‘Irrational Lengthening’ in Virgil

Abstract Word-final syllables consisting of a short vowel or a short vowel followed by a single consonant sometimes scan as heavy in Latin hexameter poetry, a feature known as ‘irrational lengthening’, lengthening in arsis, diastole etc. We examine the contexts in which this occurs in the poetry of Virgil. It is widely acknowledged that this phenomenon is based on a similar licence in earlier Greek and Roman models for Virgil, but it has also been argued that other, metrical or phonological, aspects may have been relevant to the use of lengthening. We examine these environments, and, where possible, carry out statistical analysis. We conclude that, while some of these are descriptively true, the position of lengthened words is primarily due to the constraints that Virgil applied to the construction of his hexameter rather than any other explanation.