Some aspects of Valerius Flaccus' art : enjambement and some metrical technicalities in the Argonautica

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to illustrate some aspects in Valerius Fleeces' art. It has two parts. Part I treats of enjambement, that is, the running-on of the sense and pause of a verse into its following line; Part II deals with some metrical technicalities, namely, variety and artistic beauty in metrical composition. Other aspects of Valerius Fleeces' literary art have already been studied.' The aspects which we are treating of in this thesis are intended to prove correct what Quintilian wrote on Valerius Fleeces shortly after his death: multum in Valerie Placco nuper amisimus (Inst. 10.1.90), which words, not applied with the same emphasis to other writers, certainly do not refer to a possible immature death of Valerius Fleeces, but 'ke some good artistic qualities evident in his work. We also tope that our original contribution to research in Valerius Fleeces through these artistic aspects serve as preliminary factual observations for a more general evaluation of this Silver Age poet. We have tried all along to support our conclusions both on enjambement and the metrical technicalities by means of lists of incidences and numerical illustrations. We have also given examples and quoted quite a number of illustrative long passages to spare the readers from having to refer too frequently to the text. To incidences and examples, we have added Tables and Graphs which are meant to serve as summaries and illustrations to the relevant sections and chapters. All our quotations have been taken from W. Courtney's 1970 edition of Valerius Fleeces' arconautica.