Saturnian (poetry)

The Saturnian is an ancient Latin verse metric. He is one of the few original Italian versification, which are attested literary, and thus stands apart from the rest imported from Greek metric versification. About its origin is not known, speculation remains the assumption that the meter was in connection with the archaic cult of Saturnus.

It was used in grave and dedicatory inscriptions and literary texts, but soon replaced by other forms of Greek origin. The inscriptions in the grave of the Scipios are written by the year 139 BC in Saturniern. From literary texts in the verses of the Saturniers we just handed fragments, so Sentences of Censor (312 BC) Appius Claudius Caecus, fragments from the Odusia ( the Odyssey transmission of Roman literature pioneer Livius Andronicus ) and from the epic Bellum Poenicum of Gnaeus Naevius. After Naevius the Saturnian disappeared from the literature. Even his contemporary Ennius assessed the Saturnian as an almost obsolete, outdated meter: scripsere alii rem / versibus, quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant " The other wrote this thing / in verse, which used once to sing the faunas and seer ".

In the epic of the Saturnian was replaced by the dactylic hexameter, which was also characteristic of the Greek epic for the genus. The meter of grave inscriptions was the elegiac couplet, a series of hexameter and pentameter.

Because of sparse certificates and the huge wealth of variants, the metric character of Saturniers is still unclear. It was probably originally was an accentuating meter, which gradually developed under Greek influence to a quantitierenden, but the details of this development are unknown.

Remains as open the question of the role played by the number of syllables and whether there was in this a mandatory standard. Therefore, many traditional verses or Versfragmente can not even clearly identify as a Saturnian.