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A New Text of Lucretius

In the field of metre, Questa is an expert, not only on the technical facts about prosody and scansion, but on the question of the ancient colometry, about which he has written important recent articles in RFIC 1974 and Quad. Urb. 1974. He has done a great deal to strengthen the evidence for the line division in the cantica, and that of course is a long way towards the definition of the type of metre employed. In his earlier descriptions, there was some reason to quibble about his choice of terminology for the short cola; Skutsch in his review protested against the use of the term dochmiac, and to that the present reviewer would add hypodochmiac, hemiasclepiad, lekythion, and others. It is very doubtful whether these Greek terms are properly used for Plautus. Questa has now given them up, and uses 'cretic colon' (cr) and bacchiac colon (ba) for those units which he previously called dochmiac. His inclusion, however, of both catalectic and syncopated dimeters under the single heading of 'colon' seems ill judged (and somewhat surprising seeing that he insists elsewhere on making a dubious and unnecessary distinction between glyconic and 'wilamowitzianus'). There is a real rhythmic difference between syncopated and catalectic cretic dimeters for anyone except those who, like Questa, deny the existence of ictus and disregard the effect of accent. It is the difference between niillus est homo (622) and quid mibi id prodest (633), and may be followed through in the various by-forms of each.