Corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat.
and this in a passage in which the sound seems intended to imitate the sense—
Poste recumbite vestraque pectora pellite tonsis.
And though such marked violations of harmony are rare, yet there is a large proportion of lines in which the laws for the caesura observed by later poets are violated. Again, while the final 's' is in most cases not sounded before a word beginning with a consonant (a usage which finally disappears only in the Augustan poets) the final 'm,' on the other hand, is sometimes left without elision before a vowel, as in the following line—
Miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes.
The quantity of syllables and the inflexions of words were so far unsettled, that such lines as the following are read,
Partem fuisset de summis rebu' regendis;
and this,
Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem;
and