Pyrrha's Roman
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Latin is a far more flexible language than English because it does not rely on the order of words to convey its meaning.

Poets can therefore create specific effects by placing their words where they will be most effective in terms of sound patterms and creating suspense or even visual images.

The poet Horace wrote :
tantum series iuncturaque pollet
'The positioning and combination [of words] has so much power.'

I hope you enjoy the pictorial interpretation of some of my favourite pieces in the pages which follow.

flowers everywhere!

These lines written by Virgil describe flowers growing together in profusion, and you can see in the third line that the words referring to the colocasia and the acanthus - mixtaque and ridenti - are not placed next to them. The artist has linked the nouns to their adjectives by drawing the flower-stems across.



A translation of these lines is :
With no cultivation       nullo cultu
the earth pours forth its little gifts :       tellus .. fundet .. munuscula
climbing ivy everywhere with cyclamen   errantes hederas passim cum baccare
and colocasia mixed      colocasia .. mixtaque
with smiling acanthus.      ridenti .. acantho.

Has Virgil mixed up the order of his words to illustrate the mixed flowers?

town mouse and country mouse

The Latin word olim means 'once upon a time', and this is the beginning of Horace's version of the fable.

                olim
rusticus urbanum murem mus paupere fertur
accepisse cavo, veterem vetus hospes amicum.

Without worrying unduly about the meaning of all the words in this section as the country mouse invites his friend home, you can probably guess who the rusticus .. mus is and who the urbanum murem is!

This was written by the same man who wrote (see top of this page) that the choice and positioning of words was crucial when writing poetry.

Why, then, has he used the same word in the same line TWICE, and (if that weren't bad enough!), NEXT TO each other?
murem mus    (Both words mean 'mouse'.)


                olim
rusticus urbanum murem mus paupere fertur
accepisse cavo, veterem vetus hospes amicum.


In the third line, when mentioning that they were both old friends, he again uses the same word twice :
veterem vetus.    (Both words mean 'old', but the first refers to the town mouse and the second to the country mouse.)

Why?





                olim
rusticus urbanum murem mus paupere fertur
accepisse cavo, veterem vetus hospes amicum.


Either Horace has lost his touch as a poet or - is he trying to achieve a special effect?


In the first picture you can see how the words for the country mouse surround the words for the town mouse. In the second picture the words for the town mouse surround the words for the country mouse.
A friendly embrace?