Alliteration (Latin)

The term alliteration was invented by the Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), in his dialogue "Actius", to describe the practice common in Virgil, Lucretius, and other Roman writers of beginning words or syllables with the same consonant or vowel. He gives examples such as "the rocks were resounding with the salt-water" or "he recognised his friend Anchises" or "defended by a great force of men".
Pontano also used it to refer to repetition of letters in medial positions. Among other kinds, he mentions the frequent case when the last syllable of a word begins with the same consonant as the first syllable of the next word, as in "the rigid breastplate made of bronze" (Virgil). Since "x" is pronounced [ks], the phrase "the rocks were resounding with sea water" (Virgil) can also be considered an example of this kind.
Alliteration was a prominent feature of Latin literature (in contrast to Greek), especially in poetry in the 3rd to 1st centuries BC, and continued to be used by some writers even in the Middle Ages.
Definitions.
Scholars differ as to how alliteration should be defined. Some, such as Keith Maclennan (2017), suggest that the term alliteration should be used only of repeated sounds at the beginning of words, and assonance of sounds repeated in another context. Tracy (1884) also gives examples only of word-initial alliteration.
However, Pontano himself, who invented the term, used it also of the alliteration of medial consonants. The French scholars A. Cordier (1939) and (1933) similarly define it as "the repetition, near or exact, of a phoneme or group of phonemes at the beginning of syllables (e.g. ) or at the beginning of words (e.g. ) nearby one another in the utterance."
The German classicist August Ferdinand Naeke (1829) also accepted internal alliteration and cited examples such as "you've nearly broken the hinges of the door, you idiot!" (Plautus), in which the first F, though medial, clearly contributes to the effect of the whole.
The Lucretius specialists (1947) and Margaret Deutsch (1939), on the other hand, give a slightly different definition. They define alliteration as the repetition of "consonants" (whether initial or medial), and assonance as the repetition of "vowel" sounds or of syllables. From the examples Bailey gives, such as , it is clear that he considered that consonants at the end of syllables and words could contribute to alliteration as well as those at the beginning.
Thus when several words in a row begin with the same vowel, as in "the huge man, struck, falls to the ground" (Virgil), some scholars follow Pontano in referring to it as alliteration, while others use the term assonance.
Conversely, when a medial consonant is involved, as in , it is called "internal alliteration" by Bailey but would be considered as assonance by Maclennan.
Compound alliteration.
Although simple alliteration involving only the initial consonants of words is very common, in Latin authors of all periods it will often be found that primary alliteration on an initial consonant is accompanied by a secondary or "minor" alliteration on a medial consonant. Thus Cicero's "the gates are open" as well as the primary alliteration of P has minor alliteration of T. Occasionally there are two minor consonants involved, as in "lakes and groves" (Cicero) or "with coils of snakes" (Virgil).
In other examples, the same consonant occurs both initially and medially, e.g. (Plautus) and (Virgil) with C, or (Virgil) with R. Often two different consonants are involved in the same phrase, partly initial and partly medial: (Naevius) and (Virgil) with M and T; and with M and L (Virgil); and (Nepos), (Virgil) and (Virgil) with R and G.
Any account of alliteration in Latin must therefore take such cases into consideration. However, as Bailey warns, caution must be observed in recognising such examples, as the internal alliteration may sometimes be accidental.
Alliteration and assonance.
Alliteration frequently overlaps with assonance, which is defined by one dictionary as "a resemblance in the sounds of words or syllables, either between their vowels (e.g. "meat, bean") or between their consonants (e.g. "keep, cape")". (This latter kind is also known as consonance.)
By this definition some of the examples which Naeke in the 19th century called alliteration, such as "thief who wears three yokes" (Plautus), "it's never been imagined, or painted, or written" (Plautus), or "she is overcome with grief" (Terence) would usually these days be referred to as assonance.
Often alliteration and assonance are combined, as in "with copious blood they wash their necks and shoulders" (Virgil), where there is alliteration of L L L, but also assonance of A AR AR A.
Examples of alliteration.
In popular phrases.
The earliest appearance of alliteration in Latin seems to have been not in poetry but in proverbs and popular sayings, and phrases of a religious or legal character. Examples of popular phrases are: "to waste both oil and time", "beware of the dog", "alive and well", "enough and more", "white or black", "public and private", and so on. Legal and religious phrases included such as "tablets and witnesses", "altars and shrines", "houses and temples", "brave and loyal", "routed and put to flight", "Chance and Fortune". Frequently such alliterating phrases show asyndeton, i.e. the two words are placed side by side with no conjunction such as "and". Another example of this is the boast "I came, I saw, I conquered" attributed to Julius Caesar.
It has been noted that in these phrases that if one of two alliterated words has an "a" in it, it is usually placed second: "by sword and flame", "far and wide", "hills and plains", "many and great". When the words are of unequal length, the shorter one usually precedes: "fame and fortune", "gold and silver", "care and custody", and so on. As both and Cordier noted, the Latin language naturally lends itself to such phrases, making them part of everyday speech. Some apparent examples of alliteration therefore are likely to be fortuitous, for example Jesus's saying "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (John 14.6), which is translated from a Greek original.
In prayers.
Some of the early prayers () which survive, such as the one which begins as follows, are partly alliterative, but the alliteration is not maintained throughout the prayer:
It contains alliterative lines such as this:
However, much of the prayer is not alliterative. McGann (1958) concludes that alliteration is an important but occasional device which adds greatly to the effect of the composition, but does not perform a structural function in the as a whole.
In poetry.
The earliest Latin poems, unlike early Germanic and English poetry, do not have obligatory alliteration. Most of the fragments of the early accentual Saturnian poetry listed by Lindsay exhibit no alliteration, although some do, for example the following line, attributed to Naevius (c.270–c.201 BC), which has alliteration of M, P, and T:
The epic poet Ennius (c.239–c.169 BC) made very frequent use of alliteration. In the following hexameter, the primary alliteration with T is supported by a secondary medial alliteration of R to reinforce the idea of terror and trembling:
T and R are also used in the following often-quoted line:
To a greater extent than later poets, Ennius often uses the same alliteration throughout the line:
Another famous line is the following:
The above line was quoted with disapproval for its excessive alliteration in the "Rhetorica ad Herennium" 4.12, and some modern critics have called it "almost absurd" or "embarrassing".
Another Ennius example, which Austin describes as "noble", is the following iambic octonarius. Here there is assonance between and at corresponding places in the two halves of the line, combined with alliteration of C, S, and minor alliteration of P and L:
The comic playwright Plautus also has innumerable instances of alliteration, usually for comic effect:
The other surviving comic playwright, Terence, by contrast, used alliteration hardly at all, and this is a major difference between his work and that of Plautus. Naeke, who quotes numerous examples from Plautus, can cite only a few from Terence, including the following:
Cicero has frequent examples of alliteration in his poetry, but usually involving only two or three words in any one verse. In the following lines, which describe the killing of Orion by the Scorpion as depicted in the stars, the primary alliteration of V V V is accompanied by minor alliteration of D, C, T, F and R:
Lucretius and Virgil also both used alliteration widely, Lucretius "with striking power in many memorable passages" (Austin), for example the following, where P, C, Q and R are mingled:
In Virgil, alliteration was "no longer an external ornament ... but an inner secret of sound, subtly employed to serve emotion". An example is the following line, in which the consonants in the first half of the line (CRNT, MTS) are mirrored by those in the second half (MTS, CRNT):
In Horace and Catullus it occurs much less frequently. Nonetheless even in Catullus there are lines such as the following with its alternation of C, G, T and D sounds, which appear to imitate the shaking of a tambourine:
In his lament for his dead brother the chiastic alliteration F M M F is reinforced by minor alliteration of T:
Ovid employs alliteration much less obviously than Lucretius and Virgil (some examples are given below). He sometimes seems to play with words, as when Apollo tells his son Phaethon:
In Lucan alliteration is found, although not as commonly as in Virgil. His epic poem on the Civil War begins as follows, with an alliteration on C, P and V:
Alliteration is rarely used in Juvenal and Martial, although there are occasional phrases such as the following from Juvenal:
or the following from Martial, in which L, C, and S are interwoven:
In prose.
Although alliteration is found most often in poetry, Pontano notes that prose writers also sometimes used it, and quotes from a sentence from Cicero's treatise Brutus:
In his speeches, Cicero uses alliteration sparingly, but effectively, as in famous suggestion to Catiline:
Again using assonance as well as alliteration, in an emotional moment of indignation in the he says:
Near the ending of the 2nd Philippic oration Cicero uses both alliteration and assonance to add force to an unexpected metaphor. The major alliteration, on stressed initial syllables, is D P P D P; but there is also internal or minor alliteration of L D D L as well as assonance of PAR PAR:
In another example from the same paragraph of the 2nd Philippic, with alternation of M, R, and L, Cicero says:
Some orators evidently used alliteration too much, however, causing the author of the (c. 80 BC) to complain about "the excessive use of the same letter".
Among historians Nepos, according to Rolfe, used it "to excess". The following sentence is an example:
Tacitus did not make great of use alliteration generally, but was fond of alliterative pairs of words such as "generosity and extravagance" or "by laziness of the generals, and insurrection of the legions".
Alliteration became very frequent again in north African authors of the 2nd and 3rd century A.D.: "It occurs on almost every page of Apuleius, Fronto, and Tertullian, and is very common in Cyprian." An example from Apuleius, in which the alliteration is reinforced by the rhythm of the line:
Statistical studies.
Some scholars have performed statistical studies on different poets. Clarke (1976) compared Virgil and Ovid, finding minor differences in their usage. For example, Ovid tends frequently to put alliterating words in the first half of the verse, while Virgil is more likely to put them in the second half. In both poets, the most likely position for an alliterating word is after the 3rd-foot caesura, and the second most common the beginning of the verse. Often there is alliteration in both of these places at once, as in the following line of Ovid:
Greenberg (1980), who criticises Clarke's study as statistically unsound in some respects, compares Virgil and Lucretius. One of his conclusions is that Lucretius is more likely than Virgil to use three or more initially alliterating words in the same line, for example:
In order to simplify their investigation, neither scholar takes internal alliteration into account, or alliterations such as which spread over more than one line. However, Greenberg states: "There is no intrinsic reason why alliteration should be limited to the confines of a single verse or to word-initials."
Certain letters are used in alliteration more frequently than others. In Virgil, according to Clarke, the commonest letters for word-initial alliteration are "a, c, p, s, m, t, d, e, f, i, n, v"; alliteration with "b" is very rare. However, when an alliterating word comes after a verse-break such as a caesura, the letter "a" is less common, coming only in 6th or 7th place.
Usually a letter alliterates only with itself, but sometimes "qu" can alliterate with "c"; "ph" may alliterate with "p"; "ae" and "au" may alliterate with "a"; and "sc", "sp", "st" may alliterate with "s".
From both studies, it is clear that when only two words in a line begin with the same letter, it is difficult or impossible to identify objectively whether the alliteration is accidental or deliberate, since alliterated words occur no more often in any line than would be due to chance. To identify whether alliteration is present, more subjective criteria must be used, such as whether the two words are important for the meaning of the line. Thus although Lucretius 3.267 () is counted as an example of alliteration by Greenberg's computer programme, it is doubtful if alliteration can be made on a weak word such as "and".
When two pairs of words alliterate in the same line, the order "abab" is most common, then "aabb", then "abba". An example of the last is the following from Virgil:
Although alliteration is common in Virgil, Ovid, and Lucretius, it is not found in every line. Overall, some 35-40% of lines in both Virgil and Ovid have no word-initial alliteration at all; in many of the remainder, the alliteration may well be accidental.
Uses of alliteration.
Linking alliteration.
Frequently alliteration simply adorns and beautifies a verse, without adding any particular emphasis. As Headlam (1920) notes, often the alliteration runs through a passage, linking together the various clauses, as in the opening of "Aeneid" 4, where the letters C, C, V, V, T, T recur repeatedly, as well as assonances such as , , and :
In his commentary on these lines, Ingo Gildenhard suggests that in the repeated alliteration with V in three pairs of words, Virgil seems to be hinting at a thematic link between the "wound" of Dido and the "manliness", "face", and "words" of Aeneas.
Synonyms and antonyms.
Another use for alliteration is to link together synonyms or thematically similar words:
In the following example, the great quantity of blood when the two bulls fight is emphasised by the alliteration on the words "copious" and "they wash":
Alliteration can also be used in both prose and verse to emphasise an antithesis between two opposite things:
Onomatopoeia.
Frequently both Lucretius and Virgil use alliteration onomatopoeically to paint pictures in sound. Thus alliteration with S may represent the whooshing of an arrow or a spear, the sound of waves breaking on the rocks, or the hissing of serpents:
R, C, T, and S may call up "loud and violent sounds". In the following lines the alliteration is reinforced by assonance of "or, or" and "to, to, tu, tu":
C, R, T imitate the crackling of flames in the following lines of Lucretius:
C and T can also imitate the sounds of musical instruments, as in these lines of Lucretius:
In the opening of Virgil's first Eclogue, as in the line of Theocritus that it imitates, the T and P sounds have been explained as the whispering of the leaves of the tree:
M may represent the rolling of thunder or the roaring of the sea:
With the letters P and D Virgil can represent the sound of men running:
The alternation of T Q C and G combined with a dactylic rhythm can imitate the "takkatak takkatak" sound of a horse cantering across the plain:
The letter H, which is only rarely used, can imitate the panting of a dog:
In this line, describing the fate of some Lycian peasants who have been transformed into frogs, Ovid uses the alliteration (with assonance) of QUA QUA to represent their quacking, even before revealing what creatures they have been metamorphosed into:
In the following highly alliterative line it has been suggested that Ovid is imitating the chattering sound of the local Black Sea languages:
Light and liquid.
As Bailey points out often a key word will set the alliteration in a line. Thus "rumbling" will suggest the letters M and R, "wind" and "force" will suggest V, and the letter L, the initial of and (both meaning "light"), may represent the effects of light:
Likewise in the following lines from book 2 of the "Aeneid" the L, C, and ŪC sounds of the word "light" are picked out and repeated:
L can also suggest the gliding of liquid, as at Lucretius 5.950, where there is secondary alliteration of R:
Both ideas are combined in the following lines, also from Lucretius:
Echo alliteration.
Another use of alliteration in Virgil is to emphasise particular key words or names. Headlam (1921) demonstrates how when Virgil introduces a proper name he often uses echoes of the sound of that name through alliteration or assonance in nearby words, a technique he refers to as "echo alliteration":
Not only proper names but also other key words can be highlighted in this way. In the passage below, the god Faunus and the wild olive tree () both play a significant role in the story. The first of these is highlighted by the alliteration F F F; the second by assonance (). There are further echoes in the syllables , , and in the second line:
Dramatic moments.
Alliteration is frequently used in the "Aeneid" at moments of high drama, such as the moment that Aeneas's enemy Turnus is finally struck down by Aeneas in book 12. In this passage can be heard first the noisy STR STR imitating the sound of the spear's flight, then the vocalic alliteration of I I I as Turnus falls, and finally an assonance of PLI PLI as his knees buckle:
Another warrior dies in book 9 of the "Aeneid" as follows, with primary alliteration of V V, F F, and secondary alliteration of L L and NG NG:
Ovid also sometimes uses alliteration to mark significant moments in the story, as when he describes Echo's transformation. Here the alliteration of F F is accompanied by an assonance of OSS ISS:
When Scylla silently enters her father's bedroom and cuts off the lock of hair whose loss will destroy the city, the letter T is constantly repeated, the word "crime" and "fatal" are emphasised by alliteration of F, and are linked by the assonance of NT. Finally alliteration of S emphasises the word "robs":
In the following lines Ovid describes the dangerous moment in the flight of Icarus when he flies too close to the sun. Here the consonants D and C of the word "daring" are echoed through two lines, before giving way to T T T:
Emotional speech.
Alliteration and assonance also often add emphasis to expressions of emotion, such as anger, scorn, grief, panic, and terror, as in the following lines from book 2 of the "Aeneid", where the ghost of Hector orders Aeneas to flee. Here alliteration is combined with assonance of and :
In book 12 of the "Aeneid" Turnus's sister cries these words, alternating the M and T of and (both words meaning "fear"), and combining it with assonance of "ē" and "em":
Aeneas taunts his enemy with alliteration of T C S and assonance of VER VA VAR VA AR A as follows:
In his reply, Turnus combines alliteration of T F D with assonance of FER TER FER TER:
Decline of alliteration.
Tastes in alliteration gradually changed, and some writers, such as Plautus, Ennius, Lucretius, and Virgil, used it much more freely than others such as Catullus or Horace. From the first century AD it became less common. The scholar Servius (c.400), who wrote a commentary on Virgil, commented on the triple alliteration of "Aeneid" 3.183 ( "Cassandra used to sing of these events") and similar phrases: "This style of composition is now considered a fault, although our ancestors liked it". He also disapproved of phrases such as ("Aeneid" 2.27) in which the final syllable of a word was repeated in the next word.
A few years later Martianus Capella (fl. 410-20) wrote: "It is a very great fault in composition not to avoid the constant use of a letter repeated ad nauseam."
Alliteration in Anglo-Latin poetry.
From the 7th century onwards English scholars began writing poetry in Latin, beginning with Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury in Wiltshire. Imitating and perhaps even exceeding the type of alliteration familiar in Old English, poems were written such as the following, attributed to Aldhelm himself, which displays both major and minor alliteration:
Aldhelm also used alliteration in many of his hexameter lines, such as the following:
Lapidge (1979) discusses where exactly alliteration should be sought: at the beginning of the word, on the stressed syllable, or on the verse ictus. However, these questions still remain largely unanswered.
Another highly alliterative work produced in England is the ("Melody of Love") written about 1330 by the Yorkshire mystic Richard Rolle. An excerpt of this work, which is written in prose, but with some characteristics of verse, is the following:
The same author's is a shorter poem written in alliterative verse. At about the same time as Richard Rolle wrote this, an Alliterative Revival also began in English poetry, and in the same part of England.