# suspension of adjective is the first half of the line



## Lamb67

Filia, consuetis ut erat comitata puellis, 
errabat nudo per sua prata pede, 
valle sub umbrosa locus est, aspergine multa 
umidus ex alto desilientis aquae. 
tot fuerant illic, quot habet natura, colores,_ Ovid Fasti Lib.4.427-429

_Hi, I noticed one comment from _Googlebook source _says_ that Suspension of adjective in the first half of the line is partcularly noticeable. _The following adjectives are from the next few lines of the same poem _:_
_picta dissimili plenos praeda puellare.

_I suspect the comment is about metre in poem which unfortunately I don't know anything about.However out of curiosity, can you please shed some light on this?

Thanks.
_(You may use google book by inputing the 1st line + suspension to get the comment)._


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## CapnPrep

Lamb67 said:


> _(You may use google book by inputing the 1st line + suspension to get the comment)._


You may also provide the link yourself, next time: 
P. V. Jones, K. C. Sidwell, _Reading Latin: Grammar, Vocabulary and Exercises_, p. 405–6



Lamb67 said:


> Hi, I noticed one comment from _Googlebook source _says_ that Suspension of adjective in the first half of the line is partcularly noticeable._
> […]
> I suspect the comment is about metre in poem which unfortunately I don't know anything about.However out of curiosity, can you please shed some light on this?


It is not really about the meter. It just means that in several lines of this poem, there is an adjective in the first half of the line, but we don't discover the noun that it modifies until the second half of the line. This is an extremely common pattern in Latin poetry, so it is only remarkable if it dramatically reinforces the sense, or if it happens more than once in the same line (see Golden Line), or if it happens line after line (as in this passage).

You have correctly identified _consuetis… puellis_ and _nudo… pede_, but the other words you have underlined are not suspended adjectives. Look at the notes after the text in Jones & Sidwell. The suspended adjectives are indicated by the comment "[Hold until solved]".


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## Cagey

Notice that the adjectives are near the beginning of these lines, while the nouns they modify are at the end.  
Filia, consuetis ut erat comitata puellis, 
errabat nudo per sua prata pede, 
[....]
tot fuerant illic, quot habet natura, colores,
​ 
I think this is what they mean by the "suspension of adjectives".  Once you hear the adjective, you have to wait in 'suspense' for the noun that completes its sense. I believe  the effect is stronger because the most ordinary position of a Latin adjective ~ the one you learn when you first learn Latin ~ is _after_ the noun it modifies, not before it.

*Added*: Cross-posted with CapnPrep.


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## CapnPrep

Cagey said:


> I believe  the effect is stronger because the most ordinary position of a Latin adjective ~ the one you learn when you first learn Latin ~ is _after_ the noun it modifies, not before it.


This is true for prose (or at least it is _said_ to be true), but in poetry, adjectives and noun appear more often separated than together, and the adjective more often precedes than follows the noun. For example, you can see the statistics for Tibullus here (p. 390). So the effect is really not very strong.

Conrad (1965) calls the pattern in question — "the placement of an adjective before the caesura of either hexameter or pentameter of the elegiac couplet and the noun modified by that adjective at the end of the line" — "predictable and monotonous".


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## Cagey

Point taken. 

If I rephrased it as:I believe  the effect is markedly literary or poetic because the most ordinary position of  a Latin adjective in prose [...] is _after_ the noun it modifies, not before it.​ would this seem to you accurate?

[Poor Propertius _et al_.  On the other hand,  Propertius is still being read two thousand years later, monotonous patterning and all.  This is not likely to be the case with Conrad.]


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## Scholiast

salvete!

This phenomenon (known technically as _traiectio verborum_), which is especially common in poetry, and _pace_ CapnPrep 





> It is not really about the meter


 may at least sometimes have been done for the sake of the meter. But it is also worth looking out - especially in the real masters such as Virgil and Ovid - for "word pictures", as in the clause 





> (filia) _consuetis_ ut erat comitata _puellis_


, where the word-order implies the visual spectacle of the girl, _surrounded_ by her companions.


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## XiaoRoel

Vamos a intentar un comentario (me baso en uno hecho hace años en un trimestre del antiguo curso preuniversitario, que dediqué por completo a Ovidio y la mitología). Sobre el rapto de Perséfone/Proserpina, comenté estos versos, _Fasti_, IV, 423-430:


> frigida caelestum matres Arethusa uocarar:
> uenerat ad sacras et dea flaua dapes,
> filia, consuetis ut erat comitata puellis,
> errabat nudo per sua prata pede,
> ualle sub umbrosa locus est, aspergine multa
> uuidus ex alto desilientis aquae.
> tot fuerant illic, quot habet natura, colores,
> pictaque dissimili flore nitebat humus.


En esta muestra del exquisito estilo de un poeta que domina todas las técnicas del verso, se nos deparan múltiples estilemas del _ornatus_, dentro del general _hipérbaton_ por razones estilísticas o métricas, normal en la poesía clásica, algunos tan llamativos (para nosotros, no para su época en la que era banal esta figura) como la _anástrofe_ _ualle sub umbrosa_, otros más banales (también en nuestra poesía romance), como la _sinécdoque_ _flore dissimili_ (= _flores dissimiles_).
Pero lo fundamental en estos versos a nivel significativo es la muy intencional ocupación de los lugares semánticamente importantes del verso (principio, _caput_ o ἀρχή, y final, _finis_ τέλος) de las palabras significativamente claves:
Principio de verso: _frigida… uenerat… filia… errabat… ualle… uiuidus…
_Final de verso: _colores… humus…
_Además, cuando una u otra parte del verso realza significativa una palabra, el lugar no usado pasa a contener una palabra significativamente destacada, aunque de manera secundaria:
Final de verso: _uocarar… dapes… pelis… pede… multa… aquae…_
Principio de verso: _tot… picta…_
Este principio de la poesía de toda época, el uso como espacios significativos de los lugares marcados por pausa importante, en el corte del verso, lo vemos en este fragmento de Ovidio, usados con especial maestría (un conocedor del mito, con estas palabras puede reconstruir toda la escena).
Para usar estos lugares, frecuentemente es necesaria la dislocación de las palabras de su lugar natural (el de la prosa). Esto, la alteración de la totalidad linear (temporal: el discurso "ocupa" un tiempo) de un discurso en retórica clásica tiene cuatro modalidades: _adiectio, aposición o πλεονασμός_ (con sus variantes de _prótesis, epéntesis o parágoge_); _detractio, detracción o ἕνδεια_; _transmutatio, conuersio, transmutación o μετάθεσις_; _immutatio, enálage o ἔναλαγή_.
A nivel sintáctico es de comentar la que llamamos familiarmente "_construcción en bocadillo_", la normal en la prosa para un complemento de nombre en genitivo cuyo núcleo es un sintagma nominal adjetivo-substantivo: _pulchrum Iouis templum_. Aquí se usa con el complemento adverbial del sintagma adjetivo-substantivo: _nudo per sua prata pede_.
Secundariamente habría que hacer hincapié en la fuerza del hipérbaton de los versos 427-428 que en prosa serían:_ sub umbrosa ualle locus est, aspergine multa uiuidus ex alto dissilientis aquae_. Sujeto: _locus_; vbo *intr*. _est_; predicativo del sujeto, _uiuidus_ (con todo su sintagma, _ex alto… aquae_). También en la unión aquae, humus.
En cuanto a la tópica del fragmento, señalar que todo él pertenece a la tópica del _locus amoenus_ (lógicamente ligado a la rubia Ceres, ya a Flora) y, secundariamente, a la tópica mitológica.


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## CapnPrep

Scholiast said:


> But it is also worth looking out - especially in the real masters such as Virgil and Ovid - for "word pictures", as in the clause
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (filia) _consuetis_ ut erat comitata _puellis_
> 
> 
> 
> , where the word-order implies the visual spectacle of the girl, _surrounded_ by her companions.
Click to expand...

I would be more inclined to accept this if the noun _filia_ were actually enclosed by _consuetis … puellis_. And I suppose _*nudo* per sua prata *pede*_ paints a picture of her walking from one end to the other of her meadows. And why not? This sort of thing is very good for Latin exams, but I think it's easy to overstate what effect these lines would have had on contemporary audiences who were fully accustomed to this word order pattern as a poetic convention. (I made a similar point in a past thread: Chiasmus in Aeneid.)



XiaoRoel said:


> ualle sub umbrosa locus est, aspergine multa
> uiuidus ex alto desilientis aquae.
Click to expand...

The principal mss have either _uvidus_ (AU) or _umidus_ (Z) here (source).


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## XiaoRoel

> ualle sub umbrosa locus est, aspergine multa
> uiuidus ex alto desilientis aquae.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The principal mss have either _uvidus_ (AU) or _umidus_ (Z) here (source).


Correcto, es *uuidus*, la */i/*se coló subrepticiamente. Muchas gracias, CapnPrep, ahora lo corrijo.

P.S.: Supongo que las siglas AU y Z se refieren a códices que contienen los _*Fasti*_. 
Yo más bien uso éstas:
A (en algunos autores R), Vaticano 1709, del s. X. Es el llamado _*Codex Reginiensis*_.
V, Vaticano 3262, s. XI, de Montecasino. Es el llamado _*Codex Vrsinianus*_.
M (en algunos autores D), manuscrito 8122 de la Biblioteca Real de Munich, de entre los ss. XI y XIII. Es el llamado *Codex Mallersdorfiensis siue Monacensis*.

Estos son los manuscritos fundamentales para cualquier edición crítica (yo sigo la de Postgate en el _Corpus Poetarum Latinorum_, a falta de otra más fiable). Los manuscritos inferiores con sigla _s_) muy poco aportan al texto (o nada, a no ser errores). Aunque podría seguir la de Landi del _Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum Parauianum_ (1928), también buena, aunque, para mí, no supera a la Postgate.
También es magnífica (pero no poseo un ejemplar en mi casa, aunque sí en el trabajo), por su introducción y notas, la edición de Pighi en el _Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum Parauianum_, cuyo segundo tomo trae unos muy interesantes textos antiguos complementarios de los _Fasti_.
Traducciones: en italiano y en verso de Ferruccio Bernini, en inglés de Frazer, en español de Germán Salinas o, en verso rítmico, de Quiñones Melgoza.


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