Brevis brevians, also known as iambic shortening or , is a metrical feature of early Latin verse, especially Plautus and Terence, in which a pair of syllables which are theoretically short + long (u –) can be scanned as a pair of short syllables (u u). The plural is .
One common type is where a two-syllable word ends in a vowel which was originally long, for example and so on. This type is also frequently found in classical Latin.
But also occurs in lines such as the following, in which the closed syllables hoc and om- are shortened, which would never occur in poetry of the classical period:
Plautus, Cist. 774. (tr7) "What's this business that all the people are gossiping about in the streets?"
It is thought by many scholars that such shortenings reflect the actual pronunciation of colloquial Latin. Others, however, disagree and consider that the second type, where a closed syllable is shortened, is merely a metrical licence.
Another controversy is whether iambic shortening is caused by word accent. In most (but perhaps not all) cases the shortened syllable is unstressed, and comparison can be made to English words such as monarchy, in which the second syllable is shortened after a stressed short first syllable, compared with heptarchy, in which both the first two syllables are long. Some scholars, however, who believe that the Latin accent was not a stress-accent, disagree with this view and point to some instances in which the shortened syllable appears to be accented.
Main types The main types of iambic shortening are as follows: (1) commonly used two-syllable words such as in which the final vowel is usually short even in classical Latin; (2) the first two syllables of phrases starting with a two-syllable word such as "go, please", "I want to know", "at the forum", "newly born"; (3) the first two syllables of longer words accented on the 3rd syllable, such as "pleasure" and "old age"; (4) the first two syllables of phrases starting from a monosyllable such as "what are you afraid of?", "what he is saying", "from the army", "angry with you"; (5) more rarely, and mainly in anapaestic metres, it can occur at the end of words of cretic rhythm (– u –) such as "to no one more" (this kind is known by some scholars as cretic shortening); (6) rarely it is found across word boundaries, as in "he will receive from no one".
Shortening usually takes place in the context of a phrase. Thus the -ī of is usually long at the end of a sentence but it is usually shortened in the phrase "go, please".
The name brevis brevians
Shortening only takes place after a short syllable, hence the name , which is short for () () "a short syllable which shortens the syllable which follows".Questa (2007), p. 85n. The term dates back to the 19th century,It is used in Lindsay (1893). but it does not go back to antiquity, since no ancient grammarian or metrician discusses the phenomenon.Questa (2007), p. 135. The alternative name "iambic shortening" derives from the fact that sequences like or are metrically iambs (u –).This was first formally noted by C. F. W. Müller (1869), Plautinische Prosodie, p. 85.
Characteristics
The main characteristics of in Plautus and Terence are the following:Questa (2007), pp. 85–6.
In Plautus and Terence, the phenomenon is found in iambic, trochaic, and anapaestic verse, but not usually in bacchiac or cretic metres. It is more common in trochaic verse than in iambic, and it is also frequent in anapaestic verse (used by Plautus but not by Terence).Lindsay (1893), p. 203. In iambic and trochaic verses, instances are found at the beginning of a verse more than elsewhere.Lindsay (1893), p. 203.
The syllable preceding the shortened syllable is always short. Thus "I want" and "I ask" can be shortened, but "I believe" and "I say" cannot be. Words such as "I see" and "I return", starting with a pair of short syllables, also cannot be shortened.Lindsay (1922), p. 46.
It does not usually occur when a word like or ends a clause or sentence;Fortson (2008), pp. 186–7. in other words, there are usually words or syllables following the shortened syllable, e.g. , . However, there are some exceptions to this (see below).
The shortened syllable is generally unaccented. Usually the word-accent comes either just before the shortened syllable () or immediately after it (). However, there are some apparent exceptions to this (see below).
In iambic and trochaic metres, the two syllables of the for the most part are found where an element in the metre has been resolved into two short syllables. Sometimes when a tribrach (u u u) is involved, it apparently occurs split across two elements (see below); however, this latter kind usually only occurs with words of the type which Questa calls "quasi-pyrrhic".
is optional. The same word or phrase, such as or can often be found in one line with and in another line without it.E.g., Plautus, Poen. 1089, Bacch. 92; Rud. 437, 459. Sometimes there are long passages without , and other passages where it occurs frequently.
A syllable shortened by cannot shorten another syllable.Questa (2007), p. 86.Lindsay (1922), p. 57. For example, in , where is shortened, it is thought that does not in turn shorten . However, this cannot be proved, as the metre will allow either scansion.
A long vowel at the end of a two-syllable word is often shortened, e.g. . Apart from this the great majority of shortenings involve closed syllables, as in and so on.
A word like or where the medial consonant is a mute + liquid, even though the first syllable is always short in Plautus, almostBut occurs at Plautus, Bacch. 404; cf. Bettini (1991), p. 321. never undergoes iambic shortening.Lindsay (1922), p. 45.
The role of word-accent
Scholars often look for an explanation for in the word-accent of Latin.Fattori (2021), p. 111. Thus Wallace Lindsay writes:Lindsay (1922), p. 41. "The syllable that suffers shortening must be an unaccented syllable (i.e. according to sentence-accentuation). That is a necessary condition." He observes that the accented syllable can come either before or after the shortened syllable. A. M. Devine and Laurence Stephens suggest that both syllables of the iamb must be de-stressed for shortening to take place. In their view: "the shortening rule ... cannot operate if the heavy syllable bears the full word accent, nor if the light syllable retains its full stress".Devine and Stephens (1980), p. 149.
However, not all scholars agree that iambic shortening is connected with word accent. In particular amongst Italian and French scholars it is a widely held belief that the Latin word accent in Plautus's day was a pitch accent, like that of Ancient Greek, which had no effect on the metre. Thus Cesare Questa, a specialist in the metres of Plautus, who in his earlier works accepted the role of the accent in causing iambic shortening, in his final work in 2007 rejected the idea, on the grounds that it was incompatible with his conviction that the Latin accent was a melodic or musical one.Questa (2007), pp. 138–139.
Another Italian, Marco Fattori, pointing out that in quite a few cases the shortened syllable is apparently accented (for example ), takes the view that "the accent has no role in inducing IS [iambic shortening], regardless of its position."Fattori (2021), p. 112. According to his statistics, cases such as where a lexical word is accented on the shortened syllable are just as common as cases such as where the accent follows the shortened syllable.Fattori (2021), p. 113.
In his book Vox Latina, however, W. S. Allen argues that the reduction in length observed in is itself one of several reasons for thinking that the Latin word-accent was a stress accent unlike that of Greek.Allen (1978), p. 86.; cf. Lindsay (1922), p. 258. According to this view there is no reason to reject the idea that, as in many modern languages, word accent was the cause of the syllable shortenings observed in Latin. In those cases where the shortened syllable appears to be accented, therefore, scholars who believe word accent plays a role look for other explanations, such as positing that the accented syllable loses its stress when the main stress comes on another word in the sentence.
A metrical licence? Another controversy which has been discussed for over a century is whether was a real phenomenon of Latin speech, or simply a metrical licence heard in poetry. Lindsay expressed his view as follows: "Brevis Brevians is not a poetic licence, not a Procrustean plan of squeezing a round peg into a square hole, but echoes exactly the pronunciation of everyday (educated) talk".Lindsay (1922), pp. 93–4.
The American scholar, Fortson, agreeing with Lindsay, writes: "The most likely theory in this writer’s view is that iambic shortening is linguistically real and affected iambic strings that were destressed or whose stress was subordinated to that of surrounding material, whence its most typical appearance in pronouns, particles, sentence adverbs, and strings of clitics."Fortson (2011), p. 97.
An alternative view, held by Italian scholars such as Bettini and others, is that final-vowel shortening, as found in words such as or and shortening of the vowel before final t and r as in or , which continued into later Latin, was real, but that the shortening of closed syllables as in or , which is not found in poetry of the classical period, was a metrical licence, not reflecting the actual speech of Latin speakers.Bettini (1991), p. 391; cf. Fortson (2008), p. 179. Bettini gives as an example the word ,Plautus, Stich. 228. which is shortened because it cannot fit otherwise into an iambic or trochaic verse, while Plautus, Mil. 642. is not shortened.Bettini (1991), p. 350.
Type of words shortened Ending in a long vowel One kind of word often involved in are two-syllable words ending in a vowel, e.g. .
In 1890, Leppermann listed all the iambic two-syllable words with a long vowel in the second syllable that occur in Plautus's iambic and trochaic lines, omitting those at the end of a verse. The results of his survey are summarised by Mańczak (1968). From this it would appear that some words were more often shortened than others.
The most common words are the ones most often shortened. The words are the most frequent, and and are also quite common. In all of these the shortened version is much commoner than the unshortened.See Mańczak (1968) for the exact figures. Leppermann does not include the words , perhaps because the second vowel was nearly always short.But is apparently found at Plautus Aulularia 208. All of these words, which Questa calls "quasi-pyrrhics",Questa (2007), p. 86. are also frequently found with a shortened vowel in later Latin. The word , when it is an adverb meaning "just now" or "only",e.g. Plautus Most. 390. was usuallyLindsay (1922), p. 36. shortened, and is counted as a quasi-pyrrhic,Questa (2007), p. 97. but (ablative of "way") had a long second vowel. This rule also applies in Virgil.Lindsay (1922), p. 39.
Common imperatives with a short first vowel are also frequently shortened, for example .
The verb forms and are often shortened, but rarely, and and not at all. Verb forms ending in -ī, such as , are only very rarely shortened.
The adverbs and are often shortened in Plautus; but Terence usually has , which was the regular form in classical Latin.Questa (2007), p. 97. They are not included among the quasi-pyrrhics by Questa, since they are not used in split-resolution shortening of the type .
The noun is usually not shortened, despite being very common:Fortson (2008), p. 189. .Terence, Heaut. 77. (ia6) "I'm a man; I consider nothing human alien from me"
(Possibly here is accented on the second syllable, with enclitic; in the same way according to Lindsay appears to have been accented on the second syllable.)Lindsay (1922), pp. 27; 320.