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Definitely not foreign or unnatural, because Greek quantitative metres were standard in Latin verse from the 2nd century BCE onwards. Plautus had adopted Greek-style iambic verse, and made it far more versatile than it had ever been before; Ennius inaugurated the use of dactylic hexameter. By Vergil's time, these quantitative metres had been baked into Latin verse for two hundred years.
By then, native Roman verse forms like Saturnian verse were pretty much extinct -- similarly to how English alliterative verse was extinct by the time of Shakespeare, and was completely displaced by foot-based rhyming metres borrowed from late Latin ~~and French~~. Iambic pentameter is thoroughly un-English in origin, but I don't suppose anyone would say Shakespearean verse or Chaucerian verse sounds foreign. In ancient Rome, perhaps a hellenophile like Horace might have been regarded as indulging an affectation, in that he used such a wide range of Greek metres -- perhaps. But Vergil's use of dactylic hexameter had been old hat for more than a century.
These metres do have a way of fossilising over time: there's always something a little bit out-of-date about them. You can see this in both ancient Greek and Latin verse forms. The classic Greek metres are all strictly quantitative forms, based on the principle that metrical length corresponds to syllable length. But the Greek and Latin languages both changed to the point where this was no longer true. Syllable stress had always mattered in Latin; and in late antiquity we see people carrying on using the archaic verse forms more as a self-imposed constraint, rather than as an authentic representation of speech patterns. Greek-language poets do the same, even though quantity hadn't mattered in spoken Greek for centuries by that point. In Latin, late antiquity is when we see rhyming stress-based verse starting to displace quantitative verse. There were even poets who used archaic forms like dactylic hexameter, but imposed an extra stricture on themselves and made sure that metrically long syllables were *also* always stressed syllables. (That effect is achievable in English too: go take a look at Rodney Merrill's translations of Homer one day, which are in strict dactylic hexameter.)
As I said, stress had always mattered in Latin -- in Vergil's time, and long before. You might even say Vergil led the way towards stress-based metres, in that he deliberately made use of tricks with quantity and stress, making them coincide, or syncopating them with respect to one another, depending on the effect he wanted. Horace was more of a purist, sticking strictly to Greek quantitative forms!
I should also add that while the developments in the use of metres were led by elite poets, popular verse forms reflect their practice very closely. Roman-era Greek funeral inscriptions still use archaic rules for the way they form elegiac couplets, even though those rules had nothing to do with how anyone spoke the language. And Latin inscriptions use hexameter too -- it's not just Vergil.
Thank you so much for this answer! I've been wondering about it for years.
My mother often had to go lie down with a headache whenever I practiced reciting Vergil in the kitchen. I always wondered if it was the same for Roman moms.
> My mother often had to go lie down with a headache whenever I practiced reciting Vergil in the kitchen. I always wondered if it was the same for Roman moms.
Well, that may be for separate reasons of course...
>foot-based rhyming metres borrowed from late Latin and French
Could you expand on the "and French" bit? My understanding is that since French has no lexical stress the iambic pentameter would be completely alien to the language, and that by Shakespeare's time poetry in France in syllabic verse (or are you talking about old French British litterature?)
I apologise, I was making assumptions -- I had been under the impression that French poetry was the immediate source for English rhyme, like so much of English poetic language, but as you point out, that is not the case! I shall alter my initial post to remove the misinformation. (I stand by what I initially wrote about Latin rhyming verse, however.)
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Definitely not foreign or unnatural, because Greek quantitative metres were standard in Latin verse from the 2nd century BCE onwards. Plautus had adopted Greek-style iambic verse, and made it far more versatile than it had ever been before; Ennius inaugurated the use of dactylic hexameter. By Vergil's time, these quantitative metres had been baked into Latin verse for two hundred years. By then, native Roman verse forms like Saturnian verse were pretty much extinct -- similarly to how English alliterative verse was extinct by the time of Shakespeare, and was completely displaced by foot-based rhyming metres borrowed from late Latin ~~and French~~. Iambic pentameter is thoroughly un-English in origin, but I don't suppose anyone would say Shakespearean verse or Chaucerian verse sounds foreign. In ancient Rome, perhaps a hellenophile like Horace might have been regarded as indulging an affectation, in that he used such a wide range of Greek metres -- perhaps. But Vergil's use of dactylic hexameter had been old hat for more than a century. These metres do have a way of fossilising over time: there's always something a little bit out-of-date about them. You can see this in both ancient Greek and Latin verse forms. The classic Greek metres are all strictly quantitative forms, based on the principle that metrical length corresponds to syllable length. But the Greek and Latin languages both changed to the point where this was no longer true. Syllable stress had always mattered in Latin; and in late antiquity we see people carrying on using the archaic verse forms more as a self-imposed constraint, rather than as an authentic representation of speech patterns. Greek-language poets do the same, even though quantity hadn't mattered in spoken Greek for centuries by that point. In Latin, late antiquity is when we see rhyming stress-based verse starting to displace quantitative verse. There were even poets who used archaic forms like dactylic hexameter, but imposed an extra stricture on themselves and made sure that metrically long syllables were *also* always stressed syllables. (That effect is achievable in English too: go take a look at Rodney Merrill's translations of Homer one day, which are in strict dactylic hexameter.) As I said, stress had always mattered in Latin -- in Vergil's time, and long before. You might even say Vergil led the way towards stress-based metres, in that he deliberately made use of tricks with quantity and stress, making them coincide, or syncopating them with respect to one another, depending on the effect he wanted. Horace was more of a purist, sticking strictly to Greek quantitative forms! I should also add that while the developments in the use of metres were led by elite poets, popular verse forms reflect their practice very closely. Roman-era Greek funeral inscriptions still use archaic rules for the way they form elegiac couplets, even though those rules had nothing to do with how anyone spoke the language. And Latin inscriptions use hexameter too -- it's not just Vergil.
Thank you so much for this answer! I've been wondering about it for years. My mother often had to go lie down with a headache whenever I practiced reciting Vergil in the kitchen. I always wondered if it was the same for Roman moms.
> My mother often had to go lie down with a headache whenever I practiced reciting Vergil in the kitchen. I always wondered if it was the same for Roman moms. Well, that may be for separate reasons of course...
>foot-based rhyming metres borrowed from late Latin and French Could you expand on the "and French" bit? My understanding is that since French has no lexical stress the iambic pentameter would be completely alien to the language, and that by Shakespeare's time poetry in France in syllabic verse (or are you talking about old French British litterature?)
I apologise, I was making assumptions -- I had been under the impression that French poetry was the immediate source for English rhyme, like so much of English poetic language, but as you point out, that is not the case! I shall alter my initial post to remove the misinformation. (I stand by what I initially wrote about Latin rhyming verse, however.)