3. The accent is always the normal Latin accent, according to the Law of the Penultimate.
(A tetrasyllabic word has two accents when it stands at the beginning of a line, and a pentasyllabic word always.)
4. Each line begins with an accented syllable.
These are the essential rules. In addition Lindsay has been at pains to determine carefully the accentuation of 'word-groups'. Each word in a Latin sentence has not necessarily an accent of its own. Thus apud uos is accented apúd-uos; so again in-grémium, quei-númquam, ís hic-sítus. No part of Lindsay's papers throws so much light on the scansion of the saturnian verses as that which deals with these word-groups: but it is impossible here to deal with the subject in detail. I will give here the first two Scipio Epitaphs (5. i, ii) as they are scanned and accented by Lindsay:—
i.
Cornélius Lúcius | Scípio Barbátus,
Gnáiuod páter prognátus, | fórtis-uir sapiénsque,
quoìus fórma uirtútei | parísuma fúit,
cónsol, cénsor, aidílis | queí-fuit apúd-nos,
Tàurásia, Cisáuna, | Sámnio cépit,
Súbigit ómne Loucánam | ópsidesque abdóucit
ii.
Hónc óino plóirime | coséntiunt Római
dùonóro óptimo | fuíse uíro
Lúcium Scípiònem | fílios Barbáti
cónsol cénsor aidílis | híc-fuet apúd-nos:
híc cépit Córsica | Alériaque úrbe,
dédet Tèmpestátebus | áide méretod.
But is it certain, after all, that the accent-law in Saturnian verse is the Law of the Penultimate? There was, as is well known, a period in the history of the Latin language when this Law did not obtain, but all Latin words were alike accented on the first syllable. When this period ended we cannot precisely determine. But, as Lindsay himself points out, the influence of the old protosyllabic accentuation was not quite dead even in the time of Plautus.[18] Now the saturnian verse undoubtedly reaches back to a very remote antiquity: even of our extant specimens some are very likely as old as the eighth century. It is probable enough, therefore, that the accent-law known at any rate to the first saturnian poets was the old protosyllabic law. And when we remember the hieratic character of the earliest poetry, when we take into account the conservatism of any priestly ritual or rule, may we not suppose it possible that saturnian verse retained the ancient law of accentuation long after the Law of the Penultimate had asserted itself in ordinary speech and in other forms of literature? Accented, as Lindsay accents it, according to the Law of the Penultimate, the saturnian loses the lilt and swing which it has under the old 'Queen-and-Parlour' system.
dábunt málum Metélli Naéuio poétae