, ‘The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama (Cambridge, 1968), 145-475 T. C. W. Stinton, CQ n. s., 27 (1977) 27-66; J. N. Rash, Meter and Language in the Lyrics of the Suppliants of Aeschylus (New Yor 1961); and B. Gentili, Lo spettacolo nel mondo antico (Rome, 1977), 58- 59. 44. Cato's sentence, with its anaphora and avoidance of a final cre~ tic marked by diaeresis, seems closer to literary trochaic lines, such as those cited in the text, than to "primitive" or folk versus quadratus, which Fraenkel sees as the precutsor of the former. See Fraenkel, “Die Vorgeschichte des Versus Quadratus.”194 The Colometry of Latin Prose tigna putefacit, perdit operam fabri; nequidr factis iam/est deus seatim. 4° The organization of distinct grammatical cola into separate metrical units is especially common in cretic passages in Plautus. 46 The emphatic use of Plautine clausulae can be traced through the oratorical fragments almost to the time of Cic- ero. Laelius Sapiens concluded his laudatie for Scipio Aemilianus with an ithyphallic segment: maxime Vive ‘opis est Quirités (ORF 20.22) Aemilianus himself, in an agitated passage of his defense against Tiiberius Asellus, uses the same phrase in ithyphal- lic shape three times, each time in connection with the iambic metron that Fraenkel has identified as a characteris— tic colon shape throughout the history of Latin prose: Si hoc ita est: qui spdndet mY1i nummim? si tu plus tertia parte pecuniae paternae perdidisti at- que absumpsisti in flagitiis, si hoc ita est: qui spondet niill@ nGmmtm? Non vis nequitiam. Age mali- tiam saltem defende. Si tu verbis conceptis coniura- visti sciens scienge animo tuo, si hoc ita est: qui spondét milré nummim? (ORF 21.19) (I take the repeated use of qui to be a case of "Auftakt" Friedrich Blass long ago called attention to the re~ peated rhythms in a selection from L. Licinius Crassus: —% 4 Yaa ar Bryte quid sedes? Quid illam anum patra nuntiazé vis tu? Quid illis omnibus quorum imagines duci vides? Quid maioribis tits? (ORF 66.45) =v Elsewhere in the same fragment one finds qui_numquam castra au & aU vidéris? an é1oquentiae? The repeated rhythm throughout, 45. Professor Wendell Clausen called my attention to the passage at Most. 108f£. 46. E.g., Curc. 148, Amph. 220, Men. 115. 47. On “Auftakc," see above, p. 101.Cola and the Barly History of Latin Prose 195 as Blass failed to note, is the Plautine hypodochmius, Pseu- dolum tuom.*® And in a speech delivered about sixteen years prior to that of Crassus, Q. Caecilius Metellus Numidicus uses a repeated hypodochmius to call attention to the grammatical organization of a sentence: Nam cum indignissimum arbitror cui a viris bonig benedicatur tum ne idonéum quidem cui a probis maledicatur. (ORF 58.6) The same brief fragment, it should be noted, shows an empha- tic use of the ithyphallic (nunc quod ad illum attinet, gui- rités), repeated choriambs (neque amicum recipio neque inimi- cumcum respicio), but only one occurrence of the infamous Hellenistic dichoree (dictitarit) . It is only in the oratory of Cicero that one encounters enough material for statistical study of clausulae. Cic- ero's preferred sentence clausulae are not the same as 49 nor does an examination of internal clausulae turn up any important similarities to Cato.°° Cicero learned the Cato's, 48. Blass, Die Rhythmen der asianischen und rdmischen Kunstprosa, 105, where the separation of patri and tuo to create the rhythm is also no- ticed. Blass’ book has long been neglected, no doubt due to its exces= ses. But Blass' emphasis on the lyric origin of prose rhythm is surely right. In addition, while his theory of responsion and repetition is stated in such an extreme way as to be little different from the obser- vation that certain writers preferred certain clausulae, his emphasis on examining a particular rhythn in its context is certainly a valuable one for anyone interested in appreciating prose rhythm as a literary phenome- non, and not just as a tool for textual critics. Glausulae in the pas- sage fron Crassus are marked by Norden, Die antike Kunstptosa, 174-75, without comment. 49. Primer, "Der Prosarhythmus in Catos Reden." Primer is correct to observe that there is no statistical evidence to suggest that Cato preferred the same sentence clausulae as Cicero. This observation need not entail a rejection of Fraenkel's claim that certain aspects of thythm are similar in Cato's oratory and in Cicero's. 50. TI have counted only the internal clausulae in the first part of the Sixth Philippic, but the results are not promising. See above, pp. 170-74.196 The Colometry of Latin Prose use of rhythmical clausulae chiefly from Greek rhetoricians, and, while he (or they) selected rhythms appropriate to the Latin language, Cicero's clausulae do not seem to echo Roman drama in quite the same way that the rhythms of Cato and oth- ers do. Cicero implicitly rejects the hypodechmius as a sen- tence clausula, as a passage in orator 233 shows. ‘There he rearranges C. Gracchus' expression abesse non potest quin eiusdem hominis sit probos improbare| qui imprébos probét in such a way as to put the dichoree at the end of the sentence, while the hypodochmius is embedded in the sentence: quin eiusdem hominis sit qui improbos probet| probos improbare. An even more obvious rewriting for rhythm occurs in Coelius Antipater's substitution of diequinti_Romae in Capitolium curabo tibi cena sit cocta,°* with its cretic plus spondee, for Cato the Elder's expression diequinti in Capitolio tibi cen’ cocta @rit,°? with its hypodechmius marked by diaeresis. But there are ways in which Cicero's stylistic practice does recall Plautus and Roman drama. Fraenkel has called attention to the recurrent use of iambic metra containing whole phrases or questions, a practice not unlike that of 54 Plautus and Cato mentioned earlier. what is more, Cicero's practice of colometry occasionally works specifically to cre- ate the effect of a prose lyric; that is, concern with rhythm becomes so important as to dominate the disposition of words into cola. si. te Tong been known that Cicero and other Romans did not derive their metrical practice directly from Greek oratory. Recently C. Wooten has pointed out that even the interest of the Greek rhetor cians of the second and first second centuries B.C. in prose style, inclu- ding rhythm, was piqued by Roman demand ("Le developpement du style Asiatique"). 52. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum reliquiae, 53. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum reliquiae, 86. 54. Leseproben, 190-92; see above p. 173, pp. 192ff.Cola and the Early History of Latin Prose 197 The opening of the Pro Murena, a passage noteworthy for its evocation of archaic Roman prayer, is also remarkable for its colometry. Quae precatus a dis immortalibus sum iudices| more institutoque maiorum| illo die quo auspicato| comi- tiis centuriatis| L. Murena consulem renuntiavi|| ut ea res| mihi fidei magistratuique meo| populo plebi- 5 que Romanae| bene atque feliciter eveniret|| cadem precor| ab isdem dis immortalibus| ob eiusdem homi- nis consulatum| una cum salute obtinendum|| et ut vestrae mentes atque sententiae| cum populi Romani voluntatibus suffragiisque consentiant| | aque res| 10 vobis populoque Romano| pacem tranquillitatem/ otium concordiamque adferat.|| Quod si illa sollemnis comi- tiorum precatio| consularibus auspiciis consecrata| tantam habet in se vim et religionem| quantam rei publicae dignitas postulat|| idem ego sum precatus| | 15 ut eis quoque hominibus| quibus hie consulatus me rogante datus esset| ea res| fauste| feliciter| pros- pereque eveniret.|| Quae cum ita sint fudices! et cum omnis deorum immortalium potestas| aut translata sit ad vos| aut certe communicata vobiscum|| idem 20 consulem vestrae fidei commendat| qui antea dis im- mortalibus commendavit|| ut eiusdem hominis voce| et declaratus consul et defensus| beneficium populi Romani| cum vestra atque omnium civium salute tue- atur.||5 Cicero has deliberately altered word order as, for example, in the separation of precatus and sum in line 1,°° in order to create cola of approximately the same length throughout the proem. The proem falls neatly into two halves (Quod si, 11, marks the transition) linked by the repetition of ea res (ut ea res at 3-4, eaque res at 9, and ea res at 16) and other phrases (precatus at 1 and precor at 6/ precatio at 12 and precatus at 14; populo plebique Romanae at 4-5, populi Romani at 8, populogue Romano at 10/ populi Romani at 22-23; bene_atque feliciter eveniret at 5/ fauste feliciter pros- pereque evenit at 16-17). In addition, pairs of cola end in 35. Above, pp. 158-62. 56. Marouzeau, L'ordre des mots, vol. complémentaire, 38, explains the separation of participle from form of esse as emphasizing the action of the colon.198 The Colometry of Latin Prose identical clausulae, which serve to reinforce grammatical or semantic similarities: a ob eiusdem hominis consulatum una cum salute obt Ynendin. qa) atgué sontentize, =isque consentiant (8-9) ~i commend’, conmendavit (20-24) et _declarStgs consul é defensis (22) = enn And in the pair of phrases pacem tranquillitatem and otium cOncordiamque adferat (lines 10-11) the natural Latin ten- dency to pause between items in a list is overcome by the 57 desire for rhythmical smoothness. Articulation of cola Cicero may have seen in archaic Roman prayers, °° and the par- ticular clausulae employed are the favorites of his teachers of rhetoric, but the use of identical rhythms to emphasize grammatical, semantic, or phonic similarities is the legacy of the entire Roman oratorical tradition, and ultimately of lines such as Plautus! TS stipreno vailas viripotentt Spés spes bénas coplas commédanti (bacchiacs, Persa 252-53) -o «4 -— va atque illud saepe fit tempestas vénit (cretic cola, Most. 108) ne tu istic hodie malo tuo compositis néndaciis followed five lines later by — -«44 non edepol volo profecto at pol profecto ingratiis (tr, amph. 366) BT. Above, pp. 144-47. The use of a succession of pairs of words, with each paii alliterative, is also a feature of Italic sactal lan- guage: Durante, "Prosa ritmica," 62. 58. Durante, "Prosa ritmica.” Gf. the carmen devotionis preserved at Macrobius Sat. 3.9.11; eosque ego vicarios pro me fide magistratui- que meo pro populo Romano exercitibus legionibusque nostris do devoveo.Cola and the Early History of Latin Prose 199 In addition, the organization of enumerated items into longer, rhythmical cola recalis such Piautine expressions as Urbem Zgrun_aras focos| seque uti deder ae (cr#, amph. 226) ut gesserit rem publicam ductu _imperio Sussicts wus. (iaB, Bmph. 196) vorsa sparsa terta strata| lautaque coctaque_omm{a_ putt sint (er®, Ps. 164) Finally, the crescendo in the sentence eadem precor . . . consentiant can now be seen not as a natural expression in Latin prose, but as the result of generations of refinement in prose style under the influence of prayers, Greek profes= sors, and poetry. It is customary to refer to the interdependence of perio- dicity and rhythmical clausulae in discussing Latin or Greek style.°? whe literary history of Greek xecognizes that attention to poetry produced periodic prose and that lyric poetry provided the impetus for the use of preferred clausu- lae in oratory.°° Something similar can now be said of Roman oratory. To ancient rhetoric, the placement of a long colon at the end of a sentence was an important element of periodic styie.®t Roman poetry and Roman prose learned the 59. Following, among others, Cicero's account in the Orator and De Oratore (Primmer, "Der Prosarhythmus in Catos Reden" 60. On the use of preferred clausulae (a relatively late develop- ment in Greek) and lyric poetry, see Blass, Die Rhythmen der asianischen und rSmischen Kunstprosa. On the dependence of early Greek prose on poetry (lyric and otherwise) and, in particular, on music, see Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa, 41ff. The use of Latin song to understand prose is not a problem. Cf. Cicero's approbation of Fannius (De or. 3.183) for opening a speech with a series of cretics, si Quirites minas illius, similar to those found in a tetrameter of Ennius: Quid petam praesidi aut _exsequar? quove nunc - . . - To the ancients, “long verses” such as cretic tetrameters were cantica. 61. Todesco, "Periodi oratorii," ascribes the preference for cre~ scendo to a concern with musicality. In addition to the ancient sources cited by Todesco, see Dem. Eloc. 18.200 The Colometry of Latin Prose order short-long for non-parallel cola at roughly the same time. And the rhythms used by Cato to mark the ends of cola and sentences, while they may very well be natural cadences of the Latin language, have a certain nuance from relation to Plautine meter; indeed, their emphatic use may have been inspired by such. Eric Laughton has reminded us of the rar- ity of periodic style at Rome®*--rare, I suspect, because of its difficulty, and difficult because it was not natural. Sacral language and Greek rhetoric contributed to the devel- opment of oratorical prose (periodic and otherwise), but Roman poetry, too, deserves its place in any account of the development of Latin prose style. 62. Laughton, "The Learner and the Latin Period.”