1. 2016 Poets
Horace, Ovid, Martial

2. Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS We’ll start by reading Horace.
He is one of the most famous Augustan poets (not to mention one of the most famous Latin poets of all time).
He has a large body of extant work which include Sermones (or Satires), Carmina (Odes), Epodon Liber (Epodes), the Ars Poetica (Poetic Art) and Epistulae (Letters)
Horace wrote in many meters. His satires, for instance, were written (as was custom) in epic meter, dactylic hexameter. So were his Epistles and the Ars. For his Odes and Epodes he gets adventurous and uses a multitude of Greek meters (like Catullus but more so). Besides the epic meter we’ll see iambic strophe.
His work ranges across as many topics as he does meters. We’ll be reading from his first book of satires and his book of Epodes.

3. P. OVIDIUS NASO By the end of April we’ll be reading Ovid.
He is another Augustan poet, a little later than Horace and every bit as famous.
He also has a large body of extant work including the Metamorphoses, his most famous work. He wrote a poem on Roman festivals, which is still one of our best sources on the topic. He also very famously wrote a large number of poems on love called the Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), the Amores (Loves), and the Remedia Amoris (The Remedy of Love).
His works also come in multiple meters, but not as many as Horace. The Metamorphoses is considered an epic and is appropriately in epic meter. His love poems are in elegiac couplets, which is typical of love poetry.
We’ll be reading selections from the first book of the Amores.

4. M. VALERIUS MARTIALIS
In May we will finally read some epigrams of Martial.
He is different from the other poets in this presentation for many reasons. The first being that he was not of the Augustan age. He wrote under the Flavians and the Five Good Emperors.
He also has by far the most surviving poems with somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 in 15 books. There are so many, because he wrote epigrams which are typically very short. Many are only two lines long.
His epigrams are generally in elegiac couplets, though that does not necessarily indicate love poetry which one might expect. He does deviate from couplets, but relatively infrequently.
I do not know of any other poets famous for writing only epigrams (though Catullus did write some).

5. SCANSION The are two basic rules.
Syllables can be long by nature. (For instance in the two first principal parts of the verb to hear, the first person o is always long and the i in the infinitive is always long.)
audiô, audîre
Syllables can be long by position. This is when a vowel is followed by two consonants. (There are some possible exceptions here – h does not typically count as a consonant, and r doesn’t seem to cause a vowel to become long.)

6. ELISION The are three basic rules.
When a word ends with a vowel and the following word begins with a vowel, the two words elide.
When a word ends with an m and the following word begins with a vowel, the two words elide.
When a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with an h, the two words elide.
While m to h is never included among these rules, keep in mind we did see that happen more than once in Catullus.
There a few exceptions here, too. The following words do not elide: do, dem, spe, spem, sim, sto, stem, qui (plural)

7. METERS!
Ones of the most common and important meters to know is Dactylic Hexameter, a.k.a. Epic Meter.
Remember that the dashes represent long vowels, the half circles represent short vowels. As you can see, for some of the poetic feet the poet has an option of using two shorts or a long in their place. Notice in the fifth foot, there is no option.

8. METERS!
I have here the pattern for an elegiac couplet, since it is the one meter that all of you will see a lot of. I’ve added underlines to this image so that you can see where a long can optionally replace two shorts.

9. FEET!
And don’t forget the terms for the various metrical components that form all these meters. Based on what you’re reading this semester, you’ll mostly see dactyls and spondees. Still we will see some iambs in Horace and we may even see rare trochees and choriambs in Martial.

10. FEET! Dactyl = long, short, short Spondee = long, long
Iamb = short, long
Trochee = long, short
Choriamb = long, short, short, long