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Metres Of Roman Comedy
Roman comedy is mainly represented by two playwrights, Plautus (writing between c.205 and 184 BC) and Terence (writing c.166-160 BC). The works of other Latin playwrights such as Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius, and Caecilius Statius are now lost except for a few lines quoted in other authors. 20 plays of Plautus survive complete, and 6 of Terence. Various metres are used in the plays. As far as is known, iambic senarii were spoken without music; trochaic septenarii (and also iambic septenarii and trochaic and iambic octonarii)Fortson (2008), p. 22. were chanted or recited (or possibly sung) to the sound of a pair of pipes known as (the equivalent of the Greek aulos), played by a ("piper"); and other metres were sung, possibly in an operatic style, to the same . In Plautus about 37% of lines are unaccompanied iambic senarii,A.S. Gratwick (1982), in ''The Cambridge History of Classical Literature'', vol. 2 part 1, pages 85-86. but in Terence more than half of the verses are sen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus. The word Plautine refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his. Biography Not much is known about Titus Maccius Plautus's early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a small town in Emilia Romagna in northern Italy, around 254 BC.''The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature'' (1996) Ed. M.C. Howatson and Ian Chilvers, Oxford University Press, Oxford Reference Online According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years. It is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was eventually discovered; and he adopted the names "Maccius" (a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristoxenus
Aristoxenus of Tarentum ( el, Ἀριστόξενος ὁ Ταραντῖνος; born 375, fl. 335 BC) was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been lost, but one musical treatise, ''Elements of Harmony'' (Greek: Ἁρμονικὰ στοιχεῖα; Latin: ''Elementa harmonica''), survives incomplete, as well as some fragments concerning rhythm and meter. The ''Elements'' is the chief source of our knowledge of ancient Greek music."Aristoxenus of Tarentum" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 593. Life Aristoxenus was born at Tarentum, and was the son of a learned musician named Spintharus (otherwise Mnesias). He learned music from his father, and having then been instructed by Lamprus of Erythrae and Xenophilus the Pythagorean, he finally became a pupil of Aristotle, whom he appears to have rivaled in the variety of his studies. According to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalectic
A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line. A line missing two syllables is called brachycatalectic. In English Poems can be written entirely in catalectic lines, or entirely in acatalectic (complete) lines, or a mixture, as the following carol, composed by Cecil Frances Alexander in 1848: :Once in Royal David's city (8 syllables) : Stood a lowly cattle shed, (7 syllables) :Where a mother laid her Baby (8 syllables) : In a manger for His bed: (7 syllables) :Mary was that mother mild, (7 syllables) :Jesus Christ her little Child. (7 syllables) It has been argued that across a number of Indo-European languages, when the two types of line are mixed in this way, the shorter line tends to be used as a coda at the end of a period or stanza. Blunt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the translation of the Greek classics into Latin, a precursor to the Scholastic movement, and, along with Cassiodorus, one of the two leading Christian scholars of the 6th century. The local cult of Boethius in the Diocese of Pavia was sanctioned by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1883, confirming the diocese's custom of honouring him on the 23 October. Boethius was born in Rome a few years after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. A member of the Anicii family, he was orphaned following the family's sudden decline and was raised by Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, a later consul. After mastering both Latin and Greek in his youth, Boethius rose to prominence as a statesman during the Ostrogothic Kingdom: becoming a senator by a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seneca The Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (; 65 AD), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature. Seneca was born in Córdoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan. In AD 41, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica under emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his advisor and, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, provided competent government for the first five years of Nero's reign. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, and in 65 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, in which he was probably innocen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaius Marius Victorinus
Gaius Marius Victorinus (also known as Victorinus Afer; fl. 4th century) was a Roman grammarian, rhetorician and Neoplatonic philosopher. Victorinus was African by birth and experienced the height of his career during the reign of Constantius II. He is also known for translating two of Aristotle's books from ancient Greek into Latin: the ''Categories'' and ''On Interpretation'' ('' De Interpretatione''). Victorinus had a religious conversion, from being a pagan to a Christian, "at an advanced old age" (c. 355). Life Victorinus, at some unknown point, left Africa for Rome (hence some modern scholars have dubbed him ''Afer''), probably for a teaching position, and had great success in his career, eventually being promoted to the lowest level of the senatorial order. That promotion probably came at the time when he received an honorific statue in the Forum of Trajan in 354. Victorinus' religious conversion to Christianity (c. 355), "at an advanced old age" according to Jerome, made a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aulos
An ''aulos'' ( grc, αὐλός, plural , ''auloi'') or ''tibia'' (Latin) was an ancient Greek wind instrument, depicted often in art and also attested by archaeology. Though ''aulos'' is often translated as "flute" or "double flute", it was usually a double-reeded instrument, and its sound—described as "penetrating, insisting and exciting"—was more akin to that of the bagpipes, with a chanter and (modulated) drone. An aulete (, ) was the musician who performed on an ''aulos''. The ancient Roman equivalent was the ''tibicen'' (plural ''tibicines''), from the Latin ''tibia,'' "pipe, ''aulos''." The neologism aulode is sometimes used by analogy with ''rhapsode'' and ''citharode'' ( citharede) to refer to an ''aulos'' player, who may also be called an aulist; however, aulode more commonly refers to a singer who sang the accompaniment to a piece played on the aulos. Background There were several kinds of ''aulos'', single or double. The most common variety was a reed instrumen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pacuvius
Marcus Pacuvius (; 220 – c. 130 BC) was an ancient Roman tragic poet. He is regarded as the greatest of their tragedians prior to Lucius Accius. Biography He was the nephew and pupil of Ennius, by whom Roman tragedy was first raised to a position of influence and dignity. In the interval between the death of Ennius (169 BC) and the advent of Accius, the youngest and most productive of the tragic poets, Pacuvius alone maintained the continuity of the serious drama, and perpetuated the character first imparted to it by Ennius. Like Ennius he probably belonged to an Oscan stock, and was born at Brundisium, which had become a Roman colony in 244 BC. Hence he never attained to that perfect idiomatic purity of style, which was the special glory of the early writers of comedy, Naevius and Plautus. Pacuvius obtained distinction also as a painter; and Pliny the Elder (''Naturalis Historia'' xxxv) mentions a work of his in the Temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium. He was le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caesura
image:Music-caesura.svg, 300px, An example of a caesura in modern western music notation A caesura (, . caesuras or caesurae; Latin for "cutting"), also written cæsura and cesura, is a Metre (poetry), metrical pause or break in a Verse (poetry), verse where one phrase ends and another phrase begins. It may be expressed by a comma (,), a Check mark, tick (✓), or two lines, either slashed (//) or upright (, , ). In time value, this break may vary between the slightest perception of silence all the way up to a full Pausa, pause. Poetry In classical Greek and Latin poetry a caesura is the juncture where one word ends and the following word begins within a foot. In contrast, a word juncture at the end of a foot (prosody), foot is called a Diaeresis (prosody), diaeresis. Some caesurae are expected and represent a point of articulation between two phrases or clauses. All other caesurae are only potentially places of articulation. The opposite of an obligatory caesura is a bridge wher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prosody (Greek)
Prosody (from Middle French , from Latin , from Ancient Greek (), "song sung to music; pronunciation of syllable") is the theory and practice of versification. Prosody Greek poetry is based on syllable length, not on syllable stress, as in English. The two syllable lengths in Greek poetry are long and short. It is probable that in the natural spoken language there were also syllables of intermediate length, as in the first syllable of words such as τέκνα /''tékna''/ 'children', where a short vowel is followed by a plosive + liquid combination; but for poetic purposes such syllables were treated as either long or short. Thus in the opening speech of the play ''Oedipus Tyrannus'', Sophocles treats the first syllable of τέκνα /''tékna''/ as long in line 1, but as short in line 6. Different kinds of poetry use different patterns of long and short syllables, known as meters (UK: metres). For example, the epic poems of Homer were composed using the pattern , – u u , ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castor And Pollux
Castor; grc, Κάστωρ, Kástōr, beaver. and Pollux. (or Polydeukes). are twin half-brothers in Greek and Roman mythology, known together as the Dioscuri.; grc, Διόσκουροι, Dióskouroi, sons of Zeus, links=no, from ''Dîos'' ('Zeus') and '' koûroi'' ('boys'). Their mother was Leda, but they had different fathers; Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, while Pollux was the divine son of Zeus, who raped Leda in the guise of a swan. The pair are thus an example of heteropaternal superfecundation. Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. In Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini (literally "twins") or Castores, as well as the Tyndaridae or Tyndarids.. Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini. The pair were regarded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synizesis
Synizesis () is a sound change (metaplasm) in which two originally syllabic vowels (hiatus) are pronounced instead as a single syllable. In poetry, the vowel contraction would often be necessitated by the metrical requirements of the poetic form. Synizesis is also understood to occur as a natural product in the evolution of a language over time. A tie may be used to represent this pronunciation: ''dē͡hinc'' (i.e., ''deinc''). Definition ''Synizesis'' comes from the Greek (''synízēsis'', "a sitting together") from (''syn'', "with") and (''hizō'', "I sit"). The term was used to describe this vowel change as early as the 2nd century CE, by the Alexandrian grammarian, Hephaestion. Ancient grammarians, such as Hephaestion, defined synizesis broadly as the “σύλληψις” (''syllepsis'', “a taking together (of sounds)”) of any two syllables. More contemporary scholarship has, however, recognised that, when so constructed, synizesis is given an unjustifiably br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
