ous plays are so similar that such a classification as claimed by the commentators and editors is not only unsatisfactory but wellnigh impossible; and certainly the Hautontimorumenos will not afford the typical example of the play "without active interest." Cicero, in specifically calling actors statarii, lends appropriate application of the adjective to a manner of acting-a modus agendi. Thus supported, the comment of Donatus, "duo agendi sunt principales modi, motorius et statarius," may be accepted as accurate. But it is not possible to suppose that Terence wrote the Hautontimorumenos in order to exemplify a modus agendi, though it is true that the play and the acting usually harmonize. A style of acting, for us, hardly determines the nature of a play; and, besides, the commentators support their classification by the nature of the plot and the characters. If the Hautontimorumenos is a "quiet play," a stataria, all of Terence's comedies are statariae; but any attempt to classify them as statariae and motoriae is futile, and the difference of opinion on the part of the editors is accounted for. Yet Terence makes Ambivius say: "Try what my genius can effect in either way." Granting that stataria marks a genus comoediae, the other style of play-writing had been seen in not a play of Terence at all; Ambivius is making a special plea for himself: "I have," he says, "been performing in other plays than those of Terence-those of Caecilius and possibly those of Plautus. Now try me in one of Terence's, and let it not meet the fate of the Hecyra, the last play that I attempted to present from the hand of Terence and which you were unkind enough to hoot from the stage." The application of Donatus within the comedies of Terence will not hold because the Hautontimorumenos is no more static than others of this author. Nor does the division of characters made by Quintilian point to the Hautontimorumenos as a play that would, better than any other of Terence, suit the powers of Demetrius, for example. We have the acer senex and the callidus seruos. "In hac est pura oratio." "This is a Terentian play; note its pure diction; like others of our author, it is a 'library' play-not a Plautine production." As a matter of fact, there is in Terence no such character as the sycophanta impudens; nor was there any avarus leno till the Phormio came out-two years after the Hautontimorumenos. The comment of Eugraphius would seem to be more than a literary curiosity. In critical points Eugraphius has not been highly rated. Schanz remarks: "Der Zweck dieses Commentars ist die rhetorische Kunst des Terenz darzulegen. Dies setzt aber das Verständnis des Auctors voraus; es werden daher auch erklärende Bemerkungen gegeben. Die rhetorischen Bemerkungen haben für die Geschichte der Rhetorik und des Unterrichts einige Bedeutung."25 Long and Macleane say: "The commentary of Donatus is lacking and we cannot understand Terence's meaning. We still have the diffuse paragraphs of Eugraphius." In this passage of Eugraphius, however, there is little of the rhetorical. He calls attention to the fact that the characters enumerated by the prologuist belong not especially to any class of plays, but to Latin comedy in general; and that, since Ambivius is pleading for a quiet hearing for himself, the natural, not a technical, signification should be attached to stataria. Ashmore attempts to bridge the gap between the commentators when he speaks of the "din of laughter and applause and general disturbance which the livelier drama usually called forth." But to make stataria apply both to the play and to the audience is, to say the least, making a very wide definition, and it still remains to show how the Hautontimorumenos is more restrained than the Adelphoe, Phormio, Andria, and Eunuchus; for the Hecyra seems to be the only other Terentian play that Donatus and the editors have consigned to the fate of resting in a cemetery of dry bones, while Donatus calls even it mixta. The immediate context is easily in harmony with Eugraphius. The later context is not so evidently so: nam nunc qui scribunt nil parcunt seni: si quae laboriosast, ad me curritur; si lenis, ad alium defertur gregem. in hac est pura oratio. experimini in utramque partem ingenium quid possit meum.26 Eugraphius, however, would not connect the play designated lenis with stataria at all: "quoniam sic dixerat, laboriosas potius comoedias ad se deferri, levis ad alium, ne praeiudicium huic comoediae fecisse uideretur, quod ipse dixit illam laboriosam, aut exinde iam ut superius a populo iudicari posset, adiecit ‘in hac pura est oratio.' non omnes aequali modo utrumque possunt et leuia et grauia complere. ita ait 'in utramque partem': quondam 25 Handb. der klass. Altertumsw. VIII, I, 1, 157. 26 Hauton. vv. 43-47. semper in asperioribus comprobastis, nunc quoque leuioribus nosse debetis."'27 The tone of Eugraphius' remark that "some think a stataria is a kind of comedy" indicates that the meaning of the word here was not established in the commentators' day, and that definite authority on which to base their criticism was lacking. Evidence in support of Eugraphius would seem to outweigh the claim of the other commentators. This evidence may be summarized: the similarity of the Hautontimorumenos, as to characters and plot, to the other plays; the context accompanying the use of stataria in the Hautontimorumenos; the absence of the word as applied to a department of literature; the total lack of motoria. No one reading the translation of Schuckburgh, would suppose that this "quiet play" had a technical signification within it: "Give me the privilege of acting a quiet play without interruption; that I may not always be compelled to act the parts in a Latin comedy at the top of my voice, with the most extreme exertion." And the prologue ends (as paraphrased by Ashmore): "show by your conduct toward an old man that young men may reasonably hope for a quiet hearing." That statarius was applied to actors and orators would, of course, imply that parts within a play might be designated as stataria; or that one playwright's work was more lively than another's. The plays of Plautus are, to be sure, more boisterous than those of Terence; and parts of Terence's work are more lively than other parts. But everyone familiar with Terence knows that the sameness of plot, incident, and characters is the weakness of his work. It is impossible to find two kinds of dramatic art within his plays. Only the Andria and the Hecyra had been presented by Terence before the Hautontimorumenos; at least, according to the didascalia and Donatus the Hautontimorumenos preceded the Eunuchus by two years.28 If the Hautontimorumenos followed the complete failure of the Hecyra, the comment of Eugraphius has especial point. It need hardly be added that commentators are fond of finding technicalities. The University of North Carolina. 27 Eugraphius Prol. Hauton. 36-46. 28 Vid. Dziatzko-Hauler's Phormio, Einleit. p. 16. GEORGE KENNETH HENRY. A TYPE OF VERBAL REPETITION IN OVID'S ELEGY Latin elegy reached its final stage of formal development in the poetry of Ovid. The characteristic Roman tendency to reduce the metrical vehicle to sharply defined and rather inelastic laws had revealed itself clearly in his predecessors, but it waited for its culmination until Ovid had applied his extraordinary genius for rhythm and meter. By him the rhythmic formula of the couplet is worked out to completion in all its details. The most obvious features of this formula, aside from certain purely metrical details, are the clear-cut division of each line-and especially of the pentameter-into halves by the regular placing of the main cæsura, and the exact coincidence of grammatical sentence and couplet. Or, viewing the couplet rather than the line as the unit of the verse-form, each group is made to resolve itself into four parts, each of which is, as exactly as may be, a half line; and with the conclusion of the four rhythmical parts falls also the conclusion of the grammatical sentence. Naturally, too, the subordinate parts of the grammatical sentence tend to coincide with the four rhythmical parts. One statement succeeds another in a continuous series, each rhythmically like the preceding, pauses almost invariably in the same places, and the rise and fall of sentences identically distributed over the eleven feet of the group, at whose conclusion they too must end. It is not to be understood from this general description that the formula of the line or of the couplet is invariable. As a matter of fact, only one of the characteristics mentioned is invariable-namely, the equal division of the pentameter line. But the occasional departures from the scheme are so infrequent and of such slight force that the effect of a fixed formula produced upon the reader is not thereby materially weakened. On the contrary, the variations from the rule serve often to emphasize its fixed character, on the principle that exceptions prove the rule. And considered in the light of certain metrical features like the regularity of the dissyllabic close of the halfline of the pentameter and of such traits as middle rhyme in both hexameter and pentameter, the variations seem quite accidental. In short, in spite of insignificant variations, it becomes almost impossible to read the elegy of Ovid in any other way than in accordance with the formula described. And when rhyme is added, one is even tempt ed to depart altogether from a hexameter-pentameter theory, and to write it as a quatrain, thus: Nempe favore suae Vicit tamen ille puellae. Vincamus dominae Quisque favore suae. (Am. 3, 2, 17-18). But it is with the effect of the formula rather than with its laws and exceptions that we are here concerned. The most pronounced effect, it seems to me, is that of monotony. One feels, as one reads, that the mould into which the expression of thought is to be poured for shaping is of much more importance to the poet than the thought which is to be shaped. The form overbalances the matter. And where form has been reduced, under these circumstances, to formula, monotony is the result. The ease and smoothness with which Ovid accomplished his object is admirable in the extreme, and is of the very essence of the power of one who could not speak in prose. But a more or less rigid formula in any verse-form which is made up of short units like the couplet or the quatrain inevitably results in a deadening monotony. Once the formula is devised, however great the skill may be with which the poet applies his thought to it, he is still but following the line of least resistance in confining himself to it. It soon becomes the easiest thing to do-a rhythmical habit, so to speakto make statement and couplet coextensive. If it is true, as is often said, that the poet's thought or emotion dictates, in the first instance, the verse-form he shall use, it is equally true, on the other hand, that the rhythm of his verse-form, once selected, influences, or rather, determines the grouping of the successive thoughts when they find expression in words, in such fashion, at least, that the thought group and the rhythm group shall be co-terminous. Hence the failure, for example, of a couplet form to satisfy the requirements of narrative or dramatic verse. Neither story nor action can be forced with any degree of naturalness to come to full stops at regular intervals; and the narrative or dramatic poet who adopts such a form finds himself constantly struggling against the compelling force of the couplet end. For if he yields, he knows that a hopeless monotony will be the result. It is true that in the elegy the monotony of the couplet is a matter of less moment, because the poem is partly lyrical in character and is usually short. But, on the other hand, elegy-and especially Ovid's Heroides, Ars Amatoria, Fasti, and the Epistulae ex Ponto-possesses also many of the characteristics of narrative poetry; and just to the |