Golden line
Encyclopedia
The golden line is a type of Latin
dactylic hexameter
frequently mentioned in Latin
classrooms in English
speaking countries and in contemporary scholarship written in English.
These lines have the abVAB structure, in which nouns are placed at the end of the line in an interlocking order. Pendula is an adjective modifying bractea and flaventem is an adjective modifying crinem.
Another would be Virgil
, Aeneid
4.139
word-by-word the line translates as "golden purple bound clasp cloak". The endings on the Latin words indicate their syntactical relationship, whereas English uses word order to do the same job. So a Latin listener or reader would know that golden and clasp go together even though the words are separated.
The term "golden line" originates in England. The definition quoted above is the earliest known use of the term, in an obscure Latin textbook published in England in 1652, which never sold well and of which only four copies are extant today. It appeared in some American and British Latin Grammars in the 19th and early 20th century. Only a few scholars outside the English-speaking world discuss the golden line. It is not found in any current handbooks on Latin grammar or metrics
except for Mahoney's online Overview of Latin Syntaxhttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0022%3Achapter%3D3 and Panhuis's Latin Grammar.
The term "golden line" did not exist in Classical antiquity. Classical poets probably did not strive to produce them (but see the teres versus in the history section below). Winbolt, the most thorough commentator on the golden line, described the form as a natural combination of obvious tendencies in Latin hexameter, such as the preference for putting adjectives towards the beginning of the line and nouns at the emphatic end. The golden line is an extreme form of hyperbaton
.
There are about ten different definitions of the “golden line.” Often scholars do not explicitly offer a definition, but instead present statistics or lists of golden lines, from which one must extrapolate their criteria for deeming a verse golden.
Perhaps this more inclusive definition is based upon the famous definition offered by the poet John Dryden
in his introduction to the Silvae
, “that Verse commonly which they call golden, or two Substantives and two Adjectives with a Verb
betwixt them to keep the peace.” Wilkinson offered the humorous definition “silver line” for this variant. Wilkinson also offered another humorous distinction, the "bronze line", but this term has rarely been used since.
Since there is no clear ancient definition, most modern scholars and teachers base their definition on what they learned from their first Latin teachers. Some definitions are very idiosyncratic. One scholar of British Literature completely missed the hyperbaton
which is central to the form.
to Statius
. Table 2 gives similar figures for a few poets in late antiquity, while Table 3 gives figures for a selection of early medieval poems from the fifth to tenth centuries of this era.
In all three tables, the first column is the total number of verses in the work in question, followed by the number of “golden lines” and “silver lines” in the work. More important for the purposes of comparison are the last three columns, which give the percentage of golden and silver lines in respect to the total number of verses. Aside from a few exceptions, only poems with more than 200 lines are included, since in shorter poems the percentage figures are arbitrary and can be quite high. See, for example, the combined percentage of 14.29 in the Apocolocyntosis. Similarly, other short poems that are not included on the tables, such as the Copa, Moretum, Lydia, and Einsiedeln Eclogues, have rather high combined percentages between 3.45 and 5.26.
Table 1 Golden and Silver Lines in Classical Poetry
From Table 1 we see that golden and silver lines occur in varying frequencies throughout the classical period, even within the corpus of a single author. There are no Latin golden or silver lines before Catullus
, who uses them in poem 64 to an extent almost unparalleled in classical literature. Lucretius
has a few examples of the form. Horace has about 1 in every 300 lines, as does Virgil’s Aeneid. Virgil’s earlier works have a much higher percentage. Ovid and Lucan use the golden line about once in every 100 lines. The high percentage of golden lines found in the Laus Pisonis and other works of the Nero
nian period has led some scholars to claim that the form is a mark of Neronian aesthetics. While several scholars have claimed that the golden line is mainly and artfully used to close periods and descriptions, the poems do not seem to bear this out.
Unfortunately, no amount of statistics can prove that the golden line was a recognized form of classical poetics.
Table 2: Golden lines in selected late antique poetry
As Table 2 shows, in late antiquity the use of golden lines remains within the general range found in classical times. Of particular interest is their use by Claudian. On the average the golden line crops up in every 50 lines of Claudian, but there are considerable differences between works. Table 2 gives his poem with the lowest percentage (On Honorius’s Fourth Consulship) and that with the highest (On Honorius’s Third Consulship).
Figurative poetry, such as that of Publilius Optatianus Porfirius
and, in Carolingian
times, that of Hrabanus Maurus, rarely uses the golden line. These poets use a variety of hexameters praised by Diomedes—rhopalic verses, echo verses, and reciprocal verses. They use the golden line once or twice. The form is rather elementary compared to their usual pyrotechnic displays.
Table 3 reveals several interesting tendencies in golden line usage in the early medieval period. The fact that Caelius Sedulius, Aldhelm, and the Hisperica Famina have a pronounced preference for the form has long been noted. Corippus in the sixth century also uses the golden line significantly more than classical authors. Note that there is not a comparable increase in the silver line: If anything, these authors have fewer silver lines. This trend may be due to the growing fondness for leonine rhymes, which are facilitated by the golden line structure but not by the silver line. Another tendency, seen in Corippus, Sedulius, Aldhelm, and Walther de Speyer, is an extremely large number of golden lines in the beginning of a work, which is not matched in the rest of the work. Many scholars only tallied figures for the golden line at the beginnings of these poems, and therefore can have inflated numbers. In the first 500 lines of Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate, for example, there are 42 golden lines and 7 silver lines, yielding percentages of 8.4 and 1.4 respectively; in the last 500 lines (2405-2904) there are only 20 golden lines and 4 silver lines, yielding percentages of 4 and 0.8 respectively—a reduction by half. Corippus’s Ioannis and Sedulius’s Paschale have even more extreme reductions. These skewed percentages may indicate that the golden line is an ideal that is artfully strived for but which cannot be continuously realized over the course of a long epic.
Another possible explanation for the diminished use of golden lines within an author’s work (observed already in Virgil
; see Table 1) is that, with time, poets may gradually free themselves from the constraints of the form. The golden line may have been taught in the schools as a quick way to elegance, which poets would use with increasing moderation as their experience grew. Two poems that appear to be juvenalia point to this conclusion. The Hisperica Famina is a bizarre text which is apparently from seventh-century Ireland. It seems to be a collection of school compositions on set themes that have been run together. Of its 612 lines, 144—23.53 percent—have the golden line structure. Most of the lines that are not “golden” are merely too short to have more than three words; or, occasionally, they are too long. These extremely short or long lines are due to the fact that the poem is not written in hexameter
. It may be written in some rough stress-based meter, but even that cannot be stated with certainty. But the ideal model that the composers took for their verses appears to have been the golden line. Walther de Speyer composed his poem on the life of St. Christopher in 984 when he was seventeen. The percentage of golden lines is high, but the number of near-misses is enormous. When you read Walther you get the impression that he was programmed in school to write golden lines.
The large number of golden lines in poetry from the sixth through ninth centuries could reflect the combination of several trends, such as the preference for hyperbaton
and the growing popularity of leonine rhymes. The statistics do not (and cannot) prove that the form was ever taught and practiced as a discrete form. Even if the golden line was not a conscious poetic conceit in the classical or medieval period, it might have some utility today as a term of analysis in discussing such poetry. However, the form now appears in canonical English commentaries to authors from Callimachus
to Aldhelm and most scholars who refer to the golden line today treat it as an important poetic form of indisputable antiquity.
. This work was written before 500 CE, and it has been plausibly suggested that he wrote after 350 CE.
Diomedes' chapter entitled “De pedibus metricis sive significationum industria” (Keil 498-500) describes the teres versus, which has been identified by del Castillo (p. 133) as the golden line:
The example verse is a golden line. However, it is difficult to understand what "conjoin a fluent and contiguous phrase" ( volubilem et cohaerentem continuant dictionem) means and how exactly it applies to this verse. None of the other ancient metricians use the term teres versus or (the Greek form that Diomedes mentions as its equivalent). The only other commentator to mention the teres versus was the Renaissance
scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger
(1484–1558), who did not seem to understand Diomedes. In his book Poetices Libri Septem (1964 Stuttgart facsimile reprint of the 1561 Lyon edition, p. 71-72, text in Mayer), Scaliger offers a muddled attempt at understanding Diomedes. He mentions that "Quintilian
and others" mention this as a teres versus:
Our manuscripts of Quintilian do not include this verse of Virgil, but it is the first pure golden line in Virgil and it becomes the most famous golden line citation. Scaliger's use of this example is evidence that someone between Diomedes and him took the term teres versus to be similar to a modern golden line.
The English fascination with the golden line seems to trace back to Bede
. Bede advocated a double hyperbaton
, and also the placing of adjectives before nouns. In the examples from each criterion (double hyperbaton and adjectives before nouns) Bede includes at least one golden line, but from his other examples it is clear that he did not limit these injunctions to the golden line:
Bede
’s remarks in his De arte metrica were repeated and made more strict by Renaissance
guides to versification, ultimately leading to Burles’s description of the golden line. The earliest is the 1484 De arte metrificandi of Jacob Wimpfeling:
And two years later the Ars Versificandi of Conrad Celtes
followed Wimpfeling:
In 1512 Johannes Despauterius
quoted Celtis’s remarks verbatim in his Ars versificatoria in the section De componendis carminibus praecepta generalia and then more narrowly defined excellence in hexameters in the section De carmine elegiaco:
Despauterius here combines Bede’s two rules into one general precept of elegance: Two adjectives should be placed before two substantives, the first agreeing with the first. It is not quite the golden line, for there is no provision for a verb in the middle. However, Despauterius quotes the famous example of the golden line, Eclogue 2.50, as a good example of the type. This line is the first pure golden line in Virgil's works. It is also the example line given in Scaliger above.
The same general remarks about epithets are found in John Clarke’s 1633 Manu-ductio ad Artem Carmificam seu Dux Poeticus (345):
The source of Clarke’s first example line is unknown, but the same line is also one of Burles’s examples of the golden line. Burles’s discussion of the golden line is clearly based upon this tradition concerning the position of epithets. Burles’s golden line is a narrow application of the principles outlined by Bede almost a millennium earlier.
Scholars like to believe that their critical approaches to classical poetry are direct and immediate, and that they understand classical literature in its own context or, depending on their critical stance, from the perspective of their own context(s). However, the use of “the golden line” as a critical term in modern scholarship demonstrates the power of the intervening critical tradition. The golden line may originally have been the teres versus of Diomedes, but this fact does not legitimate its use as a critical term today. No commentators today count up versus inlibati, iniuges, quinquipartes, or any of the other bizarre forms assembled by Diomedes.
In all likelihood the golden line is a term gradually developed by Medieval and Renaissance grammarians, from Bede to Burles, but this indeterminate (and apparently unknown) pedigree does not explain its curious hold on Anglo-American scholarship. Far more interesting than the appearance of the golden line in ancient and medieval poetry is the use of the term by these modern critics. Today major works and commentaries on canonical poets in Latin and Greek discuss them in light of the golden line, and occasionally even the silver line: Neil Hopkinson’s Callimachus
, William Anderson’s Metamorphoses, Richard Thomas’s Georgics
, Alan Cameron’s Claudian
, Andy Orchard’s Aldhelm. Most of these critics assume or imply that golden lines were deliberate figures, practiced since Hellenistic times and artfully contrived and composed by the poets in question. This process of scouring the canonical texts for such special verse forms is entirely in the spirit of the ancient lists of Servius, Victorinus, and Diomedes. Thus, in a curious way, the arcane wordplay that fascinated ancient grammarians has—in the English-speaking world, at least—come again to play a role in interpreting and explicating the central works of the classical canon.
Precursors
These works are often cited in golden line literature, but they do not mention the term and are only peripherally connected to the form, except for Kerlouégan
Chronological listing of Non-English Golden Line Citations
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
dactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin, and was consequently considered to be the Grand Style of classical poetry...
frequently mentioned in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
classrooms in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
speaking countries and in contemporary scholarship written in English.
Definition
The golden line is variously defined, but most uses of the term conform to the oldest known definition from Burles' Latin grammar of 1652:- If the Verse does consist of two Adjectives, two SubstantivesNounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
and a Verb only, the first Adjective agreeing with the first Substantive, the second with the second, and the Verb placed in the midst, it is called a Golden Verse: as,- Lurida terribiles miscent aconita novercae. (OvidOvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
, Metamorphoses 1.147) - Pendula flaventem pingebat bractea crinem.
- Lurida terribiles miscent aconita novercae. (Ovid
These lines have the abVAB structure, in which nouns are placed at the end of the line in an interlocking order. Pendula is an adjective modifying bractea and flaventem is an adjective modifying crinem.
-
- Pendula flaventem pingebat bractea crinem.
- adjective a, adjective b, VERB, noun A, noun B (abVAB)
Another would be Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
4.139
-
- aurea purpuream subnectit fibula vestem,
- "a golden clasp bound her purple cloak"
word-by-word the line translates as "golden purple bound clasp cloak". The endings on the Latin words indicate their syntactical relationship, whereas English uses word order to do the same job. So a Latin listener or reader would know that golden and clasp go together even though the words are separated.
The term "golden line" originates in England. The definition quoted above is the earliest known use of the term, in an obscure Latin textbook published in England in 1652, which never sold well and of which only four copies are extant today. It appeared in some American and British Latin Grammars in the 19th and early 20th century. Only a few scholars outside the English-speaking world discuss the golden line. It is not found in any current handbooks on Latin grammar or metrics
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...
except for Mahoney's online Overview of Latin Syntaxhttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0022%3Achapter%3D3 and Panhuis's Latin Grammar.
The term "golden line" did not exist in Classical antiquity. Classical poets probably did not strive to produce them (but see the teres versus in the history section below). Winbolt, the most thorough commentator on the golden line, described the form as a natural combination of obvious tendencies in Latin hexameter, such as the preference for putting adjectives towards the beginning of the line and nouns at the emphatic end. The golden line is an extreme form of hyperbaton
Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton is a figure of speech in which words that naturally belong together are separated from each other for emphasis or effect. This kind of unnatural or rhetorical separation is possible to a much greater degree in highly inflected languages, where sentence meaning does not depend closely...
.
There are about ten different definitions of the “golden line.” Often scholars do not explicitly offer a definition, but instead present statistics or lists of golden lines, from which one must extrapolate their criteria for deeming a verse golden.
The So-Called "Silver Line"
Although Burles’s 1652 definition (see the introduction above) is explicit about the abVAB structure, many scholars also consider lines with this chiastic pattern to be “golden”:- humanum miseris volvunt erroribus aevum (PrudentiusPrudentiusAurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Roman Christian poet, born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis in 348. He probably died in Spain, as well, some time after 405, possibly around 413...
, Hamartigenia 377) - adjective a, adjective b, VERB, noun B, noun A (abVBA)
Perhaps this more inclusive definition is based upon the famous definition offered by the poet John Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
in his introduction to the Silvae
Silvae
The Silvae is a collection of Latin occasional poetry in hexameters, hendecasyllables, and lyric meters by Publius Papinius Statius . There are 32 poems in the collection, divided into five books. Each book contains a prose preface which introduces and dedicates the book...
, “that Verse commonly which they call golden, or two Substantives and two Adjectives with a Verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
betwixt them to keep the peace.” Wilkinson offered the humorous definition “silver line” for this variant. Wilkinson also offered another humorous distinction, the "bronze line", but this term has rarely been used since.
Criteria for inclusion and exclusion
Most scholars who care about the topic exclude the less common variants in which one or both nouns precede the verb, gold (aBVAb, AbVaB, ABVab) and silver (aBVbA, AbVBa, ABVba). Some scholars include lines with extra prepositions, adverbs, exclamations, conjunctions, and relative pronouns. For example, Orchard does not offer a definition of the golden line, but his criteria can be extracted from his list of the golden lines in Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate. He allows relative pronouns (2, 4, 112, 221, 288), prepositions (278, 289), conjunctions like ut and dum (95, 149, 164, 260), exclamations (45), and adverbs (14). He also allows extra adjectives, as in “Haec suprema”. He includes silver lines (4, 123, 260). He disqualifies inverted or mixed order, where nouns come first (101, 133, 206, 236, 275, 298). He allows participles as the verb in the middle (71, 182), but he does not include the periphrastic verbal form in 271: Atque futurorum gestura est turma nepotum.Since there is no clear ancient definition, most modern scholars and teachers base their definition on what they learned from their first Latin teachers. Some definitions are very idiosyncratic. One scholar of British Literature completely missed the hyperbaton
Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton is a figure of speech in which words that naturally belong together are separated from each other for emphasis or effect. This kind of unnatural or rhetorical separation is possible to a much greater degree in highly inflected languages, where sentence meaning does not depend closely...
which is central to the form.
Use by classical poets
Do classical poets use the golden line? And if so, how? Statistics cannot really answer this question, but they do illuminate some long-term trends in the use of the golden line. The following statistical tables are offered with the warning that they are based upon one scholar's definitions of golden and "silver" lines (the tables are from Mayer in the bibliography below). There is no consensus on their definition. Table 1 gives the totals for the gold and silver lines in classical poetry, listed in approximate chronological order from CatullusCatullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
to Statius
Statius
Publius Papinius Statius was a Roman poet of the 1st century CE . Besides his poetry in Latin, which include an epic poem, the Thebaid, a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae, and the unfinished epic, the Achilleid, he is best known for his appearance as a major character in the Purgatory...
. Table 2 gives similar figures for a few poets in late antiquity, while Table 3 gives figures for a selection of early medieval poems from the fifth to tenth centuries of this era.
In all three tables, the first column is the total number of verses in the work in question, followed by the number of “golden lines” and “silver lines” in the work. More important for the purposes of comparison are the last three columns, which give the percentage of golden and silver lines in respect to the total number of verses. Aside from a few exceptions, only poems with more than 200 lines are included, since in shorter poems the percentage figures are arbitrary and can be quite high. See, for example, the combined percentage of 14.29 in the Apocolocyntosis. Similarly, other short poems that are not included on the tables, such as the Copa, Moretum, Lydia, and Einsiedeln Eclogues, have rather high combined percentages between 3.45 and 5.26.
Table 1 Golden and Silver Lines in Classical Poetry
| Poem | Total Verses | Golden | Silver | % Golden | % Silver | % Gold & Silver |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catullus Catullus Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:... 64 |
408 | 18 | 10 | 4.41 | 2.45 | 6.86 |
| Horace Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:... , Satires & Epistles |
3981 | 14 | 4 | 0.35 | 0.10 | 0.45 |
| Virgil Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid... , Eclogues |
829 | 15 | 7 | 1.81 | 0.84 | 2.65 |
| Virgil Georgic 2 | 542 | 11 | 5 | 2.03 | 0.92 | 2.95 |
| Virgil Georgic 4 | 566 | 5 | 2 | 0.88 | 0.35 | 1.24 |
| Virgil Aeneid Aeneid The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter... |
9896 | 34 | 26 | 0.34 | 0.26 | 0.61 |
| Culex | 414 | 18 | 5 | 4.35 | 1.21 | 5.56 |
| Ciris | 541 | 27 | 12 | 4.99 | 2.22 | 7.21 |
| Ovid Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria... , Metamorphoses |
11989 | 126 | 28 | 1.05 | 0.23 | 1.28 |
| Lucan Marcus Annaeus Lucanus Marcus Annaeus Lucanus , better known in English as Lucan, was a Roman poet, born in Corduba , in the Hispania Baetica. Despite his short life, he is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period... |
8060 | 118 | 51 | 1.46 | 0.63 | 2.10 |
| Laus Pisonis | 261 | 16 | 4 | 6.13 | 1.53 | 7.66 |
| Persius | 650 | 6 | 6 | 0.92 | 0.92 | 1.85 |
| Ilias Latina Ilias Latina The Ilias Latina is a short Latin hexameter version of the Iliad of Homer that gained popularity in Antiquity and remained popular through the Middle Ages. It was very widely studied and read in Medieval schools as part of the standard Latin educational curriculum. According to Ernest Robert... |
1070 | 20 | 8 | 1.87 | .75 | 2.62 |
| Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudi | 49 | 6 | 1 | 12.24 | 2.04 | 14.29 |
| Statius Statius Publius Papinius Statius was a Roman poet of the 1st century CE . Besides his poetry in Latin, which include an epic poem, the Thebaid, a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae, and the unfinished epic, the Achilleid, he is best known for his appearance as a major character in the Purgatory... , Thebais 1 |
720 | 5 | 3 | .69 | .42 | 1.11 |
| Statius, Thebais 2 | 743 | 8 | 4 | 1.08 | .54 | 1.62 |
| Statius, Thebais 3 | 721 | 2 | 1 | .28 | .14 | .42 |
From Table 1 we see that golden and silver lines occur in varying frequencies throughout the classical period, even within the corpus of a single author. There are no Latin golden or silver lines before Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
, who uses them in poem 64 to an extent almost unparalleled in classical literature. Lucretius
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is an epic philosophical poem laying out the beliefs of Epicureanism, De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe".Virtually no details have come down concerning...
has a few examples of the form. Horace has about 1 in every 300 lines, as does Virgil’s Aeneid. Virgil’s earlier works have a much higher percentage. Ovid and Lucan use the golden line about once in every 100 lines. The high percentage of golden lines found in the Laus Pisonis and other works of the Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
nian period has led some scholars to claim that the form is a mark of Neronian aesthetics. While several scholars have claimed that the golden line is mainly and artfully used to close periods and descriptions, the poems do not seem to bear this out.
Unfortunately, no amount of statistics can prove that the golden line was a recognized form of classical poetics.
Table 2: Golden lines in selected late antique poetry
| Poem | Total Verses | Golden | Silver | % Golden | % Silver | % Gold & Silver |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prudentius Prudentius Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Roman Christian poet, born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis in 348. He probably died in Spain, as well, some time after 405, possibly around 413... , Apotheosis |
1084 | 8 | 5 | 0.74 | 0.46 | 1.20 |
| Prudentius Prudentius Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Roman Christian poet, born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis in 348. He probably died in Spain, as well, some time after 405, possibly around 413... , Hamartigenia |
966 | 11 | 3 | 1.14 | 0.31 | 1.45 |
| Prudentius Prudentius Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Roman Christian poet, born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis in 348. He probably died in Spain, as well, some time after 405, possibly around 413... , Psychomachia Psychomachia The Psychomachia by the Late Antique Latin poet Prudentius is probably the first and most influential "pure" medieval allegory, the first in a long tradition of works as diverse as the Romance of the Rose, Everyman, and Piers Plowman.In slightly less than a thousand lines, the poem describes the... |
915 | 12 | 4 | 1.31 | 0.44 | 1.75 |
| Aegritudo Perdicae | 290 | 3 | 0 | 1.03 | 0.00 | 1.03 |
| Dracontius, De laudibus Dei 1 | 754 | 6 | 2 | .80 | .27 | 1.06 |
| Claudian Claudian Claudian was a Roman poet, who worked for Emperor Honorius and the latter's general Stilicho.A Greek-speaking citizen of Alexandria and probably not a Christian convert, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395. He made his mark with a eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby... , Panegyricus 1 |
279 | 10 | 3 | 3.58 | 1.08 | 4.66 |
| Claudian Claudian Claudian was a Roman poet, who worked for Emperor Honorius and the latter's general Stilicho.A Greek-speaking citizen of Alexandria and probably not a Christian convert, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395. He made his mark with a eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby... In Eutropium Eutropius (Byzantine official) Eutropius was a fourth century Eastern Roman official.He began his career as a eunuch in the palace of Theodosius I. After Theodosius' death in 395 he successfully arranged the marriage of the new emperor, Arcadius, to Aelia Eudoxia, having blocked an attempt by Arcadius' chief minister, Rufinus,... 1 |
513 | 5 | 8 | 0.97 | 1.56 | 2.53 |
| Claudian Claudian Claudian was a Roman poet, who worked for Emperor Honorius and the latter's general Stilicho.A Greek-speaking citizen of Alexandria and probably not a Christian convert, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395. He made his mark with a eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby... On Honorius Honorius (emperor) Honorius , was Western Roman Emperor from 395 to 423. He was the younger son of emperor Theodosius I and his first wife Aelia Flaccilla, and brother of the eastern emperor Arcadius.... ’s Third Consulship |
211 | 9 | 3 | 4.27 | 1.42 | 5.69 |
| Claudian Claudian Claudian was a Roman poet, who worked for Emperor Honorius and the latter's general Stilicho.A Greek-speaking citizen of Alexandria and probably not a Christian convert, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395. He made his mark with a eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby... On Honorius Honorius (emperor) Honorius , was Western Roman Emperor from 395 to 423. He was the younger son of emperor Theodosius I and his first wife Aelia Flaccilla, and brother of the eastern emperor Arcadius.... ’s Fourth Consulship |
656 | 10 | 5 | 1.52 | 0.76 | 2.29 |
| Ausonius Ausonius Decimius Magnus Ausonius was a Latin poet and rhetorician, born at Burdigala .-Biography:Decimius Magnus Ausonius was born in Bordeaux in ca. 310. His father was a noted physician of Greek ancestry and his mother was descended on both sides from long-established aristocratic Gallo-Roman families... , Mosella |
483 | 18 | 4 | 3.73 | 0.83 | 4.55 |
As Table 2 shows, in late antiquity the use of golden lines remains within the general range found in classical times. Of particular interest is their use by Claudian. On the average the golden line crops up in every 50 lines of Claudian, but there are considerable differences between works. Table 2 gives his poem with the lowest percentage (On Honorius’s Fourth Consulship) and that with the highest (On Honorius’s Third Consulship).
Figurative poetry, such as that of Publilius Optatianus Porfirius
Publilius Optatianus Porfirius
Publilius Optatianus Porfirius was a Latin poet, possibly a native of Africa.He flourished during the 4th century. Porfirius has been identified with Publilius Optatianus, who was praefectus urbi , and is by some authorities included amongst the Christian poets...
and, in Carolingian
Carolingian
The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The name "Carolingian", Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling The Carolingian dynasty (known variously as the...
times, that of Hrabanus Maurus, rarely uses the golden line. These poets use a variety of hexameters praised by Diomedes—rhopalic verses, echo verses, and reciprocal verses. They use the golden line once or twice. The form is rather elementary compared to their usual pyrotechnic displays.
Use by Medieval Poets
Table 3: Golden lines in some early medieval poetry| Poem | Total Verses | Golden | Silver | % Golden | % Silver | % Gold & Silver |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caelius Sedulius, Paschale 1 | 352 | 27 | 1 | 7.67 | 0.28 | 7.95 |
| Caelius Sedulius, Paschale 2 | 300 | 7 | 1 | 2.33 | 0.33 | 2.67 |
| Caelius Sedulius, Paschale 3 | 333 | 16 | 0 | 4.80 | 0.00 | 4.80 |
| Caelius Sedulius, Paschale 4 | 308 | 11 | 1 | 3.57 | 0.32 | 3.90 |
| Caelius Sedulius, Paschale 5 | 438 | 7 | 1 | 1.60 | 0.23 | 1.83 |
| Caelius Sedulius, Paschale, Total | 1731 | 68 | 4 | 3.93 | 0.23 | 4.16 |
| Corippus, Iohannis 1 | 581 | 31 | 0 | 5.34 | 0.00 | 5.34 |
| Corippus, Iohannis 2 | 488 | 11 | 2 | 2.25 | 0.41 | 2.66 |
| Corippus, Iohannis 3 | 460 | 7 | 2 | 1.52 | 0.43 | 1.96 |
| Corippus, Iohannis 4 | 644 | 16 | 0 | 2.48 | 0.00 | 2.48 |
| Corippus, Iohannis 5 | 527 | 18 | 3 | 3.42 | 0.57 | 3.98 |
| Corippus, Iohannis 6 | 773 | 10 | 3 | 1.29 | 0.39 | 1.68 |
| Corippus, Iohannis 7 | 543 | 17 | 2 | 3.13 | 0.37 | 3.50 |
| Corippus, Iohannis 8 | 650 | 5 | 0 | 0.77 | 0.00 | 0.77 |
| Corippus, Iohannis, Total | 4666 | 115 | 12 | 2.46 | 0.26 | 2.72 |
| Corippus, In laudem preface. | 99 | 6 | 0 | 6.06 | 0.00 | 6.06 |
| Corippus, In laudem 1 | 367 | 12 | 0 | 3.27 | 0.00 | 3.27 |
| Corippus, In laudem 2 | 430 | 10 | 0 | 2.33 | 0.00 | 2.33 |
| Corippus, In laudem 3 | 407 | 19 | 0 | 4.67 | 0.00 | 4.67 |
| Corippus, In laudem 4 | 377 | 13 | 0 | 3.45 | 0.00 | 3.45 |
| Corippus, In laudem, Total | 1680 | 60 | 0 | 3.57 | 0.00 | 3.57 |
| Aldhelm, Carmen de virginitate | 2904 | 188 | 23 | 6.47 | 0.79 | 7.27 |
| Ennodius Magnus Felix Ennodius Magnus Felix Ennodius was Bishop of Pavia in 514, and a Latin rhetorician and poet.He was one of four fifth to sixth-century Gallo-Roman aristocrats whose letters survive in quantity: the others are Sidonius Apollinaris, prefect of Rome in 468 and bishop of Clermont , Ruricius bishop of Limoges ... , Itinerarium |
52 | 6 | 0 | 11.54 | 0.00 | 11.54 |
| Ennodius Magnus Felix Ennodius Magnus Felix Ennodius was Bishop of Pavia in 514, and a Latin rhetorician and poet.He was one of four fifth to sixth-century Gallo-Roman aristocrats whose letters survive in quantity: the others are Sidonius Apollinaris, prefect of Rome in 468 and bishop of Clermont , Ruricius bishop of Limoges ... , In Natale |
170 | 4 | 4 | 2.35 | 2.35 | 4.71 |
| Vita S. Erasmi | 450 | 0 | 1 | 0.00 | 0.22 | 0.22 |
| Vita S. Verenae | 132 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Passio S. Mauricii | 252 | 6 | 2 | 2.38 | 0.79 | 3.17 |
| Vita S. Clementis | 984 | 6 | 2 | 0.61 | 0.20 | 0.81 |
| Vita S. Ursmari 1 | 798 | 11 | 1 | 1.38 | 0.13 | 1.50 |
| Vita S. Ursmari 2 | 220 | 2 | 0 | 0.91 | 0.00 | 0.91 |
| Vita S. Landelini | 529 | 6 | 0 | 1.13 | 0.00 | 1.13 |
| Vita S. Bavonis 1 | 415 | 14 | 1 | 3.37 | 0.24 | 3.61 |
| Hisperica Famina | 612 | 144 | 1 | 23.53 | 0.16 | 23.69 |
| Walther de Speyer I | 235 | 16 | 1 | 6.81 | 0.43 | 7.23 |
| Walther de Speyer II | 251 | 18 | 2 | 7.17 | 0.80 | 7.97 |
| Walther de Speyer III | 254 | 14 | 2 | 5.51 | 0.79 | 6.30 |
| Walther de Speyer IV | 252 | 11 | 1 | 4.37 | 0.40 | 4.76 |
Table 3 reveals several interesting tendencies in golden line usage in the early medieval period. The fact that Caelius Sedulius, Aldhelm, and the Hisperica Famina have a pronounced preference for the form has long been noted. Corippus in the sixth century also uses the golden line significantly more than classical authors. Note that there is not a comparable increase in the silver line: If anything, these authors have fewer silver lines. This trend may be due to the growing fondness for leonine rhymes, which are facilitated by the golden line structure but not by the silver line. Another tendency, seen in Corippus, Sedulius, Aldhelm, and Walther de Speyer, is an extremely large number of golden lines in the beginning of a work, which is not matched in the rest of the work. Many scholars only tallied figures for the golden line at the beginnings of these poems, and therefore can have inflated numbers. In the first 500 lines of Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate, for example, there are 42 golden lines and 7 silver lines, yielding percentages of 8.4 and 1.4 respectively; in the last 500 lines (2405-2904) there are only 20 golden lines and 4 silver lines, yielding percentages of 4 and 0.8 respectively—a reduction by half. Corippus’s Ioannis and Sedulius’s Paschale have even more extreme reductions. These skewed percentages may indicate that the golden line is an ideal that is artfully strived for but which cannot be continuously realized over the course of a long epic.
Another possible explanation for the diminished use of golden lines within an author’s work (observed already in Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
; see Table 1) is that, with time, poets may gradually free themselves from the constraints of the form. The golden line may have been taught in the schools as a quick way to elegance, which poets would use with increasing moderation as their experience grew. Two poems that appear to be juvenalia point to this conclusion. The Hisperica Famina is a bizarre text which is apparently from seventh-century Ireland. It seems to be a collection of school compositions on set themes that have been run together. Of its 612 lines, 144—23.53 percent—have the golden line structure. Most of the lines that are not “golden” are merely too short to have more than three words; or, occasionally, they are too long. These extremely short or long lines are due to the fact that the poem is not written in hexameter
Hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...
. It may be written in some rough stress-based meter, but even that cannot be stated with certainty. But the ideal model that the composers took for their verses appears to have been the golden line. Walther de Speyer composed his poem on the life of St. Christopher in 984 when he was seventeen. The percentage of golden lines is high, but the number of near-misses is enormous. When you read Walther you get the impression that he was programmed in school to write golden lines.
The large number of golden lines in poetry from the sixth through ninth centuries could reflect the combination of several trends, such as the preference for hyperbaton
Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton is a figure of speech in which words that naturally belong together are separated from each other for emphasis or effect. This kind of unnatural or rhetorical separation is possible to a much greater degree in highly inflected languages, where sentence meaning does not depend closely...
and the growing popularity of leonine rhymes. The statistics do not (and cannot) prove that the form was ever taught and practiced as a discrete form. Even if the golden line was not a conscious poetic conceit in the classical or medieval period, it might have some utility today as a term of analysis in discussing such poetry. However, the form now appears in canonical English commentaries to authors from Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
to Aldhelm and most scholars who refer to the golden line today treat it as an important poetic form of indisputable antiquity.
History
The first person to mention the golden line may be the grammarian Diomedes Grammaticus, in a list of types of Latin hexameters in his Ars grammaticaArs grammatica
An Ars grammatica is a generic or proper title for surveys of Latin Grammar.Extant works known as Ars grammatica have been written by*Aelius Donatus*Maurus Servius Honoratus*Diomedes Grammaticus*Charisius*Pseudo-Remmius Palaemon...
. This work was written before 500 CE, and it has been plausibly suggested that he wrote after 350 CE.
Diomedes' chapter entitled “De pedibus metricis sive significationum industria” (Keil 498-500) describes the teres versus, which has been identified by del Castillo (p. 133) as the golden line:
- Teretes sunt qui volubilem et cohaerentem continuant dictionem, ut
- Torva Mimalloneis inflatur tibia bombis
- Rounded verses are those that conjoin a fluent and contiguous phrase, such as
- Torva Mimalloneis inflatur tibia bombis.
The example verse is a golden line. However, it is difficult to understand what "conjoin a fluent and contiguous phrase" ( volubilem et cohaerentem continuant dictionem) means and how exactly it applies to this verse. None of the other ancient metricians use the term teres versus or (the Greek form that Diomedes mentions as its equivalent). The only other commentator to mention the teres versus was the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger
Julius Caesar Scaliger
Julius Caesar Scaliger was an Italian scholar and physician who spent a major part of his career in France. He employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the new learning...
(1484–1558), who did not seem to understand Diomedes. In his book Poetices Libri Septem (1964 Stuttgart facsimile reprint of the 1561 Lyon edition, p. 71-72, text in Mayer), Scaliger offers a muddled attempt at understanding Diomedes. He mentions that "Quintilian
Quintilian
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...
and others" mention this as a teres versus:
- Mollia luteola pingens vaccinia calta (a mangled version of VirgilVirgilPublius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, EclogueEclogueAn eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.The form of the word in contemporary English is taken from French eclogue, from Old French, from Latin ecloga...
2.50)
Our manuscripts of Quintilian do not include this verse of Virgil, but it is the first pure golden line in Virgil and it becomes the most famous golden line citation. Scaliger's use of this example is evidence that someone between Diomedes and him took the term teres versus to be similar to a modern golden line.
The English fascination with the golden line seems to trace back to Bede
Bede
Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...
. Bede advocated a double hyperbaton
Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton is a figure of speech in which words that naturally belong together are separated from each other for emphasis or effect. This kind of unnatural or rhetorical separation is possible to a much greater degree in highly inflected languages, where sentence meaning does not depend closely...
, and also the placing of adjectives before nouns. In the examples from each criterion (double hyperbaton and adjectives before nouns) Bede includes at least one golden line, but from his other examples it is clear that he did not limit these injunctions to the golden line:
- But the best and most beautiful arrangement [optima ... ac pulcherrima positio] of the dactylic verse is when the penultimate parts respond to the first ones and the last parts respond to the middle ones [primis penultima, ac mediis respondet extrema]. Sedulius was in the habit of using this arrangement often, as in
- Pervia divisi patuerunt caerula ponti [Sedulius, Paschal. 1.136, a golden line]
- and
- Sicca peregrinas stupuerunt marmora plantas [Sedulius, Paschal. 1.140, another golden line]
- and
- Edidit humanas animal pecuale loquelas [Sedulius, Paschal. 1.162, not a golden line]
Bede
Bede
Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...
’s remarks in his De arte metrica were repeated and made more strict by Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
guides to versification, ultimately leading to Burles’s description of the golden line. The earliest is the 1484 De arte metrificandi of Jacob Wimpfeling:
- It will be a mark of extraordinary beauty and no mean glory will accrue when you have distanced an adjective from its substantive by means of intervening words, as if you were to say
- pulcher prevalidis pugnabat tiro lacertis.
And two years later the Ars Versificandi of Conrad Celtes
Conrad Celtes
Conrad Celtes , also Konrad Celtis and Latin Conradus Celtis , was a German Renaissance humanist scholar and Neo-Latin poet.-Life:...
followed Wimpfeling:
- Fifth precept: the most charming form of poem will be to have distanced an epithet from its substantive by means of intervening words, as if you were to say
- maiores cadunt altis de montibus umbre
- pulcer prevalidis pugnabit tiro lacertis.
In 1512 Johannes Despauterius
Johannes Despauterius
Jan de Spauter was a prominent Flemish humanist. His name was Latinized to Johannes Despauterius as was common in the Middle Ages....
quoted Celtis’s remarks verbatim in his Ars versificatoria in the section De componendis carminibus praecepta generalia and then more narrowly defined excellence in hexameters in the section De carmine elegiaco:
- Elegiac poetry rejoices in two epithets, this is to say adjectives, (not swollen, or puffed-up, or affected adjectives). This is almost always done so that the two adjectives are placed in front of two substantives, so that the first responds to the first. Nonetheless, you will frequently find different types, for we are not imparting laws, but good style. Propertius, book 2:
- Sic me nec solae poterunt avertere sylvae
- Nec vaga muscosis flumina fusa iugis.
- Nor is this inelegant in other genres of poetry, for examples
- Sylvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena.
- Care must be taken that the two words are not in the same case and number, because that leads to ambiguity. That is not the case when Virgil says
- Mollia lutheola pingit vaccinia calta.
- Moreover, there should not be two epithets [for one noun], because that is faulty according to Servius. An example would be:
- dulcis frigida aqua.
Despauterius here combines Bede’s two rules into one general precept of elegance: Two adjectives should be placed before two substantives, the first agreeing with the first. It is not quite the golden line, for there is no provision for a verb in the middle. However, Despauterius quotes the famous example of the golden line, Eclogue 2.50, as a good example of the type. This line is the first pure golden line in Virgil's works. It is also the example line given in Scaliger above.
The same general remarks about epithets are found in John Clarke’s 1633 Manu-ductio ad Artem Carmificam seu Dux Poeticus (345):
- Epitheta, ante sua substantiva venustissime collocantur, ut :
- Pendula flaventem pingebat bractea crinem
- Aurea purpuream subnectit fibula vestem, [Aeneid 4.139]
- Vecta est fraenato caerula pisce Thetis.
The source of Clarke’s first example line is unknown, but the same line is also one of Burles’s examples of the golden line. Burles’s discussion of the golden line is clearly based upon this tradition concerning the position of epithets. Burles’s golden line is a narrow application of the principles outlined by Bede almost a millennium earlier.
Scholars like to believe that their critical approaches to classical poetry are direct and immediate, and that they understand classical literature in its own context or, depending on their critical stance, from the perspective of their own context(s). However, the use of “the golden line” as a critical term in modern scholarship demonstrates the power of the intervening critical tradition. The golden line may originally have been the teres versus of Diomedes, but this fact does not legitimate its use as a critical term today. No commentators today count up versus inlibati, iniuges, quinquipartes, or any of the other bizarre forms assembled by Diomedes.
In all likelihood the golden line is a term gradually developed by Medieval and Renaissance grammarians, from Bede to Burles, but this indeterminate (and apparently unknown) pedigree does not explain its curious hold on Anglo-American scholarship. Far more interesting than the appearance of the golden line in ancient and medieval poetry is the use of the term by these modern critics. Today major works and commentaries on canonical poets in Latin and Greek discuss them in light of the golden line, and occasionally even the silver line: Neil Hopkinson’s Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
, William Anderson’s Metamorphoses, Richard Thomas’s Georgics
Georgics
The Georgics is a poem in four books, likely published in 29 BC. It is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil, following his Eclogues and preceding the Aeneid. It is a poem that draws on many prior sources and influenced many later authors from antiquity to the present...
, Alan Cameron’s Claudian
Claudian
Claudian was a Roman poet, who worked for Emperor Honorius and the latter's general Stilicho.A Greek-speaking citizen of Alexandria and probably not a Christian convert, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395. He made his mark with a eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby...
, Andy Orchard’s Aldhelm. Most of these critics assume or imply that golden lines were deliberate figures, practiced since Hellenistic times and artfully contrived and composed by the poets in question. This process of scouring the canonical texts for such special verse forms is entirely in the spirit of the ancient lists of Servius, Victorinus, and Diomedes. Thus, in a curious way, the arcane wordplay that fascinated ancient grammarians has—in the English-speaking world, at least—come again to play a role in interpreting and explicating the central works of the classical canon.
The Golden Line in Non-English Scholarship
Non-English-speaking scholars who refer to the golden line in print usually pointedly use the English term: Thraede p. 51: “die Spielarten der ‘golden line.’ ” Baños p. 762: “el denominado versus aureus o golden line” Hellegouarc’h p. 277: “l’origine du ‘versus aureus’ ou ‘golden line.’” Schmitz p. 149 n 113, "der von John Dryden gepraegte Terminus Golden Line." Enríquez’s áureo verso is very different from the golden line used by English scholars. Baños, Enríquez, and Hellegouarc’h all refer exclusively to Wilkinson 215-217 and other English scholars for discussions of the term. Typical would be the French article of Kerlouégan, which never mentions the term, but which is entirely devoted to the form.Precursors
These works are often cited in golden line literature, but they do not mention the term and are only peripherally connected to the form, except for Kerlouégan
- 1908 - Friedrich Caspari, De ratione, quae inter Vergilium et Lucanum intercedat, quaestiones selectae. Dissertation, Leipzig.
- 1916 - Eduard Norden, P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis Buch VI Teubner, Leipzig Berlin.
- 1949 - J. Marouzeau, L' Ordre des mots dans la phrase latine. Paris 3.107.
- 1972 - François Kerlouégan, “Une mode stylistique dans la prose latine des pays celtiques.” Études Celtiques 13:275-297.
Chronological listing of Non-English Golden Line Citations
- 1978 - Klaus Thraede. Der Hexameter in Rom. Munich: C. H. Beck’sche. p. 51: “die Spielarten der ‘golden line.’ (The first mention of the golden line in non-English speaking scholarship)
- 1987 - J. Hellegouarc’h, “Les yeux de la marquise...Quelques observations sur les commutations verbales dans l’hexamètre latin.” Revue des Études Latines 65:261-281.
- 1988 - S. Enríquez El hexámetro áureo en latín. Datos para su estudio, Tesis doctoral, Granada (available in microfiche). Enríquez refers to the definitions of several English scholars, but he himself includes any line with a verb in the center, surrounded by two substantives and adjectives. He therefore includes (p. 331) the following examples of the áureo verso:
- florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella (VirgilVirgilPublius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
Eclogue 2.64) aAVbB - Temporis angusti mansit concordia discors. (LucanMarcus Annaeus LucanusMarcus Annaeus Lucanus , better known in English as Lucan, was a Roman poet, born in Corduba , in the Hispania Baetica. Despite his short life, he is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period...
BC 1.98) AaVBb
- His áureo verso includes not only the gold and silver lines defined above (of which Enríquez cites a large number of examples), but also lines without any chiastic structure at all. Perhaps this definition (which strikes English-speaking scholars as bizarre) is common in Spain, because Baños and Antolín also use Enriquez's definition.
- 1990 - Marina del Castillo Herrera, La metrica Latina en el Siglo IV. Diomedes y su entorno. Granada: Universidad de Granada. Connects Diomedes' teres versus with the áureo verso but does not define or elaborate.
- 1992 - J. M. Baños Baños, "El versus aureus de Ennio a Estacio", Latomus 51 p. 762-744.
- 1993 - Norbert Delhey. Apollinaris Sidonius, Carm. 22: Burgus Pontii Leontii. Einleitung, Text und Kommentar. Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 40. Berlin/New York, p. 86. (silver lines).
- 1994 - J. J. L. Smolenaars, Statius: Thebaid VII, Commentary. Leiden: E.J. Brill, p. 37.
- 1995 - Fernando Navarro Antolín, Lygdamus : Corpus Tibullianum III. 1-6, New York : E.J. Brill, 1995, p. 381 (follows the aAVbB form of Enríquez).
- 1998 - Dirk Panhuis, Latijnse grammatica. Garant, Leuven-Apeldoorn "gouden, zilveren, en bronzen vers."
- 1999 - S. Enríquez. "El hexámetro áureo en la poesía latina", Estudios de Métrica Latina" I, pp.327-340, Luque Moreno-Díaz Díaz (eds.).
- 2000 - Christine Schmitz, Das Satirische in Juvenals Satiren. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000, p. 148-9.
- 2004 - Andreas Grüner, Venus ordinis der Wandel von Malerei und Literatur im Zeitalter der römischen Bürgerkriege. Paderborn: Verlag Ferd.Schoning GmbH & Co, 2004, p. 88-94. "Seit Dryden bezeichnet man das betreffende Schema als golden line."
- 2004 - Enrico Di Lorenzo. L'esametro greco e latino. Analisi, problemi e prospettive, Atti delle "Giornate di Studio" su L'esametro greco e latino: analisi, problemi e prospettive. Fisciano 28 e 29 maggio 2002. Quaderni del Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Antichità. Napoli, p. 77.
- 2008 - Unknown author "Gouden Vers: PV in het midden + 2 adj vooraan + 2 subst achteraan (of omgekeerd)"
External links
- The golden line according to Magister J. White's Real New Latin Grammar
- The golden line in Carmina's guide to interpreting poetry
- The golden line according to Anne Mahoney's Overview of Latin Syntax, (note that one of her examples of the golden line is a line with a noun in the genitive instead of an adjective)
- Uni-Koeln.de, an article suggesting that the golden line is from Greek Hellenistic poetry, J.D. Reed, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 106 (1995) 94–95
- Emory.edu, note about the golden line in N. W. Slater, "Calpurnius and the Anxiety of Vergilian Influence".