Listening to Lyric: Accent and Ictus in the Latin Sapphic Stanza

Meter, as taught in ancient Rome, entailed not just the sounds of the words, but also the expectation of verse beat (ictus). Even Latin lyrics can include significant coincidence and counterpoint between the performed accent and a latent, learned ictus. This essay surveys evidence for ictus and accent in Sapphics, then considers counterpoint and coincidence in Horace's Odes, a poem of Ausonius, and Horace's Carmen Saeculare, where a regular caesura falling one syllable later than expected reflects a different relationship of accent to beat. This relationship explains Horace's directions to his youthful chorus (Carm 4.6.35-36) and helps us notice an acoustic feature of Latin lyric.