VOL. X

(Concluded from page 90)

When the teacher has gained some mastery of Latin quantities, and understands the structure of the Latin hexameter, what shall he do next? He should read Latin verses aloud, by the hundreds. How? Well, let the teacher work out in his own practice some scheme for himself, and stick to that, resolutely. But in doing this, he should keep certain principles in mind. Here again I shall state the obvious the obvious that is, however, often overlooked.

Since verse is not prose, and since it is distinguished from prose by the greater part which rhythm plays in it, the first task is to bring out the rhythm. The six metrical accents-ictuses of the Latin hexameter must, so far as is possible, be brought out, to the reader's own ear, if he has one, and to the ears of listeners. Here, some points of detail may be noted. Whatever may be one's theory of the nature of the ictus in Latin poetry, in practice he must treat ictus as stress. We can read verse, Latin or English, in no other way.

So let us forego the attempt to read Latin verse in some other way. Secondly, one may as well forego the attempt to 'count time' as he reads Latin hexameters. The theory that a long syllable had twice the time of a short will not work for any type of Latin verse, except the hexameter: it is not worth the effort to practice a metronome reading of the hexameter, for, to repeat, we must discard such a method the moment we pass to the reading of any other type of Greco-Roman verses. In practising, it will do no harm, at first, to exaggerate the ictus-stress: it is easy enough, after one gets the swing of the verse, to discard such overemphasis.

Another point, of special importance, may be noted here. It is well known that, commonly, there is in the first four feet of the hexameter conflict between wordaccent and ictus. Here, forgetting what I have elsewhere written on the subject, I say now, that, if the two cannot be maintained side by side, then the word-accent should yield to the metrical accent. We make wordaccent surrender thus to ictus in our reading of English poetry: why not do so in Latin poetry?

Out of what has just been said flows another matter. As a result of the conflict of word-accent and ictus, the earlier half of the Latin hexameter not infrequently

See in T. D. Goodell, Chapters on Greek Metric (Scribner's, New York, 1902), the fine chapter entitled Rhythmicus or Metricus (6-57); Chapter I in Mr. Lewis's book, English Verse, mentioned below; and THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 3. 12, Notes 1-2.

No. 13

seems to critical ears unmusical, if not more or less unmetrical. But this phenomenon is familiar enough in English verse. The point has been very well discussed in that admirable book, English Verse, by C. M. Lewis (Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1906). See Chapter I entire (1-18), and Chapter II (19-39).

What of elision? This matter has recently been treated anew, by Professors E. H. Sturtevant and R. G. Kent, in a paper, Elision and Hiatus in Latin Prose and Verse, The Transactions of the American Philological Association, 46.129-155. Professor Sturtevant gives the substance of this paper in The Classical Journal 12.34-43 (October, 1916), under the same title. Now, in the reading of Latin verse aloud, one may well refuse ever to 'elide'. I know perfectly well that he will, in such case, not be doing what the Romans did in this matter, but he will get results infinitely better than those got now by the process of crushing out entirely the elided syllable. He will get sense (see below), and he will get rhythm; the latter point I have proved by my own practice, and, far better evidence, by the fact that students who took part, under my direction, in performances of two Latin plays in Latin, and in no case crushed out the elided vowel, got, to other ears than mine, rhythm, rhythm unmistakable. It is easy enough to change from any other practice to this, that of refusing to elide at all. The present practice, followed by many, of completely eliding, is a foe to understanding of the original.

Again, in the reading of verse aloud, attention should be paid to bringing out the sense of the original. Here again is a platitude, but many persons seem never to have grasped the idea that a poet meant to be understood. They read line by line, stopping at the end of the verse, no matter how intimately the words at the end of that verse and those at the beginning of the next are associated in logic and syntax. This practice gives results as absurd as come from the current practice of singing hymns in Churches, when a (long) pause is made after each line, as absurd as the results that come from the practice of some organists of playing a refrain between stanzas which belong together in thought. To see its absurdity as applied to Latin one has only to read Horace, Carmina 2.6.1-2, with complete elision before et, the last word in each of these verses, and with a pause after the etl

Reading aloud helps in another matter, to many troublesome, that of the caesura. Here one may well begin by noting that the Grammars, as a rule, define caesura in a way which, while accurate enough, mis leads. According to them, we have caesura whenever a word ends within a foot. It follows that we may have numerous caesuras-five or six-in a single verse. It would be better to think of caesura in one way only-as a pause conditioned either by the necessity of taking breath within the verse, or by a pause in the sense, or by both factors at once. In this sense, we have in many verses two caesuras; in some, even three. Next, many find trouble in the fact that, if they fix on a certain point in the verse as the proper place for the caesura, words which belong closely together in logic and syntax stand on opposite sides of the caesura. I found no light anywhere on this point until I read Evangeline through, several times, from end to end, aloud. I noted presently that in verse after verse I had, of necessity, from limitations of breath, or from the effort to give the sense, or from both causes together, made a caesural pause at points so set in the verse that words which belonged closely together in logic and syntax were on opposite sides of the caesura. I concluded that, since this was giving me no trouble in English, my vernacular, it would give no trouble to a Roman, who understood Latin as his vernacular: my task, then, was merely to come to know Latin better.

In the early part of this editorial I spoke of the extent to which the language of the poets is affected and determined by purely metrical considerations. These matters ought, it seems to me, to be brought to the attention of the secondary student of Vergil. It is a task easy of accomplishment if the pupil has received any sort of adequate training in the hexameter; if the teacher discharges this task well, he will inevitably deepen the respect and admiration of his pupils for Vergil, by giving them some conception of the difficulties which in matters of form Vergil met and overcame. Further, a teacher might compare, for his own good as well as his pupils', some of the best as well as some of the worst verses in Ennius with good in the Aeneid, and thereby make even the dullest of his pupils realize the gap between the hexameters that mark the beginnings and those that mark the culmination of that type of poetic form among the Romans. He might compare verses of Catullus and Lucretius, too, with verses of Vergil, to show what advances Vergil made over his immediate predecessors; and lastly, by setting Vergil's verses side by side with those of Lucan, Ovid, or even Juvenal, he might show how incapable any one else was, even with Vergil before him as a model, to duplicate Vergil's achievement. All this is in reality comparatively simple work, not involving understanding of the subject-matter of the works referred to, and likely to stimulate understanding and appreciation of metrical form. If the teacher has no time to do this with his pupils he should do it for himself. This study of the metrical form of the Aeneid will lead him to juster apprehension and appreciation of the Aeneid itself. It is true that Vergil loved, for their own sake, intricate

and unusual turns of expression; but it is also true that much that strikes one, at least at first, as disagreeable in the language of Vergil was forced upon him by conditions which, with all his marvelous skill, he was not able to overcome entirely. To realize, first, how ill-adapted the Latin language was, naturally, to the hexameter, to gain some conception of the history of this form of verse among the Romans, to appreciate, even if but faintly, how much Vergil achieved in his hexameters, must waken admiration for Vergil's powers as a poet. С. К.

THE ITINERARIES

Almost at the very beginning of Greek literature stands the line, πολλῶν δ ̓ ἀνδρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα, 'he saw the cities of many men', and after this line comes the account of the travels of Odysseus to these same cities, our first itinerary. From the days of Homer there were Greek descriptions of travels, sometimes merely incidental to the author's theme, sometimes the most important part of his task. Pausanias, the industrious sightseer, who has been called an ancient Baedeker, is only the best-known of a long series of travellers who told of their journeys in Greece and of the marvels they had seen. The Anabasis of Xenophon and the Anabasis of Arrian give us full descriptions of travels in Asia. For Africa we have the Greek epitome of the story of the voyage of the Carthaginian Hanno, who in the fifth century B.C. founded a string of colonies along the west coast of the dark continent. There are a number of descriptions of the Red Sea and of the Indian Ocean, some depending on autopsy, others on hearsay and the writer's imagination. The cities a traveller would see along the coasts of the Mediterranean and of the Black Sea have been described several times. In fact, accounts of travels were so abundant that people finally began to parody them. Lucian's True History is a delightful take-off of some of the more fanciful travellers' tales. It leads us a journey of eighty days west of the Pillars of Hercules, to the moon, to the sun, to the Islands of the Blest, etc.

But it is not my intention to discuss all the writers of travels, Greek or Roman, or to give an outline of the history of travel or a summary of ancient geography. I would, however, like to call your attention to some late Latin documents which are called Itineraria, Itineraries, and to a few others very closely related to them, even though they do not actually bear the name Itinerarium.

On the Lago di Bracciano, about twenty-five miles north of Rome, are some hot sulphur springs which anciently were known as Aquae Apollinares. In 1852 their modern owners, the monks of a Jesuit monastery, noticed that the masonry about the mouth of the spring needed repairing. So they sent for a corps of Roman artisans and ordered them to remove the stonework, which had been placed there perhaps as early as the Etruscan period. Only a few feet below the normal level of the water the workmen came upon a layer of bronze and silver coins of the fourth century A.D. Beneath this was a stratum of gold and silver pieces of the early Empire. Then came silver family and consular money of the Republic. Under this were found bronze sextants, quadrants, trients, etc., of the most ancient period. The workmen divided among themselves the gold and the silver and made away with it. When everything of value, as they thought, had been abstracted, they called the owners of the spring.

The bronze pieces which were then gathered by the monks made the find the largest single discovery of coins of this sort. More than four thousand coins of Republican times were found, among them pieces from Rome, Naples, Metapontum, Syracuse, and other cities; besides these, one thousand four hundred specimens of aes grave signatum, and more than half a ton of aes rude. Underneath all this a thick layer of neolithic remains, arrowheads, knives of polished stone, etc., came to light. The whole find is now one of the treasures of the Museo Kircheriano in Rome. Its value is probably very much greater than that of the gold and the silver coins secreted by the original finders.

The workmen had come upon a collection which represented an accumulation of votive offerings. From time immemorial these hot springs must have been frequented. The visitor who was cured or at least aided by the use of the waters would on his departure throw a small offering into the spring in order to show his gratitude to the nymphs and to Apollo. In this way a treasure was gradually accumulated.

Now, besides the coins a few other objects of value were recovered in the water, among them four silver cups of cylindrical shape, 9-15 cm. high and 6-7 cm. in diameter. On the outside of these there is engraved a list of cities and stations and the distances between them, the whole giving us the complete route from Gades (Cadiz) in Spain to Rome. Some silversmith in Gades had very conveniently inscribed the cup which the traveller was to use on his journey with the route over which he was to pass.

Each of the four lists has a heading saying that this is the itinerary from Gades to Rome. Then follow the names of the cities in four columns, each of 25-26 lines, thus:

AD PORTUM XXIII (=the number of miles), HASTAM XVI, UGIAM XXVII, ORIPPUM XXIIII, HISPALIM VIII, CARMONEM XXII, OBUCLAM XX, etc.

The route given on these cups leads from Gades north along the Via Julia up the valley of the Baetis (Guadalquiver) until it strikes the seacoast near Saguntum, then follows Hannibal's line of march along the coast of Spain and southern France, turns up the Rhone for a short distance, crosses the Cottian Alps to Turin, goes along the southern side of the Po valley, down the eastern shore of Italy to Ariminum, then across the Apennines to Rome. The distance is summed up at the end of the itinerary; it amounts to the respectable sum of 1840 miles.

There are a few variations in the routes on the different cups, both as to the towns given and as to the distances between them. The goblets were probably not all made at the same time, and the differences perhaps represent minor changes in the route. Some of them are self-explanatory. For instance, a long stage might be broken up and a new station added. Or in the mountainous regions there might be an alteration of the road caused by the desire for an easier grade. Smaller discrepancies in the numbers, 16 for 15 miles, etc., probably represent mere differences in the estimates of the distances.

Some other variations may be noted. The first cup bears this heading: ITINERARIUM A GADES1 ROMAM. The second reads: AB2 GADES USQUE ROMA ITINERARE. The third runs: ITINERARE A GADES USQUE ROMA3, the fourth, A GADIBUS ROMA.

Similar differences are to be seen in the list themselves. The first cup has most of the names in the accusative, the correct case; the others have an occasional accusative, but the ablative is more frequent. Thus, HASTAM becomes HASTA, UGIAM UGIA, ORIPPUM ORIPPO. Now and then there is a locative form too; e. g. CORDUBAM becomes CORDUBA, then CORDUBAE. Other mistakes are plentiful; REGIUM LEPIDI, for example, appears as LEPIDUM REGIUM, REGIO LEPIDI, LEPIDO REGIO, REGIO. Ae and e are often confused.

This variation in the use of the cases, the uncertainty of the writers about prepositions, the bad spelling, and so forth, prove that these lists must have been made in fairly late times, when the Latin system of case-constructions was breaking down, when people no longer had a feeling for the meaning of the inflections, and when the pronunciation had changed considerably from the standards of Cicero's time. Some details in the course of the roads help us to fix the date of the cups with greater precision; it is the third century of our era.

A bronze cup of the same sort was found in Britain; it gives the names of five cities along Hadrian's wall. Very similar to the itineraries engraved on these goblets are some that have been preserved in manuscript. The best-known and most complete of this series is the Itinerarium Provinciarum Antonini Augusti, going back, as the name indicates, to one of the Antonines. Instead of giving merely the route between two points in the Roman Empire, it contains lists of almost all the Roman roads and the stations on them, in Africa, Sardinia, Sicily, Gaul, Spain, Britain, the Balkan Peninsula, and a large part of Italy; besides this, an itinerary from Rome through Pannonia, Moesia, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt to the southernmost boundary of the Roman Empire.

A work of a similar character is the Itinerarium Maritumum, which does for the shores and the islands An entirely different impression is obtained from the so-called Tabula Peutingeriana, a copy of an original of about 250 A.D. It is a map, if we can call it by so dignified a name, which represents the Roman Empire. But this map is about twenty feet long and one foot wide. We can readily imagine what happens to the countries under these conditions. Italy runs east and west. The Nile flows east, except for the Delta, and its source is very near Crete, much nearer than the Delta is. The island of Cyprus lies in a long, narrow bay, just east of Sidon and Tyre; the long and narrow bay is the eastern end of the Mediterranean, but it is no more elongated than any other part of the inland sea.

Curious, too, is the method of representation. The cities are indicated by two little houses with red roofs and doors; smaller fortresses by two towers, larger fortresses by a ring of towers; Rome, Constantinople, and Antioch by seated female figures; bathing-places and hot springs by a tank in the center of a large house. Now and then there appears a building of some other shape, with a legend attached, e. g. Hoc est templum Asclepii. The mountains are curiously flat. They are depicted by a straight line below and a scalloped line above; the intervening space is filled with yellow or black. The roads, drawn in red, are very prominent.

Now, in spite of the grotesque shape of the countries pictured, this map does give us a fairly accurate scheme of the Roman roads. For after all the roads are the important thing for the writer or painter of this description. The mountains, rivers, and other natural features which are introduced play no great rôle. The Tabula Peutingeriana is a true itinerary, an Itinerarium Pictum.

Somewhat closer to the itineraries of the cups is the so-called Itinerarium Burdigalense. It gives the route from Burdigala (Bordeaux) in southwestern France to Jerusalem. This runs via Arles, Turin, Milan, Aquileia through modern Servia and Bulgaria to Constantinople, then through Asia Minor to Antioch and Jerusalem. The return journey is made through Macedonia, across the Adriatic, to Beneventum, to Rome, then to Milan, where it joins the original route.

Now in this itinerary short notices are occasionally found, such as inde incipiunt Alpes Cottiae, or transis pontem, intras Pannoniam inferiorem, or civitas Viminatio mil. X. ubi Diocletianus occidit Carinum, or mansio Libissa mil. VIII.: ibi positus est rex Annibalianus (Hannibal is meant!) qui fuit Afrorum.

However, when we come to Palestine, the account grows much fuller. We have here a description of the Holy Land five or six pages in length, which is very important because it is the first of a long series of descriptions of Palestine. It was written during the life-time of Constantine, only seven years after the famous pilgrimage of his mother, St. Helena. Many of the sites that are still shown to tourists are already pointed out in this itinerary: Golgatha and the Holy

the Jews weep, the cave in which Christ was born, the fountain at which Philip baptized the eunuch, etc. Among the more apocryphal might be mentioned the tree on which Zacchaeus climbed to see the Lord, and the cave where Solomon tortured the demons. Rather interesting is the writer's remark about the pool of Siloam: Haec (!) fons sex diebus atque noctibus currit, septima vero die est sabbatum; in totum nec nocte nec die currit.

This Bordeaux Itinerary is, however, far surpassed by the Peregrinatio Aetheriae or Sanctae Silviae. This is the best known and most interesting of the many accounts of pilgrimages. Besides its very great value as an example of late Latin of the worst sort, its contents are most important for the student of Palestinian archaeology. It is very detailed; the bare lists of names have made way for a careful description of the places seen and of the actions of the visitors. The account unfortunately is fragmentary (the chief part, concerning the travels in Palestine, has been lost); still there remain about thirty pages of notes on Sinai, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, and twenty pages more describing minutely the order of service in the various Churches of Jerusalem and nearby places.

The account is written for some women, who are addressed as dominae venerabiles sorores. Who they were is not known. The name of the author is probably Aetheria. Who she was is also unknown. She seems to have lived near the Rhone, in the fourth, fifth, or sixth century. The Roman Empire was still powerful, though attacked by enemies. We are told, for example, that, on the boundaries of Egypt, Aetheria and her companions were escorted by soldiers from one fortress to the next, on account of the danger of an attack by Saracens (Chapter 7.2).

It has been suggested that the author was a woman of some ecclesiastical position, perhaps an abbess, because the monks of all the monasteries were very eager to receive the travellers, to show them the sights, to climb mountains with them, and to conduct them from one place to another. For instance, in her description of Mt. Sinai, Aetheria says (Chapter 7):

See, the priest, who had charge of the church left his monastery and came to meet us and the other priests too came to meet us, and also all the monks who dwelt near that mountain we were leaving the church the priests of that place gave us gifts, that is of the apples which grow on that mountain.

and as

Still, it seems hardly necessary to make Aetheria an abbess on account of the cordiality of the monks, for is that not the same hearty reception that one gets even to-day in out-of-the-way monasteries in the Orient?

A word about the things Aetheria and her party came to see. Their chief interest was of course religious; they were pilgrims. On Sinai they visited the cave where Moses dwelt when he went to receive the law, the place where stood the camp of the Israelites, the rock against which Moses broke the tablets of the law, the spot where stood the golden calf, where it rained manna, where Deuteronomy was written, and, last but not least, they visited the monks and the holy men who dwelt nearby.

Whenever the party came to an important site, they would have a religious service; they would sing a psalm and read the passage of Scripture in which this particular place was mentioned. As an example the following instance will do (Chapter 4): Towards evening they came to a pleasant garden before a little Church and in that garden saw the bush, the identical bush, in the flames of which the Lord had appeared to Moses. It was too late for the full service; so they offered prayers in the Church and in the garden at the bush and read the proper passage from the book of Moses, 'and so, because it was late' they 'took lunch before the bush, together with the holy men'.

Only once in the Peregrinatio does there seem to be an appreciation of the beauty of nature (Chapter 3.8):

But from the top of that mountain <Sinai> those mountains which we had at first ascended only with great difficulty seemed in comparison with the central mountain on which we were standing to be as far below us as though they were little hills, while they were actually so huge that I did not believe ever to have seen higher ones except that this central one surpassed them exceedingly much. But Egypt and Palestine and the Red Sea and that Parthenian Sea, which leads to Alexandria and the territory of the Saracens, we saw lying beneath us so infinite that it could scarcely be believed.

In general, it might be added, this appreciation of natural beauty is rare in the pilgrimages. Petrus Diaconus, or rather one of his sources of very much earlier date, gives us almost the only other instance (edition of Geyer, page 111):

But from Mt. Hermon, which is very high, all Gallilee is seen nothing is more beautiful, for, since it is a large plain, there is nothing there but vineyards and olive orchards.

Now and then Aetheria seems a bit dubious, or shall we say perplexed, at the things she is asked to believe. When she was in Egypt, following the headlong course of the Children of Israel fleeing before Pharaoh, a very great many places, it seems, were pointed out as having been on the route of the fleeing nation. She says (7.3):

And I wish your love to believe me, that, at least as much as I could see, the Children of Israel travelled in this way, that, just as far as they went to the right, so far they turned to the left, and, as far as they again advanced, so far they again turned back, and in this way they made that journey until they came to the Red Sea.

At another time it seems she was somewhat disappointed. This was when she came to the spot where Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt (12.7):

But believe me, venerable mistresses, the pillar itself no longer appears, but the place only is shown; but the pillar itself is said to have been covered by the Dead Sea. Certainly when we saw the place we saw no pillar, and therefore I can not deceive you about this matter. For the bishop of this place, that is, of Segor, told us that it was already a number of years since that column no longer appeared.

It is very interesting to note in this connection how legends grow and change. In one of the earliest accounts of this pillar, Carmen de Sodoma, occur the lines (123 ff.):

For it still remains standing under the open sky, Not moved from its place by the rains, nor overthrown by the winds.

Nay, even if some traveller mutilate its form, Straightway it grows and out of itself it fills the wound. Theodosius (ca. 530 A.D.) says (Chapter 20): There is found the wife of Lot, who was made a statue of salt, and as the moon grows she grows too, and as the moon diminishes she diminishes too.

Antoninus of Placentia (ca. 570 A.D.) says (15):

For the stories people tell about the wife of Lot, that she grows smaller by animals licking her are not true, but she stands in the same state in which she was.

According to a still later account, that of the Russian, Daniel, A.D. 1106, Lot's wife had undergone a second transformation (56):

One verst from Segor to the south on an elevation is found a pillar of rock which is the wife of Lot.

Aetheria had probably heard similar fanciful tales of Lot's wife and thus was a bit disappointed when she did not see her at all. If you will pardon a digression, I would like to tell you about the disappointment of another pilgrim, though in an entirely different case. The story is related in the Itinerary of Antoninus (Chapter 34):

The nuns told us about the virtues of Maria, who wandered in the desert< she was evidently a very great saint>, and for two days the man with whom I was wandered about seeking her; but whether he found her or whether he did not find her, he did not wish to tell us. Still the tunics and the dates and the ground peas, the gifts which he carried out with him, or the lupines, none of these he brought back with him. His affliction and lamentation we were in no wise able to relieve; he only kept on saying: 'Alas, unfortunate man that I am, why do I call myself a Christian?'

We can only surmise what did happen or what did not happen to him.

But let us go back to Aetheria. Our saint seems to have been free from the tourists' vice of souvenir hunting. Not so all of her contemporaries. Of course we must remember that with them it usually was more than mere souvenir hunting; it was obtaining a sacred relic. In Jerusalem, says Aetheria (37), the Holy Cross is shown at certain occasions. But, when it has been put out on a table, the bishop, seated, puts his hands on top of the sacred wood, and the deacons who stand round about, keep watch.

But this is so guarded for the reason that the whole people coming one by one, believers and catechumens, bend down to the table and kiss the sacred wood and then pass on. And because at some time or other some one is said to have taken a bite, and stolen some of the sacred wood, for that reason it is now so guarded in this manner by the deacons who stand round about, that no one who comes dare again to do thus.

In his account of Arculf's pilgrimage Adamnanus (ca. 670 A.D.) records the following tale (1.23-24): In the open center of a Church on the Mount of