United States or Azerbaijan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


"Chi puo dir com' egli arde, a in picciol fuoco," say the Innamoratos, when they would represent an 'insupportable passion. "Misero quod omneis Eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te, Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi, Quod loquar amens. Lingua sed torpet: tenuis sub artus Flamma dimanat; sonitu suopte Tintinant aures; gemina teguntur Lumina nocte."

This device like alliteration is a method of intensifying the expression of a passage, and is frequently adopted by the poets. In another famous onomatopoeic line "Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum" Virgil imitates the sound of a galloping horse, and the shaking of the ground beneath its hoofs.

Nubibus ut tenebras faciat, coelique serena Concutiat sonitu? tum fulmina mittat, et ædeis Sæpe suas disturbet?" Returning to the theory of our author, may we not now characterize it as at once unfounded in its details, inconceivable in its operation, and vulgar and mechanical in its design?

They darted their spears with so great force, as ofttimes to transfix two targets and two armed men at once, and pin them together. Their pieces of battery had not only the execution but the thunder of our cannon also: "Ad ictus moenium cum terribili sonitu editos, pavor et trepidatio cepit." A pretty description of something very like an arquebuse-shot.

The English verse which we call heroic consists of no more than ten syllables; the Latin hexameter sometimes rises to seventeen; as, for example, this verse in Virgil: "Pulverulenta putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum." Here is the difference of no less than seven syllables in a line betwixt the English and the Latin.

That mastery of phrase is astonishing. From the silver beauty of the moonlit line from his Melanippe Lumine sic tremulo terra et cava caerula candent, to the thunderous oath of Achilles Per ego deum sublimas subices Umidas, unde oritur imber sonitu saevo et spiritu they give examples of almost the whole range of beauty of which the Latin language is capable.