Bassett (1925) the Caesura. a Modern Chimaera

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76

THE CLASSICAL

WEEKLY

[VOL.

XVIII,

No.

10,

WHOLE

No.

487

THE

CAESURA-A

MODERN

CHIMAERA1

The first

reading

of

the Aeneid ought

to be

a great

adventure

in

poetry.

The "stateliest

measure

ever

moulded

by the

lips

of man"

ought

to take possession

of the student's

mind;

the "ocean

roar of

rhythm"

should fill his ears. But the boy or the girl who enters

for the

first

time

this

wonderful

foreign

land of

verse

finds

at

the start

a 'lion

in the way'.

This

monster

proves

to

be worse than

a lion;

it is a

Chimaera,

'its

head

a-lion,

its tail

a

serpent,

between

these

a

she-

goat'.

This

fantastic

creature

is

called

caesura;

it

will

mar

the

pleasure

of the journey

into

the

beautiful

realm

of classical

hexameter

poetry

unless

one

recog-

nizes

that it

is

only

a creation

of the mind,

and

that,

at

least

in

the form

in which

the doctrine

is usually

taught,

it never

existed.

The

object

of the

present

paper

is

to

lace

some

of the

evidence

for the

chimaerical

nature

of

caesura,

as

taught

to-day,

before

the teachers

of

Vergil,

and especially

before

the examiners

who

put on

their

papers

the

words

"Mark

the

caesura".

Some years

ago

the writer

spent

many

months

in

trying

to find

out

how

the

theory

of caesura

began

and

what

the

ancients

meant

by

the term.

The

quest

led

into the

dreary

and

barren

desert

lands

of the

Greek

and

the

Roman

grammarians.

The results

of

the

study

were

published

in an article

entitled Theory

of

the Homeric

Caesura

According

to

the Extant

Re-

mains

of

the Ancient

Grammarians,

in

the

American

Journal

of

Philology 40

(I919),

343-372,

where may

be

found

the references

to the ancient passages

which

form

the basis

of

the

conclusions

which will

be presented

briefly

here.

The

writer began

the investigation

be-

lieving

that

(i)

every

verse

must have

a

caesura;

(2)

the

caesura

must be

found

in the

third

or in

the

fourth foot,

or at

the end

of the fourth

foot; and

(3)

there

was always

at

least a slight

pause

at

the caesura.

But

his study

led

to a conclusion

that was

quite

(liffer-

ent;

caesura,

as

it

is

generally

taught

to-day,

was

found

to be

a

monstrous

creature

of the

imagination,

brought

into being

by

the uninspired

grammarians,

and

unknown

to Homer

and to Vergil.

It

was

a Chi-

maera

not only

because

it

never

existed,

but also

be-

cause

it was

an idea

of

triple

meaning-three-headed,

as

it were-an(d

the three rneanings

coul(d

not

be united.

Before

discussing

thlese

three

meanings

and

the

im-

')ossibilityof uniting them, let us look at the inherent

imrprobability

that Vergil

ever

intended

that a

pause

should

be

felt

in

the third

or

the fourtlih

oot

of cvery

hexanmeter, by

examining

a fev

familiar

verses

of

the

Aeneid.

(i)

Caesura

in

every

verse?

Aen.

I. 92

Extemiplo

Aenieae solvuntur

frigore

membra.

Aen.

I.

124

Interca

magno

misceri

murmure

pon-

tunI.

.

.

Aen.

I.

I32

Tantanle

vos

generis

telnuit

fiducia

vestri?

No reader who was entirely unfamiliar

with

the

theory

of caesura would ever think of making any appre-

ciahle pause anywhere in these verses except at the

end

of each. It is only the doctrine

of

caesura,

which

has been foisted upon us without

the

knowledge

or the

consent of the poet, that

makes us

look for

a

pause after magno and Aenteae and generis. The

syntactical relation of each of these words

with one or

more words towards the end of the verse rather unites

the

line than severs it into two distinct parts.

And

why must there be a caesura in every verse?

The

half

dozen

reasons that have been given, and

which

the

writer

has discussed in the article referred to above

(pages 343-345), fail to convince.

(2) Caesura regularly in the third or in the fourth

foot?

Aen.

I

I8o-i88:

i8o Aeneas scopulum interea conscendit

I

et omnem

prospectum late pelago petit,

I

Anthea si quem

iactatum vento videat I Phrygiasque biremis,

aut Capyn,

I

aut celsis

in

puppibus

arma

Caici.

Navem in

conspectu nullam,

I

tris

litora

cervos

I85 prospicit errantis; hos tota armenta sequuntur

a

tergo,

I

et longum per vallis pascitur agmen.

Constitit hic;

I

arcumque manu celerisque sagittas

corripuit,

I

fidus quae tela gerebat

Achates.

Again let us forget for the moment that there is any

such

thing as caesura, and notice only those pauses

which the sense requires as we read these nine verses.

We

find that only four-less than half-show the

chief pause in sense at any one of the places where the

ancients located the caesura, viz.,

bucolic

diaeresis

(i8i),

hephthemimeral

(I82,

I84),

and penthemimeral

(185). The chief pauses in sense in the other five

verses

are, respectively, feminine of

the fifth

foot(i8o),

first

diaeresis (I83, i86), and masculine

of the

second

foot

(I87, I88). None of these was recognized

as

the

caesura

in

the ancient formulation of the theory.

And one naturally queries why one should call the

chief

pause

in

sense by the name, caesura, and

what is

the use

of

marking it. Sometimes

it

may be necessary,

for

the

full

understanding

of

the

meaning,

to

point

out

where the

chief

pause occurs, but

this has

to do

with

interpreting

the

thought alone. Who,

for

example,

ever

thought of requiring the student to mark

the

pauses in Caesar or in Cicero?

These

illustrations, it is hoped, have aroused

the

suspicion

in the

reader's mind

that

there

is some-

tlhing factitious-if not fictitious-in the present

conception

of

caesura, and have

made

him

ready

to

examine

with the

writer

this

three-headed

curiosity

as

it

is

exhibited

in

the

modern

grammatical

Zoo.

The

modernt

heory

of

caesura

is a little more

than a

century

old

(see pages 345-346

of

the

article

referred

to

above);

it

includes

three

different and

conflicting

views

of

the

meaning

of

caesura,

as follows.

(i) Caesura is a

pause or

a

hold, occurring

in the

third or

possibly

in

the fourth

foot,

and

marking

the

end

of the

first of two rhythmical phrases or

cola into

which

the

hexameter is supposed to be divided.

This

may

be

called rhythmical caesura.

The

doctrine

of the

cola

belongs

to music

and

hence to

lyric poetry.

In

this

'As is sta-ted at the close of the preceding article, Professor

Bassett returned,

in

this article,

to

the discussion

of the caesura at

my

very urgent

iovitation.

It

seemed

to me that his

scholarly

dis-

cussion

of a matter

which has

long

disturbed teachers ought be

made pedagogically

available.

C. K.

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JANUARY

5,

1925]

THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 77

kind

of

poetry

neither a pause in sense nor

even a word-

end is required

to mark the end of a colon.

Hence a

few modern

scholars have gone so far as

to hold that

the caesura of the hexameter

may

be

found in the

middle of a word.

(2)

Caesura

in general is

the

cutting

of a foot

by

a

word-end, but

the caesura is

where

a

word ends in

the

third or in the fourth foot.

For reasons which will be

given

later this caesura may properly

be

called metrical

caesura.

Unless

it

occurs

where the

sense

calls

for a

stop,

there is no reason whatever for

making

caesura a

pause,

unless we hark back

to the

theory

of the rhyth-

mical caesura.

(3)

Caesura is a pause in sense. This

I call logical

caesura.

This is a

very

reasonable definition,

but it

leads to disquieting

results. One

of

the chief

pauses

in

sense

is at

the

bucolic diaeresis,

which is not caesura

at

all

in

that

it

does

not cut a foot

in two.

Furthermore,

if

one

will examine the first two feet of the verse of

the

Aeneid or of the Iliad, one will be surprised to find how

often

a

pause

in

sense

is found

there,

and

yet

few

grammars

and works on

metric find the

caesura here.

Finally, as was queried

above, what

justification

is

there for calling these pauses

caesurae,

and what is

the

use

of

'marking'

them?

These

three

definitions,

rhythmical, metrical,

and

logical,

interfere with one another,

and

introduce un-

certainty

and confusion

with

regard

to the

nature of

caesura and

the reason for its importance.

They pre-

vent both teachers

and

taught

from

concentrating

attention

on

the

flow

of the verse.

They

form

that

triple-headed monster which bars

the path leading to

the poetic beauties of the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the

Aeneid. If

the

reader will

now have

the

patience

to

join

in

hunting

the monster

to

his

lair

in the

dry

desert of

the ancient

grammarians,

that

is,

in

tracing

how

the

doctrine arose and

how it was

applied,

perhaps

he may be

willing to throw overboard

the

whole doc-

trine of caesura

as

something

of no use

whatever in

the

elementary teaching

of

Vergil

and

Homer.

It

is very important to notice,

in the

first place,

that

the doctrine grew up very late,

in fact after Vergil

composed

the Aeneid. Aristotle

does

not mention

it;

no more

do

the

Alexandrians.

Varro was ignorant

of

it,

Dionysius

of Halicarnassus, who lived about

the

time of

Vergil, had occasion to mention it (if it existed), but

does

not

do so. But

by about

I50

A. D. the doctrine

was fully established. Four

caesurae were recognized,

btut there

was a difference of opinion

which these four

were.

Some held that they

were the feminine and the

masculine of the third foot,

the masculine of the fourth

and

the

bucolic

diaeresis.

Others

followed

a

theory

that caesura must divide

the verse into unlike, that is,

inito

odd,

parts;

hence they rejected

the

bucolic diaere-

sis,

and

substituted for it, as

the fourth caesura, the

feminine

of the

fourth foot.

This was unfortunate, for

of all

possible

breaks in the hexameter

the one

after the

first short

syllable

of the

fourth

foot is most carefully

avoided by Homer; and as for Vergil, a Latin writer

found so much difficulty in discovering an

example of

this

caesura

that he had to make one

up: Quae pax

longa remiserat arma

I

novare

parabant. This verse was

used by

many

of

his

successors to

illustrate the 'for-

bidden' caesura.

Thus confusion

and unreason mark

the doctrine from

the

earliest

formulation of it

that has

come

down

to

us.

Who was

the

originator

of the doctrine?

Undoubted-

ly he was

a Greek,

for a

large

part

of

the termi-

nology is

Greek,

e.

g.

penthemimeres, hephthemimeres,

diaeresis.

I

have

suggested

that Heliodorus

was the

man, for he lived at

exactly

the time

when the

doctrine

seems to have been

developed,

that

is, during

the first

century

of our

era;

he

was

one of

the

most

famous

metricians of his

time, and, above all, he was

much

interested

in

dividing

verses into

their

respective

cola. But,

however

uncertain we

may

be

about

the

author

of the

theory,

we

can be sure

from

existing

fragments

of

treatises that

the

theory

itself

grew up in

the

following way.

A

certain school of

metricians de-

rived all lyric verses from

the

hexameter.

They noticed

that

in

the hexameter a

word

always

ended

in

the

third

or the fourth foot or at the end of the fourth foot.

Now

it

happened

that

in

Greek

lyric poetry

there

were

dactylic

verses which

exactly

cotresponded

in form

and length

to the

first

part of the hexameter cut off

by

the

word-ends

just

mentioned. These verses

were

the trimeter catalectic

ending

in

one syllable

('penthe-

mimeres'),

or in

two

syllables ('third

trochaic'); the

tetrameter

catalectic

ending

in one

syllable

('hephthe-

mimeres'),

or in two syllables

('fourth trochaic'),

and

the

tetrameter

acatalectic

('tetrameter').

These

were the

tomae

of the

hexameter. Tome is the

Greek

word

to

which

the Latin word

caesura

corresponds.

It

means either

the

thing

cut

off,

or the

cutting

itself.

At first the tomae were the parts of the hexameter cut

off

by

the

word-ends

in

the third

or the

fourth

foot.

They

were thus neither

places

nor

pauses,

but

segments

of

the

verse.

Thus the

penthemimeres

tome,

which

is

translated into

Latin by caesura

penthemimeris, was

originally

a

lyric

verse of

two

and one-half

dactylic

feet which the

Derivationist School found

in

the first

half

of the hexameter.

For

example,

a Latin

metrical

writer

illustrates

this

caesura

(that

is, tome,

in

its

original

sense of

'segment') by

quam Juno

fertur,

and adds that

by doubling

this caesura the

so-called

pentameter

is

obtained:

quam Juno fertur, quam Juno fertur.

No other

tomae of the

hexameter than these four or

five

were

recognized. There did not exist

in

lyric

a

short

dactylic

verse

corresponding

in

length

to the

part

of

the

hexameter

cut

off

by

what we call the

triemimeral

caesura,

and hence

this tome was not

known. It

was

not

till

centuries after the

doctrine of caesura

was

fully

de-

veloped

that

we find

a

reference to this

caesura, by

Ausonius

(fourth century

A.

D.),

and he

calls

it

'the

caesura after the

first

dactyl

and a half-foot'.

The

above

seems to be the

only possible explana-

tion

of the

origin

of the

doctrine of

caesura.

If it

is

correct,

then

there is no

reason whatsoever for

making

a

pause at 'caesura'. Nor is there good reason for calling

a

pause

in

sense a 'caesura'.

Most

of the earlier treatises

make a

word-end

all

that

is essential

to caesura. It

is

true that in

these treatises there is sometimes

added

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JANUARY

5,

1925]

THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 79

ever

made a

pause

which the thought

did

not require.

The best

that can

be said

for such

a

pause

in the third

or

the fourth

foot

of every

hexameter

is that

both Homer

and Vergil

so

frequently

do makea pause

in sense

there,

that

we come

to

expect it:

our sense

of rhythm,

wrongly

trained, too, by

thc

traditional

teaching

of

caesurae,

makes

us

fail

to detect the many

subtle

varieties

of modulation

for which

Homer

was famolus

among all

poets.

This brings

us

to

another

point

which perhaps ies

at

the

root of the

whole doctrine

of caesura.

Why

are

caesura

and

pause in

sense so

much more frequent

in

the

third and

the fourth

feet,

or

at the

end of the

fourth,

than

elsewhere

in the

verse?

If

you

will

examine

a

hundred

or

more verses

of the Aeneid or

of the

Iliad,

vou

will find that

the

conflict

between words an(d

eet,

and likewise

the

pauses

in

sense,

are

much

more

sought

after

by

the

poet

here

than

in the other

four

feet.

What is

the reason

for

this?

Why,

for

example,

should

not caesuraand pause in sense occutr t the ened f the

third foot?

The

answer

is really

quite

simple.

If a

poet

has only

one

kind

of

verse

in

which

to write

a

poem

of thousands

of

lines,

he must

use

many

devices

to avoid

monotony.

The

most

important

of

these

we

havc mentioned above.

And

yet

at the same time

the

)oet must

take care

that

his verse

shall

always

have

the unmistakable

swing

of the

hexameter.

If he makes

a

pause

anywhere

within

a

foot,

he

thereby

to

some

extent

destroys

the dactylic

rhythm.

An

ancient

rhetorician

called

attention

to a

verse

like Aen. I

237, pollicitus.

I

Quae

te, gentitor,

sententia

vertit,

saying

that the

pause

in the second

foot made

the

rest

of the verse readlike an anapaesticdimeter .

So

the

masculine

'caesura'

of

the

third foot

leaves

the so-called

paroemiac

verse,

which

is

the last

verse of

the anapaestic

system

or

stanza. If a pause

in sense

thus

disturbs

the

regular

rhythm,

the poet

must get

back

to

the

rhythm.

Hence

the popularity

of the

pause at

the

end

of

the fourth

foot,

even in

Homer

and the

Aeneid.

It is much

the

same in

the

case

of

mere 'caesurae',

that

of word-ends

cutting

the feet.

The hexameter

must

always

be

felt

as

a

single

solidly-built

verse.

It must

not

show

any

tendency to

break in

two in

the middle

or

near the

middle.

Hence

the two-fold

conflict, introduced

be-

tween the schematicrhythmand the variedmodulation

on

the one hand,

and

between the

metrical

feet and

the

phenomenon

of caesura

on the

other, keeps

both

the

rhythmical

and

the

metrical

sense of

the reader

in

suspense,

and therefore,

as

Professor

Humphreys

has

observed, actually

helps

to bind

the long

verse into

one.

Eustathius,

in the

passage

from

which I quoted

above, said

much the

same thing:

'The

ancient

gram-

marians

liked

to have

the metrical

feet

boundtogether

in

such a

way that

no foot

ended with

a word'.

Let

me repeat in

the form

of a summary

the

con-

clusions

of this article.

(i)

Caesura

in

modern

times

may be one

of three

things, (a) a rhythmical modulation or hold,

withlout

reference to

the thought;

(b) a

word-end,

occurring

n

the middle

third of the

hexameter,

again

with little

or

no

reference

to

the thought;

and (c)

a pause in

thought,

no matter where

t

occurs, but

the

pause

which

comes

in

the middle third of the verse is usually regarded as

the caesura. In anicient times, beginning

with

about

IOO . D., the term came to have

much

the same mean-

ings, except that

rhythmical

caesura, without regard

to

the thought, is not vouched

for

in

coninection with

recitative

poetry.

The three definitions resulted in

great confusion in both ancient

and

modern timnes.

(2)

The doctrine of caesura arose in the time of the

grammarians hrough the discovery that the end of a

word

in

the two middle feet of Homer's hexameter cut

off a

sectiotnwhich

was a lyric dactylic measureused by

the

Greek

poets.

In

applying

this

discovery, some

famous

metrician,

possibly

Heliodorus,

but at

any

rate

some one

who

lived at about his

time,

the

middle

of the

first century A.

D.,

lai(d

down a rule that caesura

must occur in olne of four

places

in the two middle

feet of

the

verse.

The

metricians then began to

look

for word-ends

at

these

places, and made caesura

nothingbut the occurrenceof the end of a wordin one

of these four places. There was difference of opinion

about

the

fourth

caesura,

some

holding that

it

was

the

fenminine

f

the fourth foot

(the

forbidden caesura

in

Homer and Vergil),

and

others the so-called bucolic

diaeresis.

But

caesura

in the

strict

sense

never

oc-

curred elsewhere, according

to

all

the treatises up

to

the

time of

Ausonius (fourth century A. D.),-the

reason being, obviously,

that

there existed

no shorter

dactylic

verses

in

lyric poetry which could

be found

before

the end

of

a word in

any

foot before

the third.

The rhetorical study

of

Homer led to the observation

that the

pauises

n

sense coincided with the caesurae.

Hence the term was extended by some grammarians o

include

a

pause

in

sense, and in late treatises

oftein

meant

nothing

else.

(3)

There

s no

evidence hat

the

ancients

ever made

a

pause

itn

the recited

hexameter

which

was not

required y

the

sense. And it

is

certain

that

caesura,regarded

s

the

mere

occurrence

f

a

word-end

n

the middle third

of

the

vterse,

wvas evermarked

by

a

pause.

(4)

Therefore

here

s

no

reason or making

a

pause

in

the

verse

of

Homer or

Vergilanywhere

hat the sense

does

not

require

t.

A

nd

there is

quite

as little reason

for

marking

the

pauses

in

sense,

and

calling

them

caesurae,

in

Vergil als

there

is in Cicero or

in Caesar.

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT

SAMUELE.

BASSETT

THE

NEW

YORK

CLASSICALCLUB

Dr. Grant Showerman, of the University

of Wis-

consin,

Director of the Summer School of Classical

Studies

at the

American

Academy

in Rome, addressed

The New

York

Classical

Club at its first meeting of the

year

1924-1925, November 6, on The Meaning of

Rome.

He traced

America's connection

with

Europe

through

the

English,

the Norman-French, and the

Romans,

the

influence

of Rome

especially showing

itself

through

the

Renaissance,

the

afterglow

of

which

is still

seen to-day.

He

stated that for

sources

of our modern

life we

should study

our

ancestry, that our cultural and

spiritual

ancestry is English, that

we are

Anglo-

Saxon

and Roman,

that

is, Anglo-Latin or Anglo-

Roman.

He

added

that Rome

had been

the

labora-

tory

of law for centuries and

that Roman law had

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