It is very difficult to understand the relation which music bore to the exhibition of Roman comedy. It is clear that there was always a musical accompaniment, and that the instruments used were flutes; the lyre was only used in tragedy, because in comedy there was no chorus or lyric portion. The flutes were at first small and simple; but in the time of Horace were much larger and more powerful, as well as constructed with more numerous stops and greater compass.[[165]]
Flutes were of two kinds. Those played with the right hand (tibiæ dextræ) were made of the upper part of the reed, and like the modern fife or octave flute emitted a high sound: they were therefore suitable to lively and cheerful melodies; and this kind of music, known by the name of the Lydian mode, was performed upon a pair of tibiæ dextræ. The left-handed flutes (tibiæ sinistræ) were pitched an octave lower: their tones were grave and fit for solemn music. The mode denominated Tyrian, or Sarrane,[[166]] was executed with a pair of tibiæ sinistræ. If the subject of the play was serio-comic, the music was in the Phrygian mode, and the flutes used were impares (unequal,) i. e., one for the right, the other for the left hand.[[167]] In tragedy the lyrical portion was sung to music and the dialogue declaimed. But if that were the case in comedy, it is difficult to imagine what corresponded to the lyrical portion, and therefore where music was used. Quintilian informs us that scenic modulation was a simple, easy chant,[[168]] resembling probably intonation in our cathedrals. Such a practice would aid the voice considerably; and if so, the theory of Colman is probably correct, that there was throughout some accompaniment, but that the music arranged for the soliloquies (in which Terence especially abounds) was more laboured and complicated than that of the dialogue.[[169]]
In order to understand the principles which regulated the Roman comic metres, some remarks must be made on the manner in which the language itself was affected by the common conversational pronunciation. In most languages there is a natural tendency to abbreviation and contraction. As the object of language is the expression of thought, few are inclined to take more trouble or to expend more time than is absolutely necessary for conveying their meaning: this attention to practical utility and convenience is the reason for all elliptical forms in grammatical constructions, and also for all abbreviated methods of pronunciation by slurring or clipping, or, to use the language of grammarians, by apocope, syncope, synæresis, or crasis.
The experience of every one proves how different is the impression which the sound of a foreign language makes upon the ear, when spoken by another, from what it makes upon the eye when read even by one who is perfectly acquainted with the theory of pronunciation. Until the ear is habituated, it is easier for an Englishman to speak French than to understand it when spoken. If we consider attentively the manner in which we speak our own language, it is astonishing how many letters and even syllables are slurred over and omitted: the accented syllable is strongly and firmly enunciated, the rest, especially in long words, are left to take care of themselves, and the experience of the hearer and his acquaintance with the language find no difficulty in supplying the deficiency. This is universally the case, except in careful and deliberate reading, and in measured and stately declamation.
With regard to the classical languages, the foregoing observations hold good; in a slighter degree, indeed, with respect to the Greek, for the delicacy of their ear, their attention to accent and quantity, not only in poetry but in oratory, and even in conversation, caused them to give greater effect to every syllable, and especially to the vowel sounds. But even in Greek poetry elision sometimes prevents the disagreeable effect of a hiatus, and in the transition from the one dialect to the other, the numerous vowels of the Ionic assume the contracted form of the Attic.
The resemblance between the practice of the Romans and that of modern nations is very remarkable; with them the mark of good taste was ease—the absence of effort, pedantry, and affectation. As they principally admired facility in versification, so they sought it in pronunciation likewise. To speak with mouthing (hiulce,) with a broad accent (late, vaste,) was to speak like a clown and not like a gentleman (rustice et inurbaniter.) Cicero[[170]] admired the soft, gentle, equable tones of the female voice, and considered the pronunciation of the eloquent and cultivated Lælia as the model of purity and perfection: he thought that she spoke as Plautus or Nævius might have spoken. Again, he speaks of the habit which Cotta had of omitting the iota; pronouncing, for example, dominus, dom’nus, as a prevalent fashion; and although he says,[[171]] that such an obscuration argues negligence, he, on the other hand, applies to the opposite fault a term (putidius) which implies the most offensive affectation. From these observations, we must expect to find that Latin as it was pronounced was very different from Latin as it is written; that this difference consisted in abbreviation either by the omission of sounds altogether, or by contraction of two sounds into one; and that these processes would take place especially in those syllables which in poetry are not marked by the ictus or beat, or in common conversation by the stress or emphasis. Even in the more artificial poetry and oratory of the Augustan age, in which quantity was more rigidly observed by the Roman imitators than by the Greek originals, we find traces of this tendency; and Virgil does not hesitate to use in his stately heroics such forms as aspris, for asperis, semustum for semiustum, oraclum for oraculum, maniplus for manipulus; and, like Terence, to make rejicere (rēīcĕrĕ) a dactyle.[[172]] A number of the most common words, sanctioned by general usage, and incorporated into the language when in its most perfect state, were contractions—such as amassent for amavissent, concio for conventio, cogo from con and ago, surgo from sub and rego, malla for maxilla, pomeridianus from post-mediam-diem, and other instances too numerous to mention.
But in the earlier periods, when literature was addressed still more to the ear than to the eye, when the Greek metres were as yet unknown, and even when, after their introduction, exact observation of Greek rules was not yet necessary, we find, as might be expected, these principles of the language carried still further. They pervade the poems of Livius and Ennius, and the Roman tragedies, even although their style is necessarily more declamatory than that of the comic writers; but in the latter we have a complete representation of Latin as it was commonly pronounced and spoken, and but little trammelled or confined by a rigid adhesion to the Greek metrical laws. In the prologues, indeed, which are of the nature of declamation, and not of free and natural conversation, more care is visible; the iambic trimeters in which they are written fall upon the ear with a cadence similar to those of the Greek, with scarcely any license except an occasional spondee in the even places. But in the scenes little more seems to have been attended to, than that the verse should have the required number of feet, and the syllables pronounced the right quantity, in accordance with the widest license which the rules of Greek prosody allowed. What syllables should be slurred, was left to be decided by the common custom of pronunciation.
Besides the licenses commonly met with in the poets of the Augustan age, the following mutilations are the most usual in the poetical language of the age of which we are treating:—
1. The final s might be elided even before a consonant, and hence the preceding vowel was made short: thus mălīs became mali, on the same principle that in Augustan poetry aūdīsnĕ was contracted into audĭn’. Thus the short vowel would suffer elision before another, and the following line of Terence would consequently be thus scanned:—
Ut mă | līs gāŭ | dēat ălĭ | ēn’ ātq’. | ēx ĭn | cōmmö | dīs.