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<p>Patrick Roper a *crit :
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>Apropos of this thread, could I ask about the current
view on how
<br>Virgil should be pronounced. I simply read it the way I was taught
<br>Latin at school in England in the 1950s, but am aware that the
<br>language is pronounced in all sorts of different ways and that what
<br>shapes up in my imagination would probably be completely
<br>unintelligeable to a Roman of the 1st century BC.
<p>Is there a generally accepted view of the way the language might have
<br>been spoken by Virgil? And is this recorded anywhere?
<p>Patrick Roper
<br> </blockquote>
This is <i>the </i>point. There has been for centuries a huge debate about
the right way to pronounce ancient poetry.
<br>According to me, Virgilian verses should be read with respect to the
prosody (short and long syllables) and the pitch accent (law of the
Penultimate).
I think this is the most common view nowadays.
<br>Some scholars, since R.Bentley G.Hermann, have held that there should
be respect to a metrical accent called ictus.
<br>You could read S. Boldrini's recent survey about ancient verse-reading
(<i>Prosodie und Metrik der Römer</i>, Aus dem Ital. übertr.
von Bruno W. Häuptli., Teubner, Stuttgart und Leipzig, 1999), or the
older, ALLEN W.S., <i>VOX LATINA. A guide to the pronunciation of classical
latin</i>, Cambridge Un. Pr., Cambridge, 1965,
<br>BEARE W., <i>Latin verse and European song. A study in accent and
Rhythm,</i>London,
1957.
<br>Emmanuel Plantade (France)
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</x-html>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Nov 12 09:17:16 2001
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Nov 11 22:35:31 2001
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Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 16:32:56 -0600
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From: David Wilson-Okamura <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: VIRGIL: pronunciation of Virgil
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<< message forwarded by listowner, David Wilson-Okamura >>
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 15:34:36 +0100
From: Robert Dyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Also, I believe, L.P. Wilkinson, Golden Latin Artistry (although I
cannot find a copy), who promoted the view that you must read both
rhythms, the hexameter pattern plus the normal prose word stress, for
the flow of the verse depends on whether the two rhythms coincide (as
pretty well always in the last two feet) or conflict, giving a sense of
difficulty and slowness. The editor, R.D. Williams, made a tape of the
entire Aeneid, some decades ago, at the Australian National University,
and this convinced me that this is correct way to read the Aeneid. You
arrive at it by marking both rhythms on the text and watching where the
two rhythms coincide and where they conflict. In reading you must
observe BOTH STRESSES. Thus in some verses you get a sequence of
stresses of one sort or the other, and this audibly slows down the
reading. I always began teaching it by pointing out the correct way of
reading
To be or not to be, that is the question.
This line loses all sense if you read it with its basic iambic rhythm.
The sense depends entirely on the violent contrast created by the
reversal of the metrical rhythm in the fourth iamb: THAT is, instead of
that IS. The effect of conflict in Vergil is much the same.
Rob Dyer
Paris
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