Meter in Accentual Clausulae of Late Imperial Latin Prose

Abstract

N a peo a revious rticle in this journal we examined the Latin prose style known as the cursus, or the use of accentual rhythms in clausulae. We undertook this project because the identification of the cursus system, detected in the late nineteenth century by N. Valois and others after him,2 was never put on a sound methodological basis;3 moreover, no consensus existed among scholars concerning the date of origin, the provenance, and the extent of the usage of the cursus in imperial Latin prose.4 The cursus system can be described succinctly as follows. There are three rhythmical cadences-planus, tardus, and velox5-each of which can be thought of in terms of the distance between and after the last two accents of a sentence or clause.6 The planus consists of two unaccented syllables between the last two accents and one unaccented syllable after the final accent (e.g., p6rtam clauserunt). The tardus comprises two