116v

[Hubert Dale]

Hubert:

That's an interesting idea. But the immediate question is: what meter? How can one judge the meter if, without unambiguous parsing, syllables are not clear?

Myself, I always think of the first line of the spell as of what I believe is iambus (?):

Anchi-ton o-la da-bas ...

A propos, Nick Pelling recently posted something about the 'Cisiojanus' mnemonic, which was new to me:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

which is a mixture of identifiable Latin words and fragments of others joined together in...a Latin hexameter.

That's extremely intersting (somehow I missed the post or the point) - irrespectively of meter, I think.

Hi Anton,

Sorry - a dactylic hexameter:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

You are of course right that without being able to read the text securely we can't be certain it's a hexameter.  But for the the bits we *can* read clearly enough, several of the possibilities do seem to fit the metre very well.  

Anchicon ola dabas works; so would Michi con ola dabas.  (Michi is a variant form of 'mihi', which has two short i's, but the extra 'c' makes the first syllable oh 'michi' long instead of short).  And instead of 'carcere portas' at the end you can have 'Tartare portas', or pretty much any long syllable followed by *-ere portas.

Are there other examples of mediaeval charms/prayers/incantations in hexameters?  I'm sure I've seen some here?