Scansion of Hor. S. 1.6.102

Dear Satirists,

The question was raised last class about line 102 of Hor. Sat. 1.6.  It's a hypermetric line, a line whose number of syllables exceeds what's required for six feet.

The scansion is as follows:

ēt cŏměs | āltěr, ŭ | tī nē | sōlūs | rūsvě pě | rēgrē<vě>

(If we were marking the scansion by hand, the syllable /gre/ in regre<ve> would be an anceps.)

You can see that the addition of the second -ve at the end creates an extra syllable at the end of the line. The addition of this syllable, indicated by the angle brackets, is necessary for parallel construction: "either to the country or abroad," -ve here functioning like -que does.

The solution for lines like these is often to see whether that extra syllable might elide into the first word if the next line. It does here, as is typical:

ēt cŏměs | āltěr, ŭ | tī nē | sōlūs | rūsvě pě | rēgrē<v(ě)>
ēxīrēm…

DC