Chapter VIII. Tables Showing Proportions of Short Syllables Provided by Declensional Inflections

The tables of this chapter (XXI-XXXVIII) indicate the number of short syllables provided by the endings of each declensional category, in the metrical conditions under which the forms are actually used, and the proportion that this number constitutes of all short syllables in each hemistich and in the pentameter as a whole. E.g. in the pentameters of Catullus (see table XXI) the endings of masculine and feminine NAV singulars account for 152 short syllables, or 8.8%, of a total of 1734. Almost three-quarters (110, or 72.4%) of these short syllables occur in the second hemistich; but in both hemistichs the number of short syllables furnished by the terminations of the forms in question (42 and 110) is about 9% of the total number of short syllables (462 and 1272 respectively). In the pentameters of Ovid, on the other hand (see table XXXVIII), the endings of masculine and feminine NAV singulars account for 6978 short syllables, or 12.2%, of a total of 57094. Almost four-fifths (5501, or 78.8%) of these short syllables occur in the second hemistich. Moreover, these 5501 short inflectional syllables constitute 15.2% of the total number of short syllables in the second hemistich (36200); the corresponding proportion in the first hemistich is less than half as large (1477/20894, or 7.1%).—Reference to the foot of these tables, where statistics for the declensional category of which we have been speaking are analyzed into its several cases, will show that the short inflections of this category are found almost exclusively in the nominative and vocative cases, the only short endings in the accusative being Greek.