Friday, March 17, 2006

Elisions in [Lactanti] Carmen De Passione Domini (Updated)

Although the De Passione Domini is a fairly short hexameter poem (80 lines), it contains a rather high frequency of elisions. Out of the poem's 80 lines, 42 of them (by my count) contain at least one elision. There are 6 lines with 2 elisions (6, 11, 36, 37, 40, 48), and 3 lines with 3 elisions (21, 35, 57), for a grand total of 53 in the poem. Here are the 3 lines with 3 elisions:

21: Pauperiem extremam et rerum inferiora secutus
35: Fige animo et testes et caeci infanda Pilati
57: Disce adversa pati et propriae invigilare saluti

For a slightly different configuration, see Manitius, Geschichte der Christlich-Lateinischen Poesie p. 49 n. 4. A couple of these differences are due to our using different texts to calculate. For example, one of his 3 lines with 3 elisions is 56, which is line 57 in the CSEL version of the text. Again, he lists line 3 as having two elisions, whereas I have it as having one. The CSEL text reads
Respice me, me conde animo, me pectore serva.

The app. crit., on the other hand, shows a variant of in pectore instead of pectore, which would generate another elision.

One difference, though, that I can't figure out based on the app. crit. is line 48. I have this as a two-elision line, whereas Manitius does not list it among his two-elision lines:
Atque ingens lateris vulnus, cerne inde fluorem.
The only variant listed by the CSEL's app. crit. is lateri for lateris, but this doesn't effect the elisions.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Cf. Skutsch on atqu(e) (1985: 63):

“In all Latin poetry, especially in the elegiac poets, the disyllable is much rarer than the elided form, and Ennius, despite his reluctance to elide [...] is no exception: in the Annals, where the short open final should be welcome, particularly in the fifth and first foot, he elides it twelve times and retains it in two certain instances only, once in the fifth foot, 74, and once in the first, 581.”

74Sk: In †monte Remus auspicio sedet atque secundam
581Sk: Atque manu magna Romanos impulit amnis