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Updated: May 21, 2025
Having received his freedom, he set up a school, and for the benefit of his pupils translated the Odyssey into Saturnian verse. A few fragments of this version survive, but they are of no merit either from a poetical or a scholastic point of view, being at once bald and incorrect. Cicero speaks slightingly of his poems, as also does Horace, from boyish experience of their contents.
The ancient Roman ballads were in what is called Saturnian meter, which depends on stress and accent; it is not unlike the meter of the Scotch and English ballads. That means that old Latin was spoken like English is, with syllabic accent. But Greek was not. In that, what counted, what made the meters, was tone and quantity.
Till then it may have been just possible that native metrical forms might still reassert themselves. Inscriptions of the last century of the Republic show that the saturnian still lingered in use side by side with the rude popular hexameters which were gradually displacing it; and the Punic War of Naevius was still a classic.
Why this was styled carmen is not known. Some think it was written in Saturnian verse, others that its concise and oracular formulas suggested the name, since carmen in old Latin is by no means confined to verse. It is from this that the account of the low estimation of poets in the early Republic is taken.
We have not been, nor are likely to be, a happy family, unless in your saturnian reign we learn to say, pax vobiscum do you know Latin? For I'm told the money-bags and the stately pile are for you. You are to beget children before the Lord, and sit in the seat of Justice: 'tis for me to confer honour on you all by my genius!"
The present time, when Saturn is the ruling planet of the night, seems favourable for giving a brief account of recent speculations respecting the Saturnian ring-system, especially as the observations of Mr.
So numerous, indeed, and strong, are the sanctions given to it by many acts of parliament, that, having once established the laws of customs on merchandise, it seems to have been the sole view of the legislature to strengthen the hands and to protect the persons of the officers who became established by those laws, many of whom are so far from bearing any resemblance to the Saturnian institution, and to be chosen from a degree of beings superior to the rest of human race, that they sometimes seem industriously picked out of the lowest and vilest orders of mankind.
In the one case, the majestic presence is revealed in its Atlantean task of establishing the firm foundations of the universe; in the other, in its Saturnian occupation of marking the lapse of time. In the planetary movements, material attraction bends onward impulse round into a circling curve; in the pendulum oscillations, material attraction alternately causes and destroys onward impulse.
Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome are a brilliant reconstruction of what he conceived to be the spirit of this early literature. It was written, its supporters contend, in the native Saturnian, and, while strongly leavened with Greek ideas, was in no way copied from Greek models.
To apply these results to the Saturnian verses extant, let us select a few examples: "Gnaivod patre prognatus | fortis vir sapiensque." patre or patred retains its length by position, i.e. its metrical accent, against the natural accent patre. In the case of syllables on which the ictus does not fall the quantity and accent are indifferent.
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