I quote from Austin's commentary to Aeneid 2 (OUP 1964), ad A. 2,774: steteruntque comae: cf. E. 4,61 (!), G. 2,129; 3,283 (miscuerunt), A. 3,681 (constiterunt); 10,334 (steterunt). This prosody is found in Plautus, but only at the end of a verse or colon (...); its advantage in dactylic verse is obvious, and the elegists in particular found it convenient in the second half of the pentameter (cf. Platnauer, _Latin Elegiac Verse_, p. 53).
I also happen to know that there are quite a few good Latin manuals in German; Raphael Kuehner, _Ausfuehrliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache_, T. 1 und 2 (Nachdruck Darmstadt: WBG) is usually my first port of call for such problems. By the way, a search in Clausen's commentary on the Eclogues returned nothing on prosody of E. 4,61. Mr Clausen was not interested. Neven ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
