-- that "the almost universal belief that
Latin verse is a matter of quantity only is
a mistake. Word-accent was not lost in
Latin verse."

And then, as if this undermining of our
schoolboy faith in pure Quantity were not
enough, came the surprising information that
the Romans had kept, perhaps from the be-
ginning of their poetizing, a popular type of
accented verse, as seen in the rude chant of
the Roman legionaries,

Mi^ılle Fra^ıncos mi^ılle se^ımel Sa^ırmata^ıs occi^ıdimu^ıs. ¹

Certainly those sun-burnt "doughboys" were
not bothering themselves about trochees and
iambi and such toys of cultivated "literary"
persons; they were amusing themselves on
the march by inventing words to fit the
"goose-step." Their

Unus homo mille mille mille decollavimus

which Professor Courthope scans as trochaic
verse, ² seems to me nothing but "stress"
verse, like

Ha^ıy-foot, straw-foot, belly full of bean-soup --
He^ıp -- He^ıp!"

-164-