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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Gli Anapesti di Plauto e di Seneca

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Greek Marschanapaste were first divided into dimeters by Alexandrian philologists. This division (that reflects a syntactical tendency) influenced Roman dramatists deeply. Plautus composed real anapaestic dimeters sometimes ordering them as a κατὰ στίχον series, sometimes (and more frequently) coupling them as septenarii or octonarii, but he did not compose κατὰ σύστηµα series (as scholars generally suppose) and most of these series are more conveniently interpreted as octonarii mixed with septenarii. Seneca’s anapaests should still be interpreted as dimeters mixed with monometers (the dimeters are marked off by hiatus and indifferens, while sinaphia strangely enough operates only within a monometer).